Turning Stone Casino in New York
by Rob McGarvey
Back to The Reading Room
While I was waiting for flights to Vegas to drop in price for September, a friend of mine that loves to play bingo showed me an ad for a casino in New York State I had read about. It offered a package tour to bingo players that included three bingo sessions and extra time to play in the casino. The casino has a hotel and your room is included for one full day starting at 6AM Saturday to 12 noon Sunday. Deluxe motor coach, one free breakfast, this tour sounded very reasonable. I called the tour operator to find that if I didn't play bingo, I would be given three sets of $20US in chips to play with instead of bingo cards. The outing was a total cost of $129US.
I also knew this casino offered two deck games, the same game I had enjoyed in Las Vegas. My travelling companion agreed to buy my bingo cards from me since she would have to buy more than what they give you (a three strip) for $25US so my total trip would cost me $54US. The exchange rate which virtually killed most travellers going south to the US made no difference to me since I had plenty of US dollars from my Vegas trip a few weeks prior. I knew I could count on being comped for dinner, and planned to establish credit with this casino for future trips and to mark myself as a "player", someone they might want to invite back in the future.
I thought back to Vegas. Free drinks, cashing in my chips at the end of the day, two deck games. I knew this was going to be good. Right inside the casino there is a tax free tobacco shop, so I began to dream of the cigars they might have. I'm a funny mix. I don't smoke, but I love cigars. I don't gamble, but I play Blackjack.
I have known my travelling companion for four years and she knows my story when it comes to playing Blackjack. I know her story too, a dedicated bingo and slot machine junkie that dreams of big jackpots while she dumps small fortunes, over and over again. I knew a day would come when she might take a serious interest in counting cards, and that day came one Friday evening around 1AM in the morning when I was ready to go to sleep.
Now this friend of mine "Anne" can play Blackjack, but she does not know Basic Strategy. I made it very clear that counting was useless until she became a Basic Strategy player. Still, learning to count is easier than learning Basic Strategy, so this was maybe a good first step for her. By 2AM she was well on her way to a slow version of a perfect Hi Opt I count, complete with side counted Aces! I began to feel hope for her as she said "It's plus six, I should be betting high, right?" Not only did I begin to dream of a possible member of a team player in the future, I could even see her winning back all those bingo and slot machine losses........maybe. Who knows how much a person can lose that way over the course of ten or fifteen years....it's a depressing thought.
With two more weeks to go until the trip, I knew there would be lots of time to teach Anne a few more important things. I doubted I could make her a perfect Basic Strategy player in that time, but I did know she understood enough to make her a danger around a Blackjack table. We talked about a few team play tricks I knew about that we could use, and I also told her that it is not uncommon for couples to play together and talk about how to play their hands. She was going to have to trust her own judgement with her own money, at least until I trusted her playing too. Having more than one person putting your money on the table during positive counts is an excellent way to take advantage of Blackjack games.
The bus left Toronto at 12 midnight and got to our hotel at Vernon Downs at 7AM. I used the time to sleep after a long work week and was ready to go to business at the casino by 10AM. My first order of business is always getting credit and finding out how to get a players' card to have my gaming tracked for complimentary services. Once I have done that I can start to play and earn money and comps. I walk through the casino to look at the games, the table limits, but don't pay any more attention to the Blackjack tables than anything else. I'm just being a tourist. I play a bit of Craps and Baccarat, and then I settle into playing Blackjack.
Now, the 2 deck Blackjack. The casino has two areas, but both have the same stakes. There is a $50 and a $100 minimum 2 deck game in each area. The rules do not allow doubling after a split, so the game is rated at -.35%. This is the best game in the north east by far. The dealer puts a cut card in the deck just past the 1 deck point. In other words, the shuffle comes after about 60 cards or so.
There were 1 or 2 people at the $50 tables, and very seldom anyone at all at the $100 tables. From the people I watched playing this game, they were not counters. They seemed like flat bettors that played perfect Basic Strategy, and nothing more. The table maximums were $500 which is quite enough to vary your bet to take advantage with a counting system.
