Vegas baby. There is no equal, anywhere.
Spent a great weekend with a couple of friends in Sin City. Here are the high- and low- lights, along with some tips for all you hardcore gamblers out there. Hopefully this will save some of you a lot of shoe leather. Most of this info is current as of November 30, but we all know that Vegas casinos are a constantly changing lot so your mileage may vary.
First of all, avoid the "Single Deck, Blackjack pays 6-5" tables like the Bubonic Plague. If you're in Vegas to do some gambling and not to just give all your money to the casino, please heed this advice. You've probably heard that single deck blackjack gives you better odds. This is true, all other things being equal. However, by throwing in the BJ pays 6-5 (as opposed to 3-2 like normal tables), this ups the house advantage by 1.39%. When you consider that most blackjack, when played with perfect execution of the basic strategy, is around 0.5%, you are pretty much getting suckered if you play at one of these tables. I can't tell you how rampant these tables are all over the Strip now, and how many people I saw getting suckered. By the way, the link to the basic strategy above goes to a website called thewizardofodds.com, which is extremely good for you stats/probability people, and also an invaluable reference on the many games you'll find a casino.
Okay, that being said, the other somewhat frustrating thing was the lack of tables with favorable rules. We weren't really asking for all that much: just a standard shoe game, with 6-8 decks, dealer stands on soft 17. The dealer stands on soft 17 part was the hard part. We probably walked 2 miles the first day looking for a table where the dealer stands on soft 17. Here are the casinos I remember hitting in our quest: Caesar's Palace, Mirage, Venetian, Flamingo, Harrah's, Casino Royale, Bally's, Paris, Aladdin, Bellagio, Mandalay Bay. The only places that I remember for sure having dealer stands on soft 17 were Aladdin and Bellagio. Mirage and Mandalay might have had it, but I can't recall. Everywhere else was dealer hits soft 17. Now remember: the casinos change all the time, so this information could be outdated. Also, I probably did not look at every single table in the house at all the places, so there might have been some tables I just didn't see. And third, I didn't venture into any high roller rooms, which tend to have more favorable rules, but I didn't feel like dropping that kind of cash.
Now on the one hand, it's kind of frustrating to have to do so much legwork just to find good tables. But on the other hand, I realize that by suckering the vast majority of people into playing less favorable rules, the casinos make more money and are able to make my experience that much more enjoyable while in theory, over the long run, I should have paid less than the average for it. So I guess the shoe leather is the price I pay. Hopefully my writing this helps someone out there so they don't have to make the same long trek we did.
Other observations made on this trip: the male virgin at the craps table myth was again true, with the three of us each dropping at least $100 in 10 minutes the first time we approached a craps table at the Flamingo (one of us had never played). But we made that up and then some later that night at Paris, which ended up being the only session I walked away net positive for the weekend. Also, I broke one of the cardinal rules: leave when you say you're going to leave. At the last session before we left, I said I would leave the table if I went up $500. Lo and behold, my luck was golden and within an hour or so I was indeed up more than $500. Instead of leaving, though, I stayed. And the gambling gods punished my lack of conviction by hammering me down. I lost probably 20 out of the next 23 hands. It was not pretty.
We did Vegas in true style, that is, skipping the daylight hours entirely. The first night, we were up 24 hours straight, and went to bed just as the sun was coming up. Woke up about as it was starting down, and by the time we got cleaned up and ready to hit the Strip, it was gone. Would have done the same the second night if we didn't have to check out of the hotel.
What we didn't do was see any shows, hit the strip joints, drink (too much, anyway), get married... so all in all a wholesome, clean time was had by all.
PGP Signed Entry