casino

You never know who’s listening.

by ZombieSkittles on July 13, 2010

Today while dealing roulette, one of the Pit Bosses came up to me and helped chip up a little, to make my job easier. This is all normal, but the small talk caught me off guard:

“Oh hey, I read your blog the other day James.”
“Wait what? Uhh, which one?”
“Um, something skittles.”
“Oh yeah. What post?”
“The one about Infinite Fortune. I wasn’t the one who found it, one of the shifties did, and showed us.”
“Oh…what did he think?”

At this point I’m shitting myself. I wasn’t sure if we were allowed to write about work, even though it was positive there was always a chance they’d seen something they didn’t like. Not only that, but I’m not exactly proud of my writing, and it’s kind of embarrassing having my boss see it; it’s like someone stumbling upon a video of me failing at the guitar, or of me humping a milk carton. Oh wow, thank god they didn’t see that.

“He was just like ‘free advertising!’. I mean, it was all positive. He called us over to check it out and was all ‘Is that…’ and we just nodded and replied ‘Yeah, that’s one of our dealers.’”

Thank god. It’s going to be okay. The embarrassment remained, but at least I wasn’t going to be in trouble or anything.

“Oh ok. I wasn’t sure if we were allowed to write stuff like that, even though it wasn’t derogatory or anything.”
“Nah James, it was cool, don’t worry about it.”
“Guess I’ll have to watch what I write on here, in case I write something incriminating.”

He laughed, then left to go perform some other job. It’s kind of scary when you find out other people have read your stuff, in particular when those people happen to be your immediate superiors.

Needless to say, I’ll have to watch what I write on here from now on¹.

I won’t actually, I’ll probably say something stupid and get fired. But hopefully when that time comes it’ll be worth it!

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Infinite Fortune

by ZombieSkittles on July 9, 2010

Today a new table game comes out at Adelaide Casino called Infinite Fortune. The game is extremely simple to learn and play, so I thought I’d share it with you, and teach you how to play this relatively simple game.

Infinite Fortune is dealt like Casino War, in that each player receives one card only. The dealer however does not, as the aim of the game is to guess what your card is going to be. There are three things you can bet on:

High – Wins when your card is between 9 and Ace (In this game, Ace is high only).
Low – Wins when your card is card between 2 and 7.
Dragon 8 – Wins when you get an 8.

It’s that simple; you aren’t playing against anyone else, there are no side bets, nothing. High and Low bets will pay even money, while Dragon 8 pays 11 to 1.

Infinite Fortune is good if you’re new to Casinos and gambling, but otherwise there is more enjoyment to be had in games like Blackjack or Roulette.

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The secret to winning EVERYTHING FOREVER

by ZombieSkittles on May 10, 2010

Pointed in the direction of this supposedly newsworthy article¹, I decided that I too could write an insightful post detailing how you could win in a game of chance. I’ve decided to tackle Roulette, though I guess this could apply to any game.

For those who don’t know, Roulette is a game in which you guess what number on a spinning wheel that a small ball will land in. It’s an interesting often busy game, and has lots of different bets you can make, from guessing the specific number, to guessing if it will be an odd or even number.

roulette-layout

We’re going to focus on the bets for black and red numbers. The odds for the game’s various bets are easy to work out; there are 18 black numbers, 18 red numbers, and zero (which isn’t either colour). Because zero isn’t either colour, this means there isn’t a 50/50 chance to pick the right one, as many people tend to believe. Instead, the odds of successfully picking red or black is 48.65%.
I also want to throw out there for anyone who does play the game and keeps track of what numbers come up because “17 hasn’t come up in ages”, or “there’s been 10 black numbers, surely the next one has to be red!”, that all spins are independent of each other. It could be red 69 times in a row, but on the 70th spin, there is still exactly a 48.65% chance of it coming up either colour.

Enough, how do I win already?

Oh yes! I did tell you that I was going to tell you how to guarantee winning in this and effectively any other game of chance, didn’t I? Well, listen close I’m not going to repeat this:

Bet on the winning colour.

Ingenious right? If you bet on the correct colour, you’re guaranteed to win. Sure you might need some sort of psychic power, or a ton of luck, but it’s guaranteed that you’ll win if you place it on the winning spot. The same goes for Big Wheel, Baccarat, Sic Bo, and even craps. Put the bet in the correct place and there is no end to how much you can win. There are people who would try to have this post taken down as the information is too good to let the general public know about. However, I feel that I need to get this information out to all nine of my readers² so that you can take advantage of this strategy.

You can thank me later³

Nicko236, accidently providing content for this blog since 2009…I think
number according to Google Reader. God I’m popular.
actually, thank me NOW. Do it in the form of a comment. Did I mention I love you?

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Casinos are evil

by ZombieSkittles on March 18, 2010

This is something that in the past year of working at the Adelaide Casino, I’ve heard a lot. There’s a stereotype that even though casinos are Government regulated to make sure they fit in laws and are fair, that every game is rigged so people have no chance of winning. Indeed, one guy even went so far as to believe we watched and rigged his hands personally, but we’ve already talked about him before. Let’s move on.
There is also that opinion that every employee of the industry is a soul sucking demon robot who cares not for emotion, and instead wants to take all your money in a game of chance.

It’s no doubt that this sort of thought pattern is fuelled by the movies, where the casino owner is almost always a villain. They’re willing to sell out people, beat them to a pulp in the back room for small infringements, and are all round corrupt. I blame Andy Garcia.

You motherfucker.

Because of the bad reputation given to us by the film industry, and from the unregulated casinos that do apparently still exist in America, we’re labelled as evil a lot of the time. I call bullshit.

Games aren’t rigged, but the odds are in the house’s favour.

This comes as no surprise to anyone with half a brain, but there is still a fairly large number of people out there who believe the games in a casino should be 50/50 in winnings. The problem with this mentality is that it is impossible for a casino to do that. It’s a business and if they don’t have a “house edge”, they risk losing money and thus not existing.
However, with Government regulations and common sense, the house edge is never ridiculous. For example, the true odds of picking the correct number straight up in roulette is 37 to 1. So, the casino pays out at odds of 35 to 1. The game is still random and you could win, but in the end the casino has the edge, however slight it may be. The old saying comes to mind “The house always wins”. While it may not be true individual to individual, overall, the casino is obviously making money or it wouldn’t be in business.

We are soulless robots brainwashed to take your money and cheat you.

Oh man this is totally true. Why would they employ normal people to deal cards to you when they could brainwash us into stealing all your money. I mean, the side effects kind of suck, like if someone accidently uses a trigger word around me I go ballistic and start killing people, but it’s totally worth it.
But realistically; we’re getting paid the same average wage if you win or lose. We* want you to win so then everyone is happy. Unless you’re an asshole to us and everyone around you, in which case we hope you lose it all while your partner is at home banging some other guy. With her mouth.

The casino will kick you out for winning too much money.

No, the casino will kick you out for being an arrogant fuckwit who treats everyone like shit or is otherwise disturbing everyone else.
This is a big one, as so many people kick up a fuss when getting kicked out, blaming it on this. The fact is, we don’t care if you win one thousand dollars. It’s not “a lot of money”. Last night I had someone win forty three thousand on my table in baccarat, and even that isn’t considered enough to kick someone out. Why should we punish people for doing well? It makes no sense.
Casinos kick people out for a variety of reasons though, including pre-existing bans, being underage, drunk, falling asleep at tables, being there for over 24 hours, etc. Most of what the casino does falls under certain practices we have to follow lest the company cops a fine (responsible drinking, etc).
We will never kick you out for winning.

I had a fourth point but now I’ve forgotten it.

You’re copying Rubenerd. You should stop that.

No.

Yes.

I’d like to throw out there that while most of this is an honest attempt at dealing out facts, I may have a point or two incorrect. This really only applies to Adelaide Casino, as some casinos have altered rules, regulations and allowances. Who knows, Crown Casino may actually brainwash their employees. We don’t know for certain.

*I speak for the majority, but there are definitely a few dealers who are pretty indifferent, or actually enjoy when the customers lose. Be that as it may, we still won’t steal your money.

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Conspiracy Guy

by ZombieSkittles on October 17, 2009

As a worker at a casino, I play blackjack and other games with a whole variety of different people. Many people go there just for fun every once in a while, but there are a few particularly memorable “regulars” that I always seem to end up playing with. Not knowing their names, I’m forced to come up with my own nicknames for them, such as Overly Religious Guy.

This post is dedicated to one customer, who I’ve dubbed Conspiracy Guy. He’s really nice and polite, but unfortunately blessed with the view that the casino’s game odds are against the player. I mean, he’s right; the casino’s game odds are different to true odds, because how else would a casino derive a profit? The problem is, his theories are really out there.

Now, I’ve only ever dealt blackjack and pontoon to CG, so I’m not sure if he has theories concerning other games. I’ve never seen him play anything else apart from those and ironically, pokies, anyway.
Conspiracy Guy believes that the machines we have on the table to constantly shuffle the cards, are counting the cards.
The shuffling machines are there for at least two reasons. Reason number one, is that with all the cards constantly active and not in the discard rack, it’s impossible to count cards. Also, we don’t ever need to shuffle, ensuring the game is constantly in motion and the casino makes more money. In training, we got shown the insides of the machines, and got shown how it shuffles; it’s all completely random. Of course, telling him that is impossible, because any argument made against him just gets thrown aside because he’s been playing “for x amount of years”.
That being said, he has the theory that it somehow counts the cards and organizes them, counts how many bets there are, how much is being bet, and what boxes are open. From there, the people upstairs also alter the shuffling machine in their computers, much like in The Flintstones In Viva Rock Vegas, when the head of the casino had a switch that could make all the games win, and all the games lose (but apparently more complicated).
If you take too long to start the hand after he has placed his bets (5 seconds) he gets fidgety and will start randomly grabbing his bets back, throwing more chips on, and opening and closing boxes because he thinks this will “throw the people upstairs off”. Spoiler: it never works. It’s quite amusing to watch though.
Conspiracy Guy never used to be this bad, but over time he seems to have gotten more and more paranoid about how the casino works.

The trick with all his theories is that they can’t be true, or we’d be breaking laws and legislation set by the Government to stop this very stuff. We have a Government Inspector in the casino all the time making sure we do everything above the line, and when we introduce something like the shuffling machines (which are made by a whole different company to us), they have to be checked to make sure they comply with legislation. If they didn’t, we’d end up as corrupt as the casinos in the movies (which is probably where Conspiracy Guy gets his ideas from).

The photo used is from the SkyCity Adelaide website; amateur photos aren’t allowed to be taken inside the gaming areas of the Casino, making it difficult to get a suitable image for this post.

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Casino Advertisement

by ZombieSkittles on October 9, 2009

While hanging at Glenelg a couple of days ago with the amazing Brittster, we encountered this advertisement at the Tram-stop:

100_1403 If you squint, you can see me in the reflection! But that’s irrelevant.

Now, I was aware of the advertisement’s existence; staff at the Casino get a newsletter discussing happenings at the workplace, and this was revealed as the marketting campaign for the Ladies Poker they’re holding.

I always find the Casino’s attempts at advertising hilarious and eye catching, this one included. However, I’ve heard others expressing wide ranging opinions of the ad. Some find it funny too, don’t get it, or misinterpret it. But there are also a few who find it crass and inappropriate.

My question to you, is what do you think of it? Do you have an opinion on the matter? Do you even care?