Letter from Las Vegas

Greedy ambitions of table game players are usually a recipe for defeat. Both setting a modest target for wins and a rigid bottom-line exit strategy are central to winning regularly. Sometimes though, I wonder whether the casinos themselves are not just plain greedy and suffer in consequence. The use of the double zero wheel at roulette is a prime example, but there are others. If British casinos can make a good return by offering 35 to 1 payout on 37 numbers and returning half-stakes on zero for even-chance bets, there’s no excuse for Vegas casinos to pay 35 to 1 for 38 numbers and no rebate on 0 or 00.

A few Strip casinos do offer single-zero roulette but usually at a base bet of $25. That, as I observe every week, is a trap for the unwary. Having bought in, the players put out, say $10 on black and $15 on even. Wrong! No can do! It has to be $25 per position, thus forcing players to pay more than they want to afford. If you want to back 1-12 and 25-36, then the $25 minimum forces you to bet $50. Some casinos like the Rampart have this rule on their 00 wheel too so that players who see the minimum bet is $10 find they cannot play a total of $10 but must cover any section of the layout with that sum as a minimum.

Raising the stakes

Last week I visited the Mirage where they have a single zero table, usually at $25. That day they had a big punter around – who was playing elsewhere when I arrived – and so the minimum was $100. I decided to play neighbours but they refused to take my bets totalling $100. This was uneconomic for me and so I left. The table was still empty two hours later, the dealer simply staring at me staring at him from the bar. See what I mean about greed?

These irritated thoughts were pissing me off as I sat in the bar watching the inaction. Even drinking a couple of cocktails so ostentatious that it would have embarrassed Del-Boy didn’t appease me. That very day, Las Vegas casinos had just reported all-time record profits of over $1 billion for the month of March on a drop of $13.4 billion. They could easily afford to play fair and still enable the casino bosses to live the pampered back-slapping existence to which they have become accustomed.

If the casinos didn’t create these artificial rules for roulette, then perhaps their tables wouldn’t be empty so often, and their profits might be even bigger – as you would expect them to be if more people play and lose the predictable amounts. The average player loses $400 per visit, though these record profits suggest that this figure is now outdated. As it is, every week I listen to the furious complaints from players who feel conned by these artificial rules at roulette that make minimum bets far more than they first appear.

Artificial intelligence

It is not just roulette where the casino’s greed oozes out of the green baize. A couple of months back I wrote about the technology that some casinos had installed that could enable them to beat the punters at blackjack by using their own card-counting wizardry. Now comes news to me from an insider that casinos are hoping slots manufacturers will get approval for the next generation of cash-guzzlers. These will be capable of control by the cigar-chompers in the back offices, thereby enabling them to tinker with the percentage payout so that at peak times the machines can be mean, but can be generous (well, less mean!) at slack times. Crafty punters will play at 10am on a Tuesday rather than 11pm on Fridays. Will the Nevada Gaming Board and others approve this hidden trap? My guess is they will. After all, they approved the blackjack shoe with the inbuilt brain to count cards.

Back in March I was playing roulette when a Londoner joined the table. He had a shaven head, stubble, beer gut and tattoos down both arms. The Union Jack singlet completed the image of someone from the cast of EastEnders or a Chelsea fan who had turned right instead of left out of Fulham Broadway tube. He proceeded to draw down on his credit line with a marker for $2 million, the largest I have seen outside of Macau. When I left, he was down $50,000. He seemed cheerily optimistic about bouncing back before the next Virgin flight to Gatwick. I hope he didn’t contribute to March’s record profits.

All the best,

Brett