Keen Eyes and a Drop of
the Weird
17 March 2006
By Mark Pilarski
Dear Mark,
I was asked to leave a casino because a pit boss
believed I was adding more chips to my bet on a
roulette table after the dealer “supposedly”
called no more bets. I told him I didn’t hear
the dealer say it, and that I was just adding
chips to my favorite number, which I believe he
was upset at because it just happened to be a
winner. Does the casino have the right to toss
me out? Nick B.
Let’s just say you were lucky, Nick, that you
weren’t treated to powdered eggs for breakfast
compliments of the county.
It’s obvious from your letter that the pit boss
felt, right or wrong (I wasn’t there) that you
were capping your bets, meaning, you were piling
extra chips on top of your initial bet after the
ball had dropped. Casinos consider this a
serious form of cheating, and it’s a good way to
get 86’ed from the casino and/or to spend some
time in the slammer.
The primary function of a pit boss is to protect
the company’s assets. It’s their job to be on
the lookout for charlatans who “past-post” an
unsuspecting croupier by adding chips to a
winning number, or removing chips from a losing
number after the ball has already dropped into
the wheel. One time Yours Truly had such a
hustler on a game that was graced with the hands
of a magician. He could get chips on or off a
table without me, a patsy break-in roulette
dealer, even noticing. Luckily, an alert pit
boss did, the 'eye in the sky' confirmed, and
the casino ended up pressing charges to the
fullest extent of the law.
Regarding the dealer calling “no more bets,”
every casino, Nick, has its own set of
guidelines on when they want the dealer to call
it. Some before the spin, others will allow an
experienced roulette dealer to halt wagering at
his or her discretion. Since the casino holds a
hefty 5.26% advantage over the player on all but
one bet on the layout, obviously they want to
wave in as many wagers per spin as possible
within reason. To avoid a future fracas with
casino pit personnel, I suggest you get your
bets in early, well before the dealer voices “no
more bets.”
Dear Mark,
Lemme see here. I will lay 5-1 that this is the
500th or higher e-mail you’ve received about
your Hardways explanation. You were just
checking on your readers to see if we are alert
enough to gamble, right? Mike H.
The egregious error, Mike, (a 7 and 1 to make an
easy eight on a dice roll) was purposely done so
as to give away some of my Hooked on Winning
tapes for those alert enough to spot it.
Surprisingly, I got nowhere near 500 readers
catching the blatant mistake for the free
giveaway.
The half-baked idea of seven-sided dice on a
crap game had blown in from Gurth. You might
remember him -- the knucklehead who wrote in
wanting to wrap his Uncle in Reynolds Wrap to
block Uncle’s pacemaker signal from interfering
with an electronic slot machine. Recently he
sent me a letter crawling with indigestible
mathematical muck to prove that the game of
craps could rain cash and glory on the player if
seven-sided dice were introduced on the game, I
am guessing illegally.
I’m figuring Gurth is in possession of a pair of
seven-sided dice, since I’ve seen them before,
associated with a variant form of Backgammon
that uses seven-sided dice and a seven-sided
polygon board with seven points in each quarter
instead of six, as on a standard board. Anyhow,
I’ve put Gurth on special secret assignment,
asking him to field test a seven-sider with five
million random tosses to see if all seven
numbers on the dice equally appear. That should
keep him busy, and hopefully out of trouble. I
figure he’ll be done in nine years, four months
and three weeks. I’ll post the results.
Nice catch to you, Mike, and those others who
noticed it. The tapes are in the mail.
Gambling wisdom of the Week: "If bankroll
accumulation is your goal, there are better
methods for obtaining it (for most people) than
gambling. Work two jobs. Bank everything. Spend
nothing." --Bob Dancer
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