How Would You Answer these BJ Questions

by Henry Tamburin

I was interviewed for a show on casino gambling (What Would You Do If …?) and the host asked hypothetical questions to average gamblers and also gambling experts. Most of the questions they asked me on the show had to do with blackjack and I thought it would be fun if I turned around and asked you how you would handle these situations.

Suppose you are playing blackjack and a sloppy dealer exposes her hole card. What would you do if that happened? Would you tell the dealer? Or would you say nothing and use the information to your advantage when it came time to play out your hand?

Some players feel it is unethical to take advantage of the casino by knowing the value of the dealer’s hole card. However, I feel differently and said so.

My position when it comes to sloppy dealers is this. It is not my responsibility to ensure that dealers are following casino procedures. Floor supervisors and surveillance should be on the lookout for dealers who are not following procedures and correct them. Since the information on the dealer’s hole card was available to any player on the table, and since I wasn’t in cahoots with the dealer in a pre-planned cheating scam, I see no reason why a player can’t use the information to his or her advantage.

It turned out an official from the Nevada Gaming Board agreed with my conclusion. A sloppy dealer exposing her hole card is an issue that the casino needs to address and there is nothing illegal about a player taking advantage of the info. in this scenario.

The host of the show fired this next question to me. “If you know the value of the hole card because of a sloppy dealer, would you share this information with one of your fellow players?” What would you do in this circumstance?

Several people that they interviewed on the show had mixed feelings about this. Some felt it was OK to use the information for their own benefit but thought it was unethical to share that information with fellow players.

I felt otherwise. Blackjack is a social game; players often talk with each other. Now, I wouldn’t go out of my way to whisper to each player what the dealer’s hole card is, but if I had a friend or family member playing on the same table, I wouldn’t be averse to offering them advice on how they should play their hand based on what I knew was the dealer’s hole card. Remember it’s the casino’s responsibility to enforce their procedures and to be sure dealers aren’t exposing their hole card, and besides, there is nothing illegal about sharing information or offering another player advice on how to play their hand. You may not agree 100% with my response, but that is how I see it.

Another question the host asked me had to do with a cheating dealer. “What if you were playing blackjack and you have a strong suspicion that a fellow player and your dealer were involved in a cheating scam to bilk the casino?" What would you do? Would you ignore the situation and just keep playing? Would you leave the table and indiscreetly inform a floor supervisor of the alleged cheating that you believe was going on? What would you do in this situation?

My response was to get off the table, mucho pronto. The reason is that if the casino bosses discovered that the dealer was cheating, because you were playing on the table at the time the cheating occurred you could also have been implicated or at least held for questioning. Plus, if the dealer was that good at cheating what’s to say the dealer wasn’t going to cheat you? I don’t remember what my response was regarding notifying a supervisor of the alleged cheating, but that’s a tough call. I could go either way on this and I guess even now I’m undecided whether I’d go out of my way and notify a supervisor or just leave (what would you do?).

I was asked several other blackjack-related questions which didn’t make it on the air. One was what I would do if the dealer preferentially shuffled the cards whenever the deck turned favorable to the player. This could happen when a dealer counts the cards as they are played (just like a card counter would do). When the remaining unplayed deck had an abundance of high value cards (which is good for the player) the dealer would shuffle the cards.

My response to this scenario was terse and to the point. In my opinion this is outright cheating on the casino’s part because the odds in the game would be altered. In the game of blackjack, the odds change depending upon what cards have been played. Sometimes the odds are in the dealer’s favor and other times in the player’s favor. That’s the nature of the game. But to always shuffle up when the odds swing in the player’s favor results in a markedly different game than one where the cards are only shuffled once when the cut card appears. To reshuffle whenever the edge swings in the player’s favor hurts all the players on the table and is downright cheating in my opinion.

I was also asked what I would do if a person met me in a casino parking lot, and offered me $100 worth of casino chips for $50 in cash because he had to rush to catch a plane and didn’t have time to cash out his chips. Would you purchase his chips and make a quick $50 profit? All you have to do is pay the man fifty bucks and then walk back into the casino, go to the cage, and covert the chips into a $100 bill. What would you do?

My response was basically, “no way am I going to make the exchange.” I looked at this scenario this way: what’s the risk vs. the reward? The reward, of course, was to make a quick $50 for little work. But the risk was high because if those casino chips that the man was trying to sell me were counterfeit and I tried to cash them at the casino cage, I could wind up in the slammer (in Nevada it’s a felony if you try to cash counterfeit chips). No, the risk in my opinion was not worth the potential reward so I’d pass up the opportunity to purchase those chips.

Henry Tamburin is the publisher of Blackjack Insider at www.bjinsider.com