Advantage play / cheating / crime....where is the line?

[AxelWolf]

Yes you're right IMHO. I think there were some casinos that did count the double-up towards tier points and player's club points. IIRC, many originally did this and then got wise to it and changed the system to not count it. But for the sake of argument let's say it never counted for tier or rewards points. The casino is still exposed to greater risk since a small bet can be turned into a big profit with a lucky streak. Casino management wants to manage risk and (unlimited) 50/50 bets jeopardize risk management - making it much more difficult. They would love to have high variance on all bets, but of course no one would play if it gets too out of balance so they have to have variance at the "not too tart, not to sweet level". Anyhow, I believe they could limit the double-ups in the settings menu (I am not positive about this) and if they did, I think that I remember seeing 3 double-ups max occuring at a couple shops back then.

Yes, there were double up machines that gave points for doubling up. but not many that I know of, and all the ones I knew of were for comps only, so, it wasn't really worth doing just for that reason. I guess, before my time there could have been more around that were giving cash back.

The Willams Blackjack was over 100% and had let it ride(different than double up since you are playing your wins into the next hand) and they had some places with very generous comps and some with cash back. It was only really worthwhile if you played the $1 version, but they only had those in a few places. The $1 versions were mostly in Reno and Lake Tahoe, some of best comps ever for me, including mall shopping, limos anywhere and the casino paid for it all, I would use the comps to buy gold jewelry from the gift shops (good times).

There were a few places that were giving points on the old multi-game machines when you feed in coins and banked them in the credit meter without ever having to play.

The Stardust had a slot machines that whenever you lined up 2 blue sevens (3 blue sevens was the top jackpot for 1k) it allowed you to feed in 3 more coins for a chance to spin the 3rd reel. it counted the coins going in and gave points when you did this. You could decline the 3rd reel spin and just cash out the coins, You could just keep doing that over and over without having to make any more spins. They had a 1% cash card on slots and comps, they also had various multipliers and point contests as well. Ithe hourly on that was very good and it wasn't very fun but I think it was worth about $15 to $20 an hour(perhaps $6 more per hour if you fast fed coins like a maniac, I can't remember now exactly what it was worth) with very little risk. And sometimes when you were finished and made the final spin you would connect with the $1k

Thanks Axel - it was less common than I remember it being. Do you happen to know if there were double-up limitations put in place at certain shops? That is you could only win a double-up up to three times for example, and then the option to double up would no longer be given. I seem to remember this being the case at certain places, but maybe I am getting this jumbled with online play, where this certainly was true in the early part of the mid-2000s.

Cheers, TP.

Yes, some places set limits on the number of double up's, more so nowadays. In the past, I don't think I ran into this very much. TBH I can't recall any from the early 2000s and prior that had limited the double ups set to less than 5, and only a few time I saw 5 max. I do recall some stopped once you got to a hand-pay. But most of the ones I played in the past seemed unlimited, but I obviously I never got an unlimited double up win. I have doubled up $5 wins into over $1200 many times. And doubled up $1200 double up wins as well.

On the computer, I doubled up stuff to some fantastic amounts to where I was like OH fuck, that's almost some 18 yo's in a row BS right there, I must be due to get hit by a bus and lightning at the same time, but instead I meet some hot chick.

Online many places are set to one time and you can only double up if your winning amount is over the bet amount.

Also, in the past, there were card readers that seemed to give you points on coin out(very few had this and not for long). Obviously, a double up win would work for that. I would have to think if that would help you in any way since you won't get points along the way.