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A lot of that art comes down to you directing a scene without anyone realizing it.

In this post I’ll tell you how to use social engineering skills to slow down a game and the reasons why you’d want to.

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To make things simple, I’ll be sharing a series of paid posts over the next few weeks on the dynamics of online partnerships, followed by a final post that ties everything together.

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I’ll also give you a way to find out what notes are on your players card using simple social engineering techniques.

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The Cashier Is A Dangerous Place

When the cashier has your chips behind their window, if they don’t want to give them back when you want to leave, you don’t have a lot of options.

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I didn’t have a ten-man hole card team in Atlantic City; I had one partner named Jesus. If ever we had a shift off or I was alone in the city, without Jesus, I’d play poker at the Borgata. I stayed in Atlantic City by myself often after trips because I had no life, no one to come home to, and I liked A.C. — the people, the relaxed vibe, my ability to blend in to a level that I was basically invisible. I could spend days there without talking to a soul, and I welcomed it.

During the time Jesus and I were active together in A.C. we had little to no competition besides a crew of Asians affectionately named the Hong Kong Mafia. Their title was a take on a regular group of Las Vegas hole card players called the LVHCM — Las Vegas Hole Card Mafia. A good number of the LVHCM are still out there, whacking games.

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The overall question you want answered is, “Does anyone care?”

Is there any attention whatsoever given to the game, dealer, you, or to the player(s) who just walked off the table?

Best case scenario is nothing happens. The dealer doesn’t comment, the floorman doesn’t say anything when they come by to count the rack. They don’t ask the dealer about the player who just left. No pit boss or casino manager shows up to talk to the floorman on duty. The phone doesn’t ring.

Nothing. You want nothing to occur after a session.

What should you pay attention to?

Let’s say you and your partner were Ace sequencing, your BP won 30k and left the table. You didn’t feel any heat during the play. There wasn’t any unusual attention on the game. Great.

Yes, a suit or two who weren’t the regular floorman came over to take a look at the game but other than that nothing out of the ordinary took place. You were a small player (seat holder or call player), you’re still sitting on the game, you’re cleaning it up. What are you going to pay attention to?

• Does the boss get on the phone?

Probably. Your guy just walked with 30k. Procedure may dictate he calls the casino manager and/or surveillance after large wins. Try and gauge the caller’s demeanor. Does he seem like he’s going through the motions or is he having a back and forth conversation?

Someone going through the motions on a call will have his eyes gazed downwards. He will say what he needs to say and when he gets off the phone the conversation will have left him — you can tell by his face. He’ll go back to doing whatever it was he was doing before the call — talking to a dealer, counting down chip racks, swiping players cards into the system, putting new decks on games.

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Cleaning up is good for optics and to gauge the temperature of employees when the move is done.

Optics, first.

There are several reasons you’d only want to play with one dealer in a casino. They might be the only dealer who gives you the following:

• Hole card information

• Next card information

• A clear view of the top of the deck

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Upgrade To Join The Advantage Play Chat

I usually give everyone in chat a heads up on what posts are coming next. Either it’s something I already planned or someone brings up a topic and I run with it. This week I said I’d make a post on what it means to clean up a game. I think Saturday technically counts as the end of “this week” and my post isn’t ready. It’s fine, I guess. But it’s not good enough. Monday it’ll be good enough.

In the meantime here are a few quickies to help with advantage play and a clandestine life.

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The short argument for why it’s easier for males to show up at a casino and be someone new is because it doesn’t take much. Unless he’s got really severe features like a missing limb or facial Vitiligo, most guys can be everyman — naturally forgettable.

Women on the other hand are given more attention initially, because man’s animal instinct is to quickly judge if they want to have sex with us.

It’s science.

For that reason we leave a small imprint on a male casino employee’s consciousness to begin with.

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The Big Picture

Hole card shoe games are finicky and annoying. They’re also valuable and naturally have less heat than hand dealt games.

Holecarding is not where a casino boss or surveillance operator’s head goes when they see action on a shoe or especially a continuous shuffle machine.

