My Casino back-rooming.

[kewlJ]

a team of AP's that had also discovered this situation and were taking advantage of it

And what happened?...has the casino continued to cheat?

I think you remember damn well what happened. I have nothing to do at the moment while my housemates are engaged in their usual video gaming escapades, so I will recap.

This occurred 5 years ago?, 6 years ago? Maybe more? (time flies when your having fun). El Cortez changed their pit configuration. For anyone familiar with EC, their table game pit used to run parallel 6th street. they changed it, to the same basic location of the casino but with the table game pits now running parallel to Fremont street. And there were 3 separate table game pits at the time of re-configuration. there are now 2 as the third has been replaced by a group (stadium like) blackjack area.

So the 3 pits at the time consisted of a pit that was always open, a second pit that would open for the busier times each day and a 3rd pit by the corner doors (closest to sportsbook) that was only open on Saturdays and maybe holidays. The that first pit, which is open all the times had 2 double deck games with ASM. Same tables and ASM as before the configuration. The older box type ASM.

With the configuration, there were 2 additional double deck games added to the end of the pit. Sort of on the corners of the pit. These two tables featured a newer, sleeker, less box-ier type of ASM. I should have but didn't note the name.

El Co is a place I would hit several times a week for very short sessions. And despite its sweaty rep, I have had relatively few problems. They have one of the best games in Vegas by rules, so I would stop in 2-3 times a week whenever I was downtown or passing by downtown. So it didn't take long before I was getting in a decent amount of play. First thing I noticed was that I rarely won on these tables with the newer ASM. I don't like to put too much stock in a "feeling" or noticing you don't seem to be winning in a certain situation, because blackjack card counting involves huge swings and variance. BUT, this gut feeling just said something was wrong.

So the way to prove this is tracking hundreds and hundreds of shoes. And even that probably wouldn't be proof that would stand up in court. But I wasn't planning on taking anybody to court. I wanted to prove it to myself, before I said anything and I wanted to prove it to myself so I knew to be on the lookout for more of this kind of thing. So I tracked hundreds of shoes of double deck play. Some I played, just flat betting the minimum while I tracked, others I just watched from behind the table, sometimes even a slot machine nearby. I was looking for 2 things, an abnormally high number of high count frequencies and a fewer number of blackjacks. The normal blackjack distribution is 1 of 21 hands you should receive a blackjack or just under 5%. After 100 of shoes it was more like 3% and there seemed to be an abnormally high count in an excessive number of shoes. Remember if the 10 value clump was in the middle, end, or after the cut card, you are going to see a high true count. So a true count of plus 4 or whatever I was looking for, that should occur less than 10% of the time was happening in most shoes. Like 70-75%. The only shoes it didn't happen was when the 10 value clump was at the beginning of the shoe as then the count would immediately go negative and stay there.

I ran my findings by Don Schlesinger, who confirmed they were pretty abnormal. He later back-tracked a little bit, but they were still abnormally high. So I posted what I found. Posted here first, and simultaneously posted at Norm's blackjack forum where I was banned using a handle of spiderman. I wasn't trying to hide who I was and it was guessed fairly quickly. I did not post it at WoV as it was someone else that took the discussion there and to a second blackjack forum. But, there was a lot of discussion about this at 4 different forums, including several that bigger forums like WoV and Norm's forum. I don't know where else it might have been discussed but it probably traveled to other forums as well.

So what happened was like a week later, maybe 10 days, all of the sudden those 2 newer ASM, the newer sleeker, versions disappeared. The blackjack tables on the corners had no ASM. And a very short time after that the blackjack tables themselves were replaced by two different table games. And those two sleeker, slimmer, more modern ASM have never made a re-appearance at El Cortez. I did see that model at one other location in Vegas, but I didn't put in the time to see if they were illegally being used, so I don't want to accuse anything. To this day El Co has the original 2 double deck games with the original older box-like ASM.