For me on this outing I was not prepaired to bet the required minimum so I had to pass this time. I had been told the minimum was $5, which is true only for the 6 deck games. I like to have 100 times the minimum bet available for play during a session, but I didn't bring $5,000US with me to play with. I normally don't bet over $50 either, so I am not ready to tackle this game yet. No room comp this time out, but the fall might be a different story if the table minimum drops. I was told the minimum drops at times during the grave yard shift, but since I was staying in a hotel 5 miles away, it was not as easy to pop in to see for myself and play a game in the $25-$100 range.
I watched the 6 deck games and was happy to see that doubling after splitting is permitted and that the cut card was a very favorable 1 deck from the bottom of the shoes. This is 80% penetration, far better than I have seen in shoe games for a long time. I walked about and looked for a dealer that looked friendly and had a pace that was steady and neither too slow or fast. I sat down and bought in for $200. The waitress came by and asked me if I wanted a drink and I asked for a rye and coke. No such luck! They are not permitted to serve alchohol to you. I had a rye and coke without the rye.
During a three hour period, I went through four to six dealers and two tables. Most of the dealers dealt way too fast, not for counting, but for enjoying the game. I still play because I like Blackjack, like most other Blackjack players. The dealer was firing cards off the table, picking up chips off pushes and calling the manager over when he screwed up. I hope these hot shots get re-incarnated as slot machines. It was not fun for anyone, and the only person these dealers impress is themselves.
For these sessions, I noticed more 10s as upcards than normal and made real sure the dealers kept fliping up the first card they dealt themselves, not the second, or a bit of both. They were square on this. I noticed two shoes in a row where the 10s came out off the bat and watched the shuffle. I got the cut and cut one deck from the top so these 10s would come out just before the shuffle. This worked out great and I was up around $200 after that shoe. After a nice little old lady asked me where she should cut and I pointed to an exact spot on the decks the dealer made real sure he mixed the decks up.
After about 3 hours of play I had had enough and headed to my hotel up $75US. That is about $115 in Canadian pesos. I measure my success by my take home pay from my full time job, and that is about $100 for 8 hours work. I made my days pay in 3 hours under not so good playing conditions, and got to enjoy the hotel that was included in the tour package. I really needed to sleep after the long night on a bus full of bingo playing and concentrating on the nonsence at the tables. I slept until my traveling companion got back around 11PM and went back to sleep around 2AM and slept right through until 8 the next morning. "Anne" didn't have a chance with her packed bingo agenda to break away to try her skills on the tables.
We got back to the casino around 10AM on Sunday for the ladies to play their bingo and I headed back into the casino. It was far quieter and the lady that ran the Blackjack pit remembered me and welcomed me back to playing. All of the dealers were dealing nice and even and a bit on the slow side. I was happy to see a difference from the day before. I bought in for $100 and got going.
The first shoe was up and down less than a running count of 5 all the way through and I bet pretty flat and kept even. The second shoe went positive and stayed that way long enough to put me up $145. I was ready to walk but thought I should play on and get some table time in before I went to see the credit manager again. I set a stop loss at $100 and got to play for quite a while through some not so good shoes and finally left after maybe an hour.
The day before when the credit manager went home he saw me and addressed me by name. I was impressed, but I may have been one of a very few people to apply for credit. So few people try to get perks or comps by letting the casino be your banker. When I go back I will want to stay at the casino hotel, not down the road a ways. This will help when I call ahead to make reservations. Now I want you to hear the math on this.
My average bet was $6.50 over the 3 hours I played Saturday, according to them! I know I don't come close to anything in the way of being comped decently, but I took $75 off them betting that small. They hadn't put my time in for Sunday yet, so I told him I played for an hour and was going to visit my girl in the bingo area. I took another $100 (150CAN) off them, but I am sure my average was a bit higher this time. I was cleared for $1000 credit line, which is fine with me. He knows I bring a friend that plays a losing game, but he did say I was a strong player. They know I don't make mistakes playing.
From all of this I would hope that anyone that is located in the north east would choose to play at Turning Stone instead of Atlantic City. From a recent update from one of our Blackjack players here, AC is almost all 8 deck with two decks burried below the cut, just as it is up here in Ontario.
I have another trip planned back to Turning Stone at the end of October. By then it will be time to take on that 2 deck game.
Back to The Reading Room