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The Great Northeast
Road Trip
(read part I
here, or part II
here ) We
left the mist of Niagara Falls behind, and headed north to Casino Rama in Orillia,
Ontario. Its about ninety minutes north
of Toronto, and owned by the Chippewas of Rama First Nation, while being operated by
Carnival Casinos (of cruise ship fame). The
drive took a little over 2.5 hours. There was
very little traffic, which in and of itself is unusual because it seems that each one of
Torontos 3.4 million residents are always out on the road. Radar-detectors
are illegal in Ontario, and traffic moves along at about 75 mph. This isnt a race or a time-trial so we
cruised at a comfortable speed. We
arrived in the middle of the night, and the casino was reasonably quiet. Two of their tables were open, and both had $5
minimums. Ive got to admit that I like
the tables here quite a bit. They are of
medium-length, but the rolling surface is just about perfect. I get very consistent and manageable bounce off of
the felt. The table crews and Pit Posse are
almost always in a good mood. In the winter,
they seem to get a lot of regulars, without the overwhelming onslaught of cottage-country
tourists who increase the population by thirty-fold in the summer. The down-side is that the mid-winter tokes for the
crew is usually fairly low, and they fall all over themselves to service a tipper. I
managed to string together some decent hands. Considering
that I had been away from the tables for almost a month-and-a-half, the rust wasnt
as thick or un-removable as I thought it might be. After
a short but intense session, we headed out to our cottage, which is located reasonably
nearby on Lake Joseph. The
following day, we had a very unmemorable breakfast at the Couchiching Court Buffet. Actually it was memorable as being mediocre at
best. I usually make a mental note to avoid
this one, but the alternative breakfast choices here are minimal. The
tables dont start to fill up until the first wave of buses from Toronto start to
arrive. That affords a few shooting
opportunities, but the downside is that they only open additional tables when the crowds
flock in. This isnt a problem that is
unique to this house, of course. We
had a couple of profitable early sessions, followed by a couple of fairly long ones that
were spectacularly unproductive. Like I said,
once the tables fill up, the dice circulate around the table at a slow pace. A
total of 2.25 days were spent here. The food
at all of their other restaurants was good to very-good.
I was pleased with the exceptionally great attitude of every worker that we
encountered. An
interesting observation about my shooting. I
was having great difficulty getting my roll-average above 15-per-hand. In fact, if I hadnt had a couple of very
long hands, my average would have been at an SRR of 11:1.
I wasnt despairing because of three things.
Ø
First,
I was hitting my Place numbers with a lot of regularity, and that was locking-in some
early profit.
Ø
Second,
I was hitting a lot of back-to-back Point-then-Winner type of rolls. This was extremely pleasing to me, and most of the
other players who were content to have their Pass Line bet with full Odds, and no other
bets out on the table.
Ø
Third,
the Points that I was establishing and then coming right back with a winner were mostly 4s
and 10s. This surprised me the most,
because those are not high on my Signature Number hit list.
Regardless, I followed the trend that my throws were indicating. The
lesson here for me, is that sometimes your rolls will take on an individual character all
of their own. In that case, it is up to me or
you to bet according to the numbers that are being thrown, and not the numbers that you
hope are going to roll. One
small aside about my rolls here is that in the total number of rolls that I had, I threw
exactly one craps number, and it was a 2. Talk
about being outside of the normal distribution of random-numbers, eh? I threw that eh in there to make all
of the Canadian readers feel at home. Oh,
one more thing that I should mention. In
conversations with other players, I asked if there were any craps-related web-sites that
they knew of. Not ONE of them knew of ANY! Hmmm, I think that the percentage of web-savvy
craps players is very low. Of course that is
a very unscientific sampling, but I know that Ontario is equal to California in the
percentage of internet-households, and my sense of it, is that the number of
players-to-actual-crapsite-regulars is infinitesimally low. My
Casino Rama results were as follows:
§
Sessions:
7
§
Total
Playing Time:
9.0 hours
§
My
hands:
30
§
My
Rolls:
ranged
from a low of 4 to a high of 37
§
Sevens-Rolls-Ratio: 12.3:1
§
Total
profit:
$945
§
Profit-per-Hour
$105.00 We
now depart for the Province of Quebec where three large casinos await. Get in, and sit back to enjoy the ride and the
tunes. Itll be about five hours until
we get there. Good Luck & Good Skill at the Tables
and in
Life. The Mad Professor
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