Fire away on a 6/5 CSM and you’re more likely to get attention for being stupid enough to fire on a 6/5 CSM than you are to get suspicion that you’re playing the hole card.

Reading hole cards on shoes and CSMs are almost exactly alike. The way the dealer handles their hole card will be with the same motion.

Opening up a dealer on a CSM is not the same.

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How much do you pay for a lucky seat?

This is a big question. If you offer too little at first you will get turned down and the door is likely to be shut. People don’t come to the casino to haggle with strangers.

You: Can I buy your seat for $20?

Recreational gambler enjoying their Sunday: No.

You: How about $50?

Recreational gambler enjoying their Sunday: No, I’m good.

And that’s the end of the conversation. He thinks you’re weird and he doesn’t want to talk to you anymore.

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There are two main reasons you want your players card to “show a loss.”

1. To qualify for casino promotions and marketing offers.

2. Add to your longevity at a property or connected properties.

In this post I’ll detail two ways to do a loss play on your own and another with a partner. The techniques are used mainly for adding length to your life at a property. I’ll also touch on how my team, Team Brown, operated along with our use of aliases.

Player checks.

Different casinos have different requirements on when to do player evaluations. In some casinos once a player hits a predetermined overall win on their card a player assessment will be made on their past play. Other evaluations might be triggered on a session basis. For example, a casino might evaluate a player’s play on any single session win over 20k. And some casinos will use a “number of bets won” to trigger an evaluation.

Usually these mandatory checks are done with both the assistance of software and a human — casino employee or consultant.

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Maybe you’re on a game and your bettor is quickly going broke or you’ve walked into the casino and forgot to do a chip/cash exchange in the car.

Whatever the case may be, in this post I’ll tell you three ways you can discreetly give your partner chips or cash in the casino, under the cameras, and in front of dealers.

Everything suggested my team and I have done successfully.

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I’ll also tell you why 6 to 5 blackjack is a good thing.

Casual players — slow your roll.

You’re in the casino to pass the time, for entertainment. You’re not there to look for an edge — you just want to hang out.

Someone who pays $300 for a fishing trip or $2000 on four tickets to see Adele at Caesars Palace is spending money on their personal joy. For you, personal joy is a trip to the casino. You don’t want to lose, but you’ve set aside the amount of money that if you do lose, your emotions can handle.

Ways to extend your stay.

• Slot machines — just don’t.

The house edge on slots is multiples of what it is on most table games. The variance on slots is multiples of what it is on most table games.

Maybe this is obvious to anyone who has ever been in a casino but slot machines are no way to stretch out your fun money.

But you like playing slots!

Okay. Play video poker instead.

Playing the correct strategy on a low-variance video poker game like Jacks Or Better or an easier to find variant like Bonus Poker is a better alternative to the Chubby Pigs or Crazy Buffalo slot machines you keep bumping into every time you try and find a bathroom.

Besides the type of video poker game, stick to a single-line game. Avoid multi-line video poker machines.

You don’t get bonus points for playing fast. Go slow, have a cocktail. If you want a smoke, I’m not here to stop you. For Christ’s sake I’m giving you tips on gambling.

There are a lot of apps you can use to practice basic video poker strategy. My preference is WinPoker.

I know casual gamblers are playing for fun and don’t always want to get cerebral over the thing they’re doing to blow off steam, but if you put a little effort into planning you can change the pay tables in the video poker app and figure out which machine offered has the lowest house edge.

• Full tables

The less hands you play, the less hands you play with a disadvantage. Find a table game with other players. Heads-up versus the dealer is a solid pass. The game will be dealt too fast and you won’t even have a chance to relax between hands. You’re not there to play in fast mode.

• Blackjack

Find the best rules, period. If you don’t know what those are, avoid any version of blackjack that presents itself as giving you an advantage because it gives you more options. For example, if the game is letting you double on any amount of cards, then it’s also got a rule baked in somewhere that’s taking value away from you.

