|
Cheap Craps Guide Lets
continue our journey of discovery, enlightenment and Precision-Shooting profit on some
more bargain-priced $2 tables.
Silverton: Way
down south on the Las Vegas Boulevard Strip, past Mandalay Bay, past famous the
Welcome to Las Vegas sign, past the Belz Factory Outlet Mall, is the Silverton
Hotel-Casino.
Its
not big (with 300 rooms), its not exciting (the tables are rarely full), and it not
lavish (it has a mining-town theme left over from when it was called
Boomtown), but the craps are offered at $1 or generally $2, and that is just
fine with me! They do use
some foam pads under the felt-layouts that sometimes reach the thickness of high-school
wrestling mats, so you have to carefully gauge your trajectory on these babies. Once you dial them in, these tables can provide
tremendous profit-potential, and because of the low table-population, you should have a
substantial number of rarely interrupted shooting-opportunities.
Wild Wild West
You
will find a full and complete discussion about this casino in my
Mad Professor's Mini
Tub Tour - Part IV article. Its a $2 mini-tub that deserves a close
look, if that size of table suits your current throwing technique.
Gold
Coast
All
over this fine country there are tables that have a nice, relaxed neutral dice-reaction to
them. There are also a bunch of gaming-houses
that offer cheap $1, $2, or $3 craps-tables. Now,
if you are lucky enough to find a casino that offers superb tables AND great low-cost
table-limits; then you have the best of both worlds.
Low-cost
tables permit you to have a lot of betting-method latitude when your Precision-Shooting
skills are on the rise, but still lack the sure-thing profit that professional full-time
play usually brings. This concept is
discussed further in my
Matching Bets to Your Shooting Ability
article.
It is at tables
like this that you can perfect your craft BEFORE tackling higher-limit (and hopefully more
sparsely-populated) tables. Cheap tables
validate your at-home practice in a real world gaming-environment without unduly stressing
your bankroll.
I
have a soft spot in my otherwise cold, black heart for the Gold Coast Hotel. In the past 12 years, I have spent well over
1500-hours at these particular tables. Thats
a lot of time, and Ive managed to pull out obscene amounts of cumulative net-profit
every single year that Ive played them. What
is even more important is that these tables are EXACTLY the same in performance as some
similar-length tables that you will find at a few more famous up-market (read:
higher-minimum bet) LV-Strip casinos. By
that I mean that the dice take exactly the same hops and bounces, and the same bite, stick
and roll characteristics that are found on similar-length layouts at, of all places,
Bellagio, MGM Grand and Treasure Island. In
that way, I guess you could say that the Gold Coast tables are the quintessential
low-buck version on which to perfect your high-buck craft. Because
of their low $2 shooting-cost, the GC tables allow you to perfect your Precision-Shooting
skills in a budget-priced real-world environment BEFORE you move up to the more expensive,
but similar-performance tables at Bellagio, MGM Grand and Treasure Island. The
Coast Casino policy of only offering 2x-Odds on their four tables shouldnt make a
difference in choosing whether or not to play here, especially if you get into a smooth
shooting-groove. Think
about it this way. I
would rather have consistent 15 to 40-roll hands on a 2x-Odds table, than suffer endless
quick 7-Outs on a 10x-Odds table.
Boulder
Station
While
it isnt the oldest of the casinos in the Station family, it does show its age more
than most of the others. While it has never
had the tourist-business of its sister property, Palace Station, or the laid-back
uniqueness of Sunset Station, or the cache of its newest sibling, Green Valley
Resort; Boulder Station does have a loyal,
frequent clientele, and that is especially true for its craps players. The
dealers know 80% of the players by their first names.
They also know most of the usual betting moves for their frequent local
visitors as well. Its kind of funny to
see dealers making all sorts of press, regression and parlay moves for most of their
players with hardly any verbal confirmation. What
is even more amazing is the lack of payout disputes that you would expect from such an
apparent mind-reading sort of bet-booking method. Its
pleasantly surprising that the players here are generally good-natured, with a fair amount
of trust and assumed compliance amongst the players and dealers. If the odd dispute breaks out, the box-man
resolves it quickly, and then admonishes the player to make his intentions perfectly clear
to the dealer or ALL of his future action will be no betted (sic). This
is the kind of tacit understanding that makes the game here somewhat more social than
youll usually find at the larger mega-casinos on the Strip. All
the local players seem to know each other by name, like members of a coffee-klatch that
meets everyday to share gossip and feed the pigeons in a local park. The craps tables at Boulder Station are the
male-equivalent of a beauty-salon gossip-circle. It
makes for an entertaining time, even if the dice arent doing anything notable in the
interim. Youll
find five tables set at $2 for most of the 24-hour clock.
With 10x-Odds, it makes for great Precision-Shooting opportunities once the
Social Security-set return to suburbia from 5 pm to 7 pm.
In addition, after-hours play from 2 am to 7 am offers up plenty of open
space to use your Precision-Shooting skills.
