Automatic Monkey
Banned
Couldn't get anybody to play with me, so I was an ape alone and forlorn on the Boardwalk for a few days.
The good news is playing conditions have slightly improved! Most of the 6:5 crapjack is gone. The Trump Plaza now deals only 6D with 75-80% pen. With a few exceptions pen was pretty good, got as good as 0.8D with one dealer (probably a mistake). Several shuffles in town are now workable.
The bad news was the crowds were beyond oppressive! I swear, the entire population of China seemed like they were there, as well as groups of middle aged homosexual men, strangely enough. Maybe they were having a convention or something. Borgata and most other places were up to $50-$100 mins except for their one token $5 and $10 table which of course people are lined up at. Most tables in town were NMS and that plus the crowds made backcounting very difficult, but the backcounting forays I was able to get off went well. I even found one of the few remaining crapjack tables that allowed mid-shoe entry, so I switched to UBZ and abused it for a while, lunging in for a single hand every 2-3 decks feeling like all eyes were on me. The crowd situation didn't allow me to get as much play in as I wanted. Too much time was spent finding a seat. Now I came prepared to deal with crowds, but not like that, and a dealer told me the casinos grossly misunderestimated the need for dealers. Tables were managed full 24 hours a day and the only hope for getting good play in was finding the times when the crowds didn't match up with the shift changes. The high table mins were also a problem. My bankroll wasn't sufficient for a $50 game and barely for a $25 game, but I went back to my room and did some quick sims and found that when Wonging out properly, I'm just as well off playing a $50 6D game where I can always spread to two hands, than a $25 8D game where I can only play one. So I braved the higher limits with no harm done.
Heat: I got lit up twice. Once was at a game that lent itself to double-key single-ace sequencing, and I was having a nice session of this until I looked up and saw two suits standing there with their arms crossed and glaring. Might have looked like I was bet-capping or something, so I got the heck out of there. The second incident was at a very dingy run-down Midtown joint. That's usually a good place to avoid, but I walked through and found a dealer cutting deep so I played, and on my first shoe got a huge count, spread to two hands, and on the last hand of the shoe went to spread to 3, and the PC came over and told me if I don't accept a player's card, I can only play one hand because "we don't know who you are." And I'm thinking, if they find out who I am, they're not going to let me even play one hand, so I finished the shoe and left with a nice win.
Results: lost a few hundred, got frustrated with the crowds that I was informed wouldn't be getting any better that week, so I blew town, all the way back to Foxwoods and won it all back in a couple of hours. Life at the speed of blackjack!
Best experience: getting toked a green by a whale at the table for informing him to hit A6 vs. 10! Yes of course he got his 4. It sucks to get the abuse from ploppies for basic strategy advice that doesn't go their way, so it was nice to be rewarded for a change. Also had some fun partnering with players on splits and DD's.
Worst experience: having a prostitute try to shake me down for money in an elevator. This scabrous woman makes conversation with me, then in the elevator solicits me for prostitution. I tell her "No thanks," then she tells me she's a police informant and is going to have me arrested for prostitution if I don't "take care of her." "Poor choice of words" I thought, as I considered the various ways I could take care of her. I could call the cops but that would attract unwanted attention and possibly get her to raise the stakes with a false claim. So I act afraid- "OK, OK, please don't get me in trouble, my wife will kill me. I've got $500 in my wallet, it's down in my car. You can come with me." She walks along with me and gives me this pseudo-cop lecture about the trouble I can get into talking to strangers. I'm gritting my teeth with rage, restraining myself, and at an intersection of corridors, instead of turning towards the parking deck, I walked onto the casino floor and sat down at a BJ table, flipping her a double-bird behind my back. Her voice turned into something from The Exorcist when she realized she'd been screwed, and she didn't dare follow me out there. Fifteen seconds later I turned around and she was gone. A bad omen I guess, because the session that followed was the worst of the week!
New trick: when playing at a NMS shoe, to ensure that the table doesn't fill up during the shuffle preventing you from playing two hands, just put a bet down in two spots. Right when the dealer puts the cards back in the shoe, pull one back. He won't care, and that spot will be empty til the shuffle unless your neighbor starts playing two hands.
Question: How do you deal with a dealer who picks up the cards any old way? I'm recording sequences, then the relief dealer comes in and just scoops the cards together randomly after each round. Typical AC sloppiness. I could tell him, hey that's not the right way to pick up cards, but would that be too much of a tipoff to someone that I'm using advanced AP? It's the most vexing problem I faced when sequencing. Unfortunately I couldn't just go to another table, because the tables were too full.
