Please be gentle

6 February 2018

By Frank Scoblete

Playing in a casino for the very first time can be an intimidating experience. Many first-time players tend to head right for the slot machines, since these machines will rarely have other players watching them.

Table games are a different story. Most of the time, you have to make some decisions, and in a game such as blackjack there are numerous decisions – meaning hand after hand after hand requires you to figure out what to do.

Bill remembers his first time vividly. “I went to Tropworld [now Tropicana] in Atlantic City. I wanted to play blackjack, so I sat at a table with four other players. I told everyone that this was my first time. One woman said to the dealer to be gentle.

“The dealer was a very nice woman and said not to worry, that all the players were friendly. Well that turned out to be false. One guy was a real pain in the you-know-what. Every time I tried to figure out what to do with my hand, he’d get impatient and say stuff like I shouldn’t play a game I don’t know and that I was slowing down the pace.

“One woman told the guy to be quiet and that it wasn’t easy to play blackjack the first time out. This woman also recommended that I go to the gift shop and get a strategy card that would help me play my hands correctly.

“So I had the dealer hold my spot and I went to the gift shop and got a [basic strategy] card. Back at the table I started to use it but luck wasn’t running my way. I kept losing. It was depressing. So the guy now started ragging on me about the card. ‘You think that stupid card will help you? Why would a casino sell a card that tells you how to play correctly? Think about that. I do the opposite of the card.’

“Finally I quit playing and went over to the slots. The blackjack game just had too much pressure. My second trip, after I studied the game and saw that the blackjack card from the casino was accurate, I was not nervous. Also, my second trip had a really fun group of people at the table and no one like that nasty guy.”

Darlene took a different approach to her first time in the casino. “I didn’t play the first few hours. I just went around and watched the various games. Roulette was really easy to figure out so I finally sat down at the roulette table and played either red or black. It was fun and I even wound up winning a few dollars. So my first trip was good. None of the regular players knew I was a new player. Roulette is so simple really anyone can play it right off the bat.”

The best result on a first trip happened to Charlie. He knew how to play blackjack because he had studied the game from a book (by me, by the way!), and so he sat down and felt relatively comfortable.

“Played my hands just as I was supposed to and I slowly kept winning. I was just playing five dollars but it seemed that all my double downs and all my splitting of pairs won. At the end of two hours I had won $150. It’s funny, but that was the best two hours I have ever had at a blackjack table. My first time was my best time.”

Finally, Douglas went all in “like a maniac my first time. I hit a dozen or so slot machines. I threw out money on craps by imitating the other players. A guy would say ‘yo!’ and throw out some money and I would then say ‘yo!’ and throw out the same amount of money. I played roulette and mini-baccarat. It was a losing day but it was a really fun day.”

I think the best advice I can give you if you’re attempting your first try at casino table games is to read enough about the games so you aren’t intimidated. Yes, for blackjack the best thing is to read a book and to get a basic strategy card. And never let obnoxious players – and you will inevitably run into such players at times – spoil your fun. You can always get up and go to another table too.

Darlene had a great attitude and she was in no rush to plunge right in. The games are always there and checking them out is a good idea. Roulette is easy, as is mini-baccarat. Craps is easy if you play the right way, but imitating “crazy crappers” making all sorts of high-house-edge bets is the worst way to go. So you probably should