Arizona
Charlies-Boulder This
is the newer of the two AZ Charlies that are in the Carl Ichan stable of properties (the
former TWA corporate-raider also owns AZ Charlies-Decatur as well as The Stratosphere
Tower). Their Players Card database is now
shared between the three properties, so your comps are cumulative. The
problem here is that their one craps table may not be open when you show up to play. They have a tendency to open it around 11 am and
close it down around 2 am. If business
warrants it, they may relent and keep it open till around 4 am, but slow winter
mid-week periods may see it open around 1 pm and closed again near midnight. If
you are betting their $2 minimum, then you are currently restricted to 2x-Odds. If your bet moves up to the $5 range, then that
permits a more generous 10x-Odds allowance.
Arizona
Charlies-Decatur
This is the original AZ-joint in town. You will find many, many craps-dealers from other
casinos who frequent the dice tables here. Comps
are free-flowing, as are the drinks. It
isnt unusual to be playing beside a dealer that just dealt to you at one of the
posher LV-Strip hotels. It also isnt
unusual to see inebriated off-shift dealers from other joints throwing their money around
like
well, drunken dealers. Their two tables are okay for Precision-Shooting, but they are
nothing special. You wont face any heat
or interference for your skills at Charlies-West as this place is known, and the
table-staff is good and quite accommodating. Ive
never seen them sweat the money, even when a player gets on a parlay-it-to-the-moon
searing-hot hand. At $2 and 5x-Odds, the tables here stay open longer and are
generally busier than its Boulder Highway sibling.
Mahoneys Silver Nugget
Not to be confused with Jerrys Nugget which we covered in
Part One of this article, Mahoneys is nowhere near any path that a
typical tourist would likely find themselves on unless they were dangerously lost. The only thing that this non-hotel casino has in common with the
big-boys is that they offer Strip Odds (3x, 4x & 5x-Odds). However, you wont find any of the high-end
accoutrements normally associated with LV mega-palaces. Youll find one long table set at the $2 mark. I havent ever run into any heat for my style
of rolling, and Ive never seen them sweat any profit that Ive pulled off of
their tables. On the other hand, Ive
been fairly careful about keeping my winnings under the $300 per session mark. Anything over that would probably bring way too
much attention. I only play on this table
about twice each week when I am in Vegasville. That
way, I dont wear out my welcome, and I can continue to use their tables to make
decent, but not greedy cash-withdrawals.
Gaughans Plaza
Forget about what this place may smell like. Forget that the same Sunspots act in
the Omaha Lounge has been playing there for 22 years.
Forget that one of the box-men is a real-life, real-size Jabba the Hut with
an acerbic and bitter personality to match. Forget
that their Pound o Pig breakfast special has more cholesterol than a truckload of
Big Macs. What I want you to remember
is the great dice-shooting opportunities that you will find on the four $2 tables at the
Plaza Hotel-Casino.
These are some of the busiest Downtown tables, but the wait for
the dice to cycle around to your location can also be some of the most rewarding. With very few exceptions, my patience in waiting
for the dice has been rewarded by long and profitable rolls. They DO NOT sweat the money at all, however some
of their Pit Dwellers obviously failed miserably when they took their How to Win
Friends and Influence People course from Dale Carnegie. The swing-shift has a collective case of permanent and raging
PMS amongst themselves. Their infighting
shouldnt affect you in the least. On
the contrary, its slightly amusing to see fist-fights break out between dealers,
box-men and Pit Bosses alike. The only negative effect that it may have on your actual play is
that they can sometimes be tardy in keeping your comp-rating card current. Other than that, enjoy the verbal antics that
sometimes explode into a full-blown floor-show free-for-all scrap amongst the staff. This is the gaming-version of the Osbournes. The 10x-Odds offered on their straight-rolling tables should be
sufficient to satisfy your Precision-Shooting needs.
Mid-week, early morning play generally brings the quietest time to shoot the
dice. The Plaza
tables don't have a lot of bounce, so a lower trajectory throw (less than 45 degrees, down
to 25 or 30 degrees) works best. Expect them
to get busy anytime after 11 am. If you need
a comp, just ask. Of all the Downtown casinos, I have found that you can find a
hot table here most consistently. Now that
may only seem like a coincidence, but after taking out the skewing-effect of my own hot
hands, I have found that The Plaza has the highest open tables-to-hot hands
ratio. This is TOTALLY UN-scientific, and is
merely based on my own observations over the past twenty years or so (Ive carefully
logged them over the past 12 years), and it is an interesting finding nonetheless. As most of you know, Barrick Gaming has recently acquired this
casino along with Gold Spike, Western Hotel-Casino, and the Las Vegas Club from
Plaza-founder Jackie Gaughan. I dont
see this acquisition as having any negative-effect on the gaming part of profitable
Precision-Shooting in the near-term. In
Part Four well cover even more $2 tables. Until then, Good Luck & Good Skill at those cheap tables
and in
Life. Sincerely, The Mad Professor
|
|