I recently spent a week in Blackhawk, Colorado, a picturesque casino community/strip comfortably nestled in the hills just outside of Denver, Colorado. I had the distinct pleasure of playing the Blackjack tables at The Isle of Capris, The Lodge, The Mardi Gras and The Riviera Casino's located there. As it turns out very few of the gaming establishments offer table games, the majority of the casino's only have slot machines. While there, I only visited those facilities advertising four or more Blackjack tables. One casino listed in the area, advertised only one Blackjack table and it was a video-style table - needless to say, I never visited that casino. I would like to return tot he ares sometime in the near future and pay visits to The Grand Central Station, The Mountain High, and Harvey's. All of which offer three or more tables per location, I just didn't have enough time to visit them on this particular trip.
Comps come mostly in the form of free gifts, meals, free transportation to and/or from the casino's and/or nominal cash-back offers for length of play. Since there are even fewer casino's with hotels than those offering tables games in the community, you'd have to be a pretty big high-roller in order to be comp'd one of the sparsely available rooms. Although I've heard that during slow period, even the scarcely populated hotels will offer comp'd accomodations through pre-arranged mail-out offers. The food was surprisingly well presented and tasted every bit as good as it looked. I grew particularly fond of the Lunch Buffet presented by 'The Lodge,' which offered a variety ranging from standard American menu to surprisingly good seafood entre's.
I have to openly admit that of the casino's visited, I didn't encounter a single dealer that I didn't like. The same can be said for the any/all of the ables rules at the various gaming facilities actually played. All of the casino's displayed the same set of rules, the dealer hits on Soft-16's and stands on ALL 17's. Unlimited splits are allowed, with the exception of Aces. Aces can only be split up to four times, with each Ace only receiving one subsequent card. However, double-downs are allowed on the other split opportunities after the second card is drawn (but only after the second card is drawn). Many of the dealers even allowed the player to thin-cut, and all of the tables played offered shoes of 65% or more (some of the dealers actually gave the table deep-cuts of the shoe, sometimes just above a single deck wide in a six-deck shoe).
Colorado state law restricts maximum table bets to $5, and minimum bets are also $5. As a general rule in Blackjack, you can't make any money if you can't press bets. It is imperative that being able to vary wagers is necessary in order to capatilize on splits and/or double-down opportunities. The casino's in Blackhowk realize that not only does this state law regulate how a much a player can wager per hand. it also severly restricts how much the casino can earn per-player, per-hand. To compensate for this prohibitive state regulation, the casino's there offer an alternative - that if properly monitored, can prove to be quite profitable. These gaming facilities add a twist to the game of Blackjack called 'Streak Blackjack' Side bets are made by the players on how many consecutive hands he/she will win, therefore betting on a winning 'streak' - thus the name 'Streak Blackjack.' The consecutive wins pays as follows:
2 Consecutive Wins Pays 3 to 1
3 Consecutive Wins Pays 8 to 1
4 Consecutive Wins Pays 18 to 1
5 Consecutive Wins Pays 38 to 1
Wagers of $1 to $5 are allowed on each of the consecutive side bets, in incrementsof $1. The trick is that you must place all of your STREAK bets prior to the first hand of the series being dealt. Bets of $1 to $5 are allowed on each oof the consecutive side-bets. The trick is that you must place 'all' of your 'streak' prior to the first hand of the series. By Colorado State Law, there should only be $25 per-player, per-hand at risk at any given time. Counting the $5 bet on the hand itself, should you sucessfully win 5 consecutieve hands (in theory) you would pocket $360 for all 5 hands - side bets included. Not a bad return for a $25 investment, that is if you can consistently win all 5 hands. This 'streak' betting is probably the best advantage that I've ever seen a casino having over the players.
Many players get so caught up in protecting the 'streak,' that they completely forget about playing the game of Blackjack (some don't even play 21). It didn't take me long (nor much muney) to figure out that side bets on winning 4 and/or 5 hands in a row were long shots, and that the house would collect those particular side bets many more times than they would ever pay out on them. Especially in the event of split opportunities - if the player splits 3 or more times, it then becomes absolutely necessary to win greater than 50% of the split-hands in order to maintain the 'streak.'
Let's say that a player has already won 3 consecutive hands, and is now working on the 4th of 5 hands of a 'streak.' The player is then dealt a pair of 8's, and subsequently does the 'right' thing - SPLITS! The next card dealt is another 8, to which the player again splits. The player takes a hit on the first 8, and draws another 8 - again SPLIT! In case you've lost count, that's now a total of four 8's and the dealers' upcard is a 10. The player takes two more hits on the first 8 and draws a 5 and a 9 - A BUST. On the second 8, the player hits to a 4 and a 10 - again BUST! The player hits on the next 8 and gets a 9 (total of 17). On the fourth and final 8 the player hits and draws a 3, double-downs and is rewarded with a King (21). The dealer turns up the hole-card, and reveals a 7 - total of 17.
The first two 8's busted out, the third 8 (17) was a push with the dealer and the player won on the fourth 8 with a three-card 21. Now we know that in Blackjack, a Push counts as a loss when following many Money Management/Betting strategies, and the same holds true here. The player lost the first two hands, pushed on the third, and won the fourth - score comes to 3 losses and 1 win (less than 50%). This translates to the player losing the side bets on the 4th and 5th streaks, both. So even though the player kept his/her oney on the overall hand (the double-down play on the foruth hand recouped any/all losses for the two bust hands), the house still collects $10 (the 'streak' is now over, and the player now has to start all over). Since the player in this scenario did win the first two phases of the streak, the eventual loss of the $10 side bet was in reality a net gain of $60. Not having a complete understanding of the 'true' odds here, I lost $450 my first day in Blackhawk.
Again, you have to be able to vary your bets in order to show a profit in Blackjack. But Colorado State Law prohibits betting of more than $5. Obviously, if there's any money to be made with this form of Blackjack. The money has to be made on the 'streak' bets. The dilema here is that, how do you capitalize on the higher payouts while minimizing losses? Especially since the house will generally collect the side bets from the third through 5th 'streaks.' The solution may seem quite simple, some might say - just don't bet on the streaks. But remember, the maximum table bet is $5, therefore the only that you're going to make any money at al is to wager on the consecutive wins.
Money Management becomes the most critical element in making this flavor of Blackjack profitable. Betting the 'streaks' will definitely keep you at the tables for a while, and actually turned my initial losing day completely around. I wnet from that first day of losing $450, to showing a profit of $300 to $500 per day by the end of the week. All said and done, I was able to leave Colorado iwth approximately $1700.

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