July 2009 Yakity Yak ... Do Talk Back by John Grochowski When table games players take their seats, the conversation often doesn’t get any deeper than asking the dealer how long he’s worked at the casino or whether she deals any other games. But unlike craps, which moves so fast there’s no time for conversation, card games such as blackjack, Caribbean Stud and Three Card Poker are paced so that sometimes the stories flow, and I’ve been collecting such stories for years. When something out of the ordinary is fresh in mind, that’s when the table talk flows. A BEARDED FELLOW said he liked to play Texas Hold’em, but couldn’t get a seat. So there he was, playing blackjack. “I almost had me $20,000 in Vegas last year,” he said, grinning at the recollection. “I was playing in a cheap Hold’em game, $1 and $4, but they had a ‘bad beat’ jackpot. If you got four of a kind and lost, you got 80 percent of the jackpot. The winner got 20 percent. “I’d gone all in on the flop, and the dealer warned me that in this game, you didn’t want to run low on chips. If you were all in and others were still betting, you weren’t eligible for the bad beat. So after that hand, I bought back in for $80. “Sure enough, a couple of hands later I have a pair of Jacks, and the flop brings Jack-9-8, all in hearts. I’m betting, two guys are raising me and a fourth is staying with us. “Now along comes the case Jack. I’ve got my four of a kind, and I’m wondering if there’s a slim chance one of ’em has the straight flush to beat me. Again, two guys raise me and the other guys stay, so I’m thinking there must be some powerhouses. “The river brings a 7 of hearts. Perfect, if anyone has the 10 they have the straight flush. I bet, one of the raisers folds, the guy who’s been staying stays, and the other raiser raises. I raise back, he re-raises. That’s my straight flush candidate, I’m thinking. “We turn the cards over, and I say, ‘Four Jacks.’ The fellow who’s been staying says, real shocked, ‘What?’ He had a straight and hadn’t read me at all. The other guy flips up a pair of 9s. He has trips, and he’s been raising me from the start hoping for the fourth 9 or a boat. I win the hand and a pretty good pot, but no bad beat and no super jackpot. “Wasn’t nobody as disappointed as that dealer. He saw his biggest tip of the week go down the tubes.” A 50-ISH GENTLEMAN down to his last four red $5 chips asked a couple of blackjack players, “You ever play Caribbean Stud?” When I said I did, he was into full storytelling mode. “You know what I saw a couple of days ago? The dealer had three Aces, and everybody at the table beat him. Five players, and every one of them beat three Aces. “A couple of the fellas, they didn’t even know they’d won. They were betting on every hand without looking at their cards. The dealer had an Ace up, then had two more Aces face down. And these guys are moaning, because how often are you going to beat three Aces? “But you know what? The first lady had a straight. Then there was a flush. Then the two guys who hadn’t looked, one had a straight and the other had a flush. “And me? You know what I had? Four Kings, that’s what I had. Four cowboys. That was $500 right there, and 20-1 on my bet on top of it. “You ever seen anything like that?” THE YOUNG LADY with the long blonde hair, T-shirt and shorts had to show the dealer her ID before she could play. But this wasn’t her first time at a Three Card Poker table. “I learned to play last night,” she said. “This is so easy. I felt like I never knew what was going on at blackjack. And craps? Forget it. I’ll never learn that.” Was this her first casino trip? “No, I’ve come with my parents a couple of times and just played the slots. This time I’m with my boyfriend, and he likes to shoot craps. I don’t understand it. “This is better for me. I won some money last night. Dude a couple of seats down from me was dealt three of a kind, and the dealer just kept giving him chips. I wasn’t really sure how many at the time, but he was betting $10 on Pair Plus and $10 on his hand, and the Pair Plus pays 30-1, so that’s what, $300? “The next hand, I picked up my cards, and I couldn’t believe it. I had an 8, a 9 and a 10, and they were all diamonds. A straight flush. I was so excited, I said to the dude next to me, ‘Would you believe it? Three of a kind and straight flush two hands in a row.’ “He said, ‘Wouldn’t that be nice?’ I told him, ‘Really. I have a straight flush.’ And he didn’t get it. ‘That really would be nice,’ he told me. “I made my second bet against the dealer to go with my $10 ante and my $10 Pair Plus, and I put my cards face down like you’re supposed to. When the dealer came to me, he turned the cards face up, and everybody was so surprised. Even the guy next to me went, ‘I thought you were just talking about a straight flush. But you really had one.’ “Then it was my turn to get chips and chips and chips. I got $400 on my straight flush, and I’m not sure what all on my other bets. There was a bonus in there somewhere. It was more money than I’d ever held at one time. And I went and found my boyfriend and told him, ‘Dinner’s on me tonight,’ and we went to the steakhouse. I had lobster. “So I spent about $150 of my money. Do you think I can win some more?” “I’D NEVER PLAYED craps before,” a woman in her 30s explained as the blackjack dealer shuffled. “But I’d been losing at blackjack and I’m tired of the slots, so I thought I’d give it a try. “My boyfriend said it was a really good game. He taught me about the pass line and odds and said it was all I needed to know and that I should just ignore everything else. So I bet $5 and the shooter rolled a 6, and I bet $25 in odds. The next roll was a 7, and I lost $30. That was too much. I can lose $5 at a time at blackjack and not think much of it, but $30 . . . it still hurts to think about it. “I decided just to bet pass and not the odds. It was my turn to shoot, and all the guys at the table started hollering about Lady Luck bringing them a winner. My first roll was an 11, then a 7, so I had $10 back. Then I rolled a 4, and a 9, and I don’t remember what all. I was shooting anything but 7, and I kept winning my bets and I’d put another $5 out. “It never occurred to me to go back to betting the odds. One of the guys yelled, ‘You’re hot, honey, bet it up,’ but I was too nervous. Finally I threw a 7 to end my roll, and even though they lost that bet, the whole table cheered me. “I counted my chips, and I’d won $65. I was thrilled, but a man told me, ‘If you knew how to bet, you’d have won hundreds.’ He must have won a lot himself, because he gave me a black chip. That $100 was more than I won. I couldn’t believe it. “As much fun as the winning was, that’s a nerve-wracking game. One of these days I’ll play again, but blackjack’s more my speed.” “NOBODY AROUND HERE has Multiple-Action anymore, do they?” A gray-haired gentleman in suit and tie took his place among four players in blue jeans. I told him I haven’t seen the game in ages. I used to like it, playing my hand against three different dealer hands. Players would make up to three bets at once. The dealer would get one card face up, and after players made their decisions, the dealer would then use that one face up card as the start for three hands. The dealer would complete one hand to settle No. 1 bets, then keep the first card as the start of a second hand to settle No. 2 bets, then keep it once more to start a hand to settle No. 3 bets. If you had good hands, you had a good chance of winning three hands at once. If your cards were poor, you’d hope the dealer would bust at least once, and limit your losses. Not every player is willing to make three bets at once, and there were speed of play issues — the house didn’t really get three times the action as operators had hoped, but I liked it. So did my new playing companion. “I enjoyed that game,” the man said, “but sometimes it would drive you crazy. One day I had a blackjack, and the dealer had an Ace up. They say you should never take insurance, and I figured to collect on a hand or two, anyway. So I waved off insurance and sat back to take my chances. “Sure enough, the dealer turns up three face cards. Bam! Bam! Bam! I get nothing. “A while later, I get another blackjack. Again the dealer has an Ace. Bam! Bam! Bam! Three more 10s. “Two blackjacks, six chances, six pushes. I’m telling you, I don’t know why I liked that game so much.” THE WOMAN in sweat clothes said she planned to hit the gym, but thought she’d play a little blackjack first. “Gotta ease into the day,” she said. “This is a vacation, after all.” She asked the cocktail waitress for a bottle of water, pushed a $100 bill toward the dealer, then made her first $15 bet. The whole table won and cheered a dealer bust, then waited for a shuffle. “Anybody here ever play that double-your-bet system?” she asked. Most said no, but one man said he’d dabbled but didn’t really like to go more than once or twice. “Don’t,” she laughed. “My boyfriend swore by it. My ex-boyfriend, I should say. We haven’t been together for a few months now. “Anyway, he was always telling me about this great system that couldn’t lose. He’d start with a low bet, and whenever he lost a hand he’d double his bet. When he finally won a hand, he’d have a profit equal to his original bet. He didn’t play all night or anything. He’d win $50 or $75 and call it a night. He said he was happy just beating the casino at its own game. One time he came home with around $125. He said that his bet was up to $80, and he got a blackjack, so instead of winning $5 he won $45 before starting again. “One night, we were playing together. He was playing his system, and I was just betting $5 a hand, making my money last. He laughed at me and said you couldn’t make any money betting the same amount on every hand. “He won a couple of times, then he lost at $5, and at $10, $20, $40, $80. He went to bet $160, and I said, ‘Are you crazy? You come here trying to win 50 bucks for the night and you’re betting $160 at once?’ He told me to relax, that with one win it would all be OK. “He lost at $160, and I wanted him to stop. I could tell that he really wanted to go on, but he didn’t have enough money to bet $320, and I wasn’t going to give it to him. He’d already lost $315. That was plenty. “On the way home, he told me how unlucky it was that he didn’t bring enough money to finish the system, that he’d have gotten the money back and made a profit. I told him I thought not having the money with him was the luckiest part of his night. “We had a big fight about it. Crazy, huh?” THE SHAVED-HEADED fellow in his 30s walked up to the blackjack table smirking, as if he was sharing a private joke with himself. “Is everybody here playing by the book?” he asked cheerfully, grinning the entire time. Another man chimed in, “I’m not sure everyone here has read the same book.” Young baldie laughed. “I’m just having some fun. You should have seen the dude I was playing with over in the other pit. He was dead serious. Not just about his play. He wanted to play everybody else’s hand, too. “On my first hand, I had an Ace and a 5, and the dealer had a 6. I signaled to hit, and this guy said, ‘Don’t you double on that?’ I’ll admit I get a little lost on the strategy on soft hands, but I just said, ‘Not always.’ And this dude, very aggressive, says, ‘Can you explain to me when it’s not the right play to double on soft 16 against a 6?’ “It was like it was his mission to teach everybody blackjack strategy. He was correcting everybody. A dude and his girlfriend left, and made faces behind his back. She gave him devil horns from a foot or so away. At least I think that’s what she was doing with those fingers. “Finally, we got a full table where everybody seemed to know the strategy pretty good. Like I say, I mess up the soft hands sometimes, but I didn’t get that many, and I guess my plays satisfied him. He kept saying things like, ‘That’s the way to go by the book,’ and ‘Everybody playing by the book, just the way I like to see it.’ “Eventually, he colored up his chips and left, and I think everybody breathed a sigh of relief. Dude a few seats away from me said, ‘I’d like to take that book and hit him with it.’ “Anybody here have the book?” — John Grochowski is the author of The Casino Answer Book, The Slot Machine Answer Book, The Video Poker Answer Book and the Craps Answer Book, available through Bonus Books, Inc. at (800) 225-3775.