[00:01] casino and one of those ways is by maximizing their comp system I'm going to share with you seven tips so both recreational players and Advantage players can maximize comps at the blackjack
[00:17] professional blackjack player I've run teams responsible for beating casinos others how to beat Blackjack at Blackjack apprenti ship.com when I was 24 years old my wife and I went on a 5-day completely paid trip to Las Vegas
[00:31] our airfare was covered hotel room food and we were picked up in a limo by one of those guys with a sign that said Mr Jones on it our compt penthouse suite strip had a TV that came out of the footboard of the bed when you pushed a
[00:45] button there was another TV behind the mirror of the bathroom that had a bedet of course and for 5 days all of our food alcohol and show tickets were completely covered by the casino we were ordering room service several times a day just so
[00:58] liquor brought up to our room that we could bring home to friends as gifts as a cheap Scrappy card counter I couldn't believe what the casinos were throwing my way it was all free but that doesn't mean it didn't come without effort on my
[01:11] part let's get into my best tips to get the most out of the casinos the first thing you need to decide is if you're going after the casino's money or the comps you can definitely try to go after both but if you don't want the casino
[01:23] have to play unrated and if you're playing unrated you cannot go after the comps like I said I'm a card counter casinos don't like us so the moment they figure out that you're a threat to their bottom line they're likely to refuse
[01:37] million-dollar card counter loud and often has a hilarious story of a casino so that they could make him a player card he's a pretty Infamous card counter so he doesn't want to give them his ID eventually he turns to The Pit Boss he
[01:51] says look if I want a free hot dog I'll ask for a free hot dog to which the entire table exploded defending him to the pit okay you're fine with playing rated but how do you get the most value out of your comps well it helps if you
[02:04] know how the casinos calculate your comps they have a formula that takes your average bet size times what they expect their advantage against you to be percentage back of what they expect to make off of you if they think you're
[02:19] worth $100 an hour to them then they're going to give you back something like $30 an hour in comp value but there are a handful of ways to throw off their calculations to give you more comp value than they're intending to for example
[02:33] let's say at the blackjack table you bet between $25 and $200 on average they're going to put your average bet size at around $100 but they aren't watching you their computers for every hand of blackjack so if you start out with a $25
[02:49] bet they're probably going to go to the computer and put in your average bet as $25 however if the first bets they see you make are $200 bets then they're that that you're betting $200 a hand how do you use this to your advantage bet
[03:03] the highest amounts that you bet when the Pit Boss is watching you this is at the table and hand them the player's card they're going to go to the computer going to leave for a while and they'll come back periodically and adjust it
[03:18] when the Pit Boss is near have a higher average bet when they walk away drop your bet to a lower average bet as a card counter I didn't want to bet against the count I wanted to bet what my count told me to bet so what I would
[03:31] do is when I had those big bets out there I'd say Hey Ron am I getting raid they'd go over to his computer and adjust the average bet size secondly you based on what they expect their advantage against you to be you can use
[03:45] that to your advantage pun intended by having a better game than they expect you to have if you're betting smaller like under $100 a hand they're probably of your game but if you're just a
[03:58] recreational blackjack player make sure that you are perfect at basic strategy so that their advantage against you is as small as possible remember the casino's formula is how much you're betting times what they believe their
[04:10] advantage against you to be times how many hands an hour they expect you to play one of my Blackjack Heroes Ian Anderson tells in his book burning the tables in Las Vegas how he would get the casinos to inflate what they thought
[04:23] they were making off of him to his Advantage one of those ways involved that third part of the equation how many hands they think you're playing an hour when playing for the comps he would choose tables that were full of players
[04:36] so that it would be very slow that way if the casino's formula is assuming you're playing 70 hands an hour which is industry standard for casino's comp systems but you're actually playing this full slow table that's only playing 40
[04:49] hands an hour then you're actually getting rated at Double the rate of what you're actually making the casino of course if you're a card counter or an AP then this is hurting your EV because you're playing slower you're not getting
[05:02] in as many rounds per hour but if you're doing it for the comps this can actually be to your benefit even more if you're a card counter you're playing with an advantage when the casino is rating you as a losing player the risk as I
[05:14] mentioned is that if you're a card counter the clock is ticking before the casino figures out that you're a winning player and they don't want you playing there however if you're primarily trying to get value out of the comps as a card
[05:27] counter then you don't have to use as aggressive of a bet spread especially if it's a lwh house Edge game I don't like getting into specifics on a public and you're a card counter use betting software like our prob betting software
[05:40] or cvcx to figure out if there's a tight bet spread that's Break Even or slightly radar so you can milk those comps Blackjack apprenti member JC rocks11 shared this story briefly in a podcast about a local casino that he beat for
[05:56] $150,000 plus another $100,000 in com comp value but please don't get me wrong my default and the way that my teams have won millions of dollars is from aggressive card counting only use this technique if it's worth sacrificing
[06:10] Eevee at the tables for the value of the comps speaking of throwing off the blackjack player and blackjack Hall of Famer Arnold Snyder has one of the best stories of throwing off the casino's
[06:22] comp formula in his book radical Blackjack Snyder tells a story of finding specific casinos that use BJ survey which is a blackjack analysis players normally this would be a bad thing for us but Arnold knew what
[06:37] casinos were using it and he came up with a few strategic mistakes that looked really bad and made the casino think that he was a very bad blackjack actually cost him much money at all I don't want to give away the exact plays
[06:50] that he made but the point is sometimes there are strategic mistakes that cost you very little but make it look to the casino like you are a far worse player than you are resulting in them either riding you off or significantly
[07:02] overcoming you here's a much more basic example Blackjack deviations that card counters use often look like mistakes to an untrained surveillance operative I've actually had surveillance friends tell me yeah I analyzed your play years ago
[07:16] and I determined you were not a winning player because you weren't following basic strategy of course I wasn't I was using playing deviations players like Arnold Snyder and Infamous card counter kyc have used things like this to huge
[07:30] advantage in the comp system this next tip is a really big one you know that story I told at the beginning about all the free stuff the airfare reimbursement the comp Suite all the free room food beverage do you know how I got all that
[07:43] beverage do you know how I got all that stuff I got my ass kicked by the casino on the previous trip as I'm losing first they're offering me a free room and then some Show tickets and a free dinner they keep offering more stuff as I continue
[07:56] to get clobbered at the table but I didn't get the really good stuff until the next trip does that mean you want to lose on purpose of course not but when you're getting crushed which happens to the best of us that's when you want to
[08:08] ask for the world the key is to let them know how badly you've been losing and that you would love something in return to keep you happy my friends Brian and played on my Blackjack teams and not
[08:21] only have they made money from the blackjack tables they also were great at maximizing their comps they were regularly getting $5,000 gift cards from casinos on top of comp playoff game tickets and all of their room food and
[08:35] beverages covered how they got so much in comps came down to their ability to work their Casino Host relationships comp City by Max Rubin is a book that has a lot of value in how to navigate this part of
[08:48] the game casinos don't want you to understand their comp system they don't you to keep coming back and giving them your money here are five more things casinos don't want you to know [Music]