Blackjack Switch, Super Fun 21, and Double Exposure Blackjack are good examples. The house edge on those variants are higher than traditional blackjack and so is the variance.

Variance is bad. If we want to sit at a table through four quarters of an NBA game we don’t want big swings.

Avoid playing a blackjack game that pays you 6 to 5 rather than the traditional 3 to 2 on a blackjack.

The house edge on a 6/5 blackjack game is about three times higher than on traditional blackjack.

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But what if the casino only offers 6/5 on low limit games and you want to play a low limit game!?

Let’s say that their $10 minimum tables are 6/5 and their $25 minimum games are 3/2. If it’s all the same to you, choose another casino with more options.

If that’s not reasonable, you really, really want to play blackjack and you sit down at a 6/5 game for the love of all things holy make sure you know basic strategy. Don’t give the casino any more of an advantage than it already has.

Storytime

When Las Vegas first introduced 6/5 blackjack the card counting community was up in arms. There were protests, buildings were set on fire, one guy went on a hunger strike and chained himself to the ‘Welcome To Las Vegas’ sign.

You guys, it was pandemonium.

The holecarding community on the other hand was celebrating. We would have thrown elaborate parties and burned hundred dollar bills for warmth but we were too busy working.

When 6/5 was introduced on the Vegas strip, it was hand dealt. Suddenly casinos offered entire pits with hand dealt games where there were once shoes. They assigned dealers to deal the games who’d never dealt pitch in their lives — they’d never held a deck of cards, their experience was on shoes. The holecarding opportunities really were endless. Yes, the odds off the top were worse because of the lowered payout but when you can see the dealer’s hole card and know what you’re up against it doesn’t matter.

And there’s more!

Because the odds were drastically increased for the house, there was little to no heat on the games. The casino viewed 6/5 blackjack as uncountable by card counters. And they thought that any player who would choose 6/5 over 3/2 at the next table over was a sucker. Holecarders were blessed with natural cover.

What a time to be alive.

Extending your stay, extended.

• Pick a slower game

Pai Gow Poker and Three Card Poker offer worse odds than blackjack for the casual player but the games can be dealt half as fast, especially at a full table. You can station yourself on a Pai Gow game and watch your chip stack inch up and down at a slower pace.

Three Card Poker is high variance, and we already know we don’t like that, but some tables are dealt slow enough that we can overcome the variance with the small number of hands we play in an hour.

• Don’t play side bets

Don’t play side bets. They are money suckers. All of them. Don’t play them.

• Don’t bet a lot

I can’t tell you what to bet. I don’t know how much money you have.

For table games, take what you have and divide it by 50, at least.

For video poker, divide your day’s joy money by 200, at least.

That’s my gut feeling, semi-arbitrary, not-that-mathematical advice on bet sizing when you’re playing for funsies.

Note: If you’re playing $1 video poker that means you should approach it with $1000 — 200 bets of $5. I’m using $5 as your bet size on a $1 game because if you’re playing one of the video poker games mentioned above, you’ve got to bet the maximum five coins — anything less than the maximum raises the house edge and defeats the purpose of choosing video poker over slot machines.

Gambooool

If you’re gambling to feel the rush of gambling, ignore almost everything I just said. Play slots, overbet, go heads-up with a dealer. Throw $25 on that crazy 777 side bet! Wait until your day is almost done and you’re leaving anyway because your likelihood of going broke just skyrocketed.

In no uncertain terms, do not go off on 6/5 blackjack. Do not give the casino the satisfaction of falling for their predatory, odds changing, bastard of a blackjack game when you can take your chance on any other negative house edge game they’re offering.

Chubby Pigs or Crazy Buffalo anyone?

I’m really not here to encourage gambling without an edge, but I get it. I understand it more than I understand the lure of fishing. Casinos offer hundreds of different things to bet on between side bets, slots, table games and video poker. Don’t make it easy for them to steal your joy.

Advantage Players, hold up.

Several things can factor into you getting an edge.