The good news is playing conditions have slightly improved! Most of the 6:5 crapjack is gone. The Trump Plaza now deals only 6D with 75-80% pen. With a few exceptions pen was pretty good, got as good as 0.8D with one dealer (probably a mistake). Several shuffles in town are now workable.
The bad news was the crowds were beyond oppressive! I swear, the entire population of China seemed like they were there, as well as groups of middle aged homosexual men, strangely enough. Maybe they were having a convention or something. Borgata and most other places were up to $50-$100 mins except for their one token $5 and $10 table which of course people are lined up at. Most tables in town were NMS and that plus the crowds made backcounting very difficult, but the backcounting forays I was able to get off went well. I even found one of the few remaining crapjack tables that allowed mid-shoe entry, so I switched to UBZ and abused it for a while, lunging in for a single hand every 2-3 decks feeling like all eyes were on me. The crowd situation didn't allow me to get as much play in as I wanted. Too much time was spent finding a seat. Now I came prepared to deal with crowds, but not like that, and a dealer told me the casinos grossly misunderestimated the need for dealers. Tables were managed full 24 hours a day and the only hope for getting good play in was finding the times when the crowds didn't match up with the shift changes. The high table mins were also a problem. My bankroll wasn't sufficient for a $50 game and barely for a $25 game, but I went back to my room and did some quick sims and found that when Wonging out properly, I'm just as well off playing a $50 6D game where I can always spread to two hands, than a $25 8D game where I can only play one. So I braved the higher limits with no harm done.
Heat: I got lit up twice. Once was at a game that lent itself to double-key single-ace sequencing, and I was having a nice session of this until I looked up and saw two suits standing there with their arms crossed and glaring. Might have looked like I was bet-capping or something, so I got the heck out of there. The second incident was at a very dingy run-down Midtown joint. That's usually a good place to avoid, but I walked through and found a dealer cutting deep so I played, and on my first shoe got a huge count, spread to two hands, and on the last hand of the shoe went to spread to 3, and the PC came over and told me if I don't accept a player's card, I can only play one hand because "we don't know who you are." And I'm thinking, if they find out who I am, they're not going to let me even play one hand, so I finished the shoe and left with a nice win.
Results: lost a few hundred, got frustrated with the crowds that I was informed wouldn't be getting any better that week, so I blew town, all the way back to Foxwoods and won it all back in a couple of hours. Life at the speed of blackjack!
Best experience: getting toked a green by a whale at the table for informing him to hit A6 vs. 10! Yes of course he got his 4. It sucks to get the abuse from ploppies for basic strategy advice that doesn't go their way, so it was nice to be rewarded for a change. Also had some fun partnering with players on splits and DD's.
Worst experience: having a prostitute try to shake me down for money in an elevator. This scabrous woman makes conversation with me, then in the elevator solicits me for prostitution. I tell her "No thanks," then she tells me she's a police informant and is going to have me arrested for prostitution if I don't "take care of her." "Poor choice of words" I thought, as I considered the various ways I could take care of her. I could call the cops but that would attract unwanted attention and possibly get her to raise the stakes with a false claim. So I act afraid- "OK, OK, please don't get me in trouble, my wife will kill me. I've got $500 in my wallet, it's down in my car. You can come with me." She walks along with me and gives me this pseudo-cop lecture about the trouble I can get into talking to strangers. I'm gritting my teeth with rage, restraining myself, and at an intersection of corridors, instead of turning towards the parking deck, I walked onto the casino floor and sat down at a BJ table, flipping her a double-bird behind my back. Her voice turned into something from The Exorcist when she realized she'd been screwed, and she didn't dare follow me out there. Fifteen seconds later I turned around and she was gone. A bad omen I guess, because the session that followed was the worst of the week!
New trick: when playing at a NMS shoe, to ensure that the table doesn't fill up during the shuffle preventing you from playing two hands, just put a bet down in two spots. Right when the dealer puts the cards back in the shoe, pull one back. He won't care, and that spot will be empty til the shuffle unless your neighbor starts playing two hands.
Question: How do you deal with a dealer who picks up the cards any old way? I'm recording sequences, then the relief dealer comes in and just scoops the cards together randomly after each round. Typical AC sloppiness. I could tell him, hey that's not the right way to pick up cards, but would that be too much of a tipoff to someone that I'm using advanced AP? It's the most vexing problem I faced when sequencing. Unfortunately I couldn't just go to another table, because the tables were too full.
