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| Easy Pickings? |
This week I was on a Scientific Games Webinar panel for a debate on game protection in the new Covid-19 casino era. SG's Roger Snow, the host, asked the question if the liberalization of Vegas blackjack rules, mainly bringing back en masse the 3 to 2 blackjack payoff, was an invitation of a "feeding-frenzy" to hungry card counters and advantage-play sharks smelling blood in the currently bleeding Las Vegas casinos.
Benny B-Man Mancino, the VP of Hard Rock Cincinnati and host of the B in the Know Internet show, answered unequivocally that casinos in Las Vegas more or less have "no choice but to put the place on sale." What he was referring to is that in this era of reduced casinos where operators have to do everything possible to draw clientele, offering blackjack games with a lower house percentage, in spite of the counters and advantage players, is the only way to go in these trying times.
Let's take a more in-depth look at the B-Man's analysis of the current situation.
One of the literally hundreds of debates going on about what Las Vegas casinos should and shouldn't do during the re-opening period has been how to deal with what is seen as possible spiked advantage-play attacks on the casinos due to certain reopening factors that many game protection people believe will lead to just that. Before we go on, let me mention that this argument is more relevant to Las Vegas casinos than any others in the US since Las Vegas finds itself in a unique position in which it has hundreds of competing casinos, three dozen or so that rely on the travel industry, mainly gamblers arriving by air.
Some facets of the liberalization/game protection debate are centered around three main issues: 1) Surveillance staffs will be preoccupied monitoring Covid-19 protocols and therefore won't have sufficient time for adequate game protection operations and coverage; 2) Table game staffs will be reduced and also preoccupied with protocol and customer service; 3) The players per table rules will increase earning opportunites for counters and advantage-players as they will see lots more hands per shoe than when tables are fully-occupied in normal times.
As I am hearing, casinos are reacting to this at different extremes. Some are not taking any special measures to avoid a possible AP attack while others are downright paranoid. I have heard that some casinos just aren't worried about this as it is not nearly as important as getting the players back at the tables, no matter who they may be, albeit casinos have the ability to identify card counters and APs in spite of the masks to some extent, including requiring people entering the casinos to lift their masks for a surveillance ID check.
I am also seeing reports that some casinos (not sure to what extent this is happening in Vegas) are so paranoid that they have reduced bet spreads to 1 to 3 units on their higher-limit blackjack games. I have even heard that at least one casino actually has a table minimum of $100 and table maximum of $300. Now that is ridiculous! Imagine a high roller flying-in who bets $200 on his first hand of blackjack and then just wants to let it ride one time but is told he can't. I think that would evoke a lot of "adios-amigos." And I would imagine that the dealers would not be specifically pointing out this bet-spread reduction to high rollers as they arrive at the tables, because most would probably just get up and say adios right there.
So which route should Vegas take here? Personally, I think the B-Man has the right idea. If you gotta rent out the joint cheap for a few months or even a year to help keep a steady flow of blackjack action, do so. The risk of not doing so might have ramifications that we don't even anticipate. Who knows, if blackjack sits more idly than it should for a year, could that reality do long-term damage to the game's popularity? I don't know...just something to think about. And another reality to take into consideration: as the threat of card counting and advantage players perceived by casinos has always been greater than necessary, that perception is exaggerated more than necessary now, which is nothing more than the same as it's always been. So again, no need to overreact to the counting/AP threat now...unless we see some dramatic negative results.
The solution to this Vegas game protection issue just might be uniformity. If all casinos can somehow come up with more or less the same adjusted or remain-the-same blackjack rules, the problem would most likely solve itself.
But in this period of casino confusion, that might be too much to ask.
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