• A certain dealer

• The exact time of day

• New cards being put onto a game

• A specific boss not being in view

While you’re waiting for your perfect opportunity you might have to slow down a game.

For example?

• You’re on a hole card game. Your dealer goes on break for twenty minutes. The best course of action to not bring attention to yourself is to sit and continue to play with the relief dealer until the lucky dealer comes back.

• You’re playing One Card Baccarat. The dealer is dangerously close to the end of the shoe but she doesn’t expose the back card. You need to stall the game until another dealer takes over.

I’m sure some of you can think of other examples.

Here are three tips to slow down your game.

1. Buy in with small denomination bills.

Take out $63 in small, crumpled up bills and ask the relief dealer to change them for chips.

2 tens, 5 fives, 18 ones

The time it takes the dealer to smooth out, then lay out twenty-five bills is time you don’t have to play.

Below is a Canva generated image for “2 ten dollar bills, 5 five dollar bills, 18 one dollar bills, crumpled up”

Maybe AI can help with dating but it cannot help with photos for this post.

If pulling this obnoxious move will put you in a bad light, have a teammate do it. If you don’t have a teammate, be cheerful. Try using the excuse that you need more tip money!

2. Have a non-playing teammate interrupt the game with a stack of chips to color up.

This works best with pretty females, or females that look oblivious to their surroundings, or both. Point is, a woman can get away with this one because she is judged as more innocent than a man in the casino.

Your non-playing partner can walk up to the table with white, red, and green chips that she either got at another table or the poker room and innocently ask the relief dealer to color them up. She doesn’t have to sit and play. She just has to ask nicely.

This move is also good for getting a dealer’s name from their name tag when you can’t see it off the table. Even if the dealer refuses to color the chips up you’re close enough to peek her name for later use.

3. Spill your drink on one card.

ONE CARD ONLY! If you get a tiny, tiny drop of water on one playing card, the floorman will usually just change out that one card and not the entire deck. The time it takes the boss to switch in a clean card is time you don’t have to play while you wait for whatever you’re waiting for to happen.

If you pull this move too close in time to the regular deck change, the boss might go ahead and change the entire deck. Changing an entire deck or two might take more time than you need, so be aware.

The casino’s procedure might require them to call surveillance to monitor the switching of the two cards. If surveillance’s eye on your table could possibly bring you heat, don’t try this one.

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My Story

When I was younger and had tolerance of steel, my BP was betting two hands of $5,000 on a hole card game and he’d taken too many breaks with the relief dealer to take another one. (Taking a break every single time the relief dealer comes to the table is a bad look.) In an effort to buy some time I made a motion to spill a drop of my water on one card. Something happened where I lost control of my body and spacial awareness. Instead of one drop on one card at our table, I spilled the entire bottle of water across the felt and it hit so hard it splashed water on the table behind us. The floorman had to change eight decks of cards — two on our table and six on the next.

Because we were posing as high rollers destined to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars, the bosses were nothing but nice about the incident. Fast forward a few months later to when the casino figured out that we’d been playing the hole card and the fall out was ten times worse than it would have been if I hadn’t obnoxiously spilled my water. Once they were privy to what we’d been doing everyone involved was very, very mad.

Along with a tolerance of steel, younger me could run faster than an average security guard. And I did. Through the casino, out the door, through the parking lot, across the street, and I didn’t stop for half a mile.

In this post I’ll explain how you can get down on One Card Baccarat as a solo player, 2-man team, and how to scale the operation with multiple spotters. I’ll also expand on reasons why One Card Baccarat is stronger than it appears on the surface.

What we know.

• The average baccarat game, in my experience, takes 45-minutes including the time to shuffle.

• A 6-hour session will count as 8 shoes — 8 chances at playing the One Card.

• The average edge for One Card Baccarat is 7.4% c/o Eliot Jacobson.

• An 8-deck Baccarat game lasts about 80 hands.

In order to calculate our hourly we are going to use what we know and some conservative assumptions based on the unhealthy amount of time I’ve spent in casinos.

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