When riverboat gambling was launched in Illinois in 1991, it was beyond
my wildest flights of imagination that we would get to this point:
A picky player is just as well off gambling on the boats and barges in
Illinois and Indiana as on the Las Vegas Strip.
Don't get me wrong. I truly enjoy Las Vegas. I've rarely had a bad trip,
even when I've lost money. The constant circus, the all-night
restaurants, the 24-hour show has always been appealing to one who was a
night worker for most of the last 25 years.
But when it comes time to deal the cards, more and more I find myself
shuffling off the Strip and making my way downtown or to locals casinos
on Boulder Highway, Rancho or in Henderson.
The Strip, it seems, is no longer about gambling. It's about pirate
battles and dancing fountains, magicians and designer restaurants,
"Mystere!" and "The Folies Bergere." But it's not about getting a decent
blackjack game or video poker pay table.
That feeling has been building over the years as I've chosen to invest
more of my wagering dollar off the Strip, at locals-oriented casinos
including the Palms, Fiesta, Orleans and Arizona Charlie's.
I've known for years--and have written often--that players get more bang
for the buck at the locals joints. But now it's gotten to the point that
a popgun could overwhelm the bang at many Strip resorts.
During the Global Gaming Expo in September, I checked out the Tropicana,
a place where I've stayed and played often since the late 1980s. The
gambling hasn't been first-class there in a long time, but a liberal
comping policy and the presence of 8-5 Bonus Poker, a 99.2 percent game
with expert play, on its quarter Triple Play/Five Play video poker
machines made it a reasonable play.
I headed to the Triple Play/Five Plays ... and found the Bonus Poker pay
table had been reduced to 6-5. Full houses now returned only 6-for-1
instead of 8-for-1, and the 99.2 percent game was now a 97 percent game.
Room and meal comps may be easy, but not enough to make up THAT kind of
a shortfall.
So I headed toward the blackjack pit, and at first was pleasantly
surprised to find a hand-dealt double-deck blackjack game. Then I
inspected more closely. There was an automatic shuffler on the table,
shuffling six decks, then separating two decks for the dealer. This is
no double-deck game; it's a fooler of a six-deck game with really lousy
penetration. For a basic strategy player, the house edge is as high as
on any other six-deck game.
I mentioned the blackjack game to Henry Tamburin, a friend and author of
Blackjack: Take the Money and Run. Henry says several casinos have gone
the phony double-deck route, and that there's a certain meanness about
blackjack on the Strip nowadays. Single-deck games that pay only 6-5
instead of the normal 3-2 are common on the Strip, including tables at
Paris, Bally's, the Flamingo Hilton and Harrah's, and paranoia about
card counters has grown all out of proportion.
Many six-deck games on the Strip have the dealer hit soft 17 nowadays,
leaving a game that's tougher on the player than the multideck games
with the dealer standing on all 17s in the Chicago area at Harrah's and
Empress in Joliet, Trump and Majestic Star in Gary, Harrah's in East
Chicago and Horseshoe in Hammond.
When riverboat casinos first opened with 7-5 Jacks or Better, 6-5 Bonus
Poker and some really ugly versions of Deuces Wild, it used to be a
treat to get to the Strip for some full-pay video poker. Today, full-pay
games on the Strip are a dying breed. If you look hard, you can still
find some 9-6 Jacks or Better--although availability often is skewed
toward high-end players. Anyone for $5, $10, $25 and $100 Jacks or
Better at Bally's? And Barbary Coast, near the center of the Strip, is a
legitimately good video poker casino. But overall, if you took Majestic
Star and dropped it on the Strip, it would be one of the best video
poker houses there.
One way in which the Strip and Chicago-area casinos differ is in their
treatment of multiple-hand games, such as Triple Play. Near Chicago,
most casinos have taken the higher wagers made on these games as
justification to raise pay tables and offer more attractive games. On
the Strip, multihand games usually have lower pay tables than the
single-hand games, as if opportunity to play multiple hands is enough of
an attraction that they might as well stick the suckers who play with
poor games.
Think it's just the skill games, blackjack and video poker? Nope. In
May, the last Nevada figures I have, quarter slots on the Strip returned
about 92 percent, while dollars returned 94 percent. Both figures are
lower than average returns in Illinois.
There's still plenty of good gambling in Las Vegas. Playing at locals
casinos, with good single-deck and double-deck blackjack and great video
poker, can be a real treat, just the way the Strip used to be.
The Strip still has its attractions for those who want glitz and glamor.
But gambling? On the Strip, it's all show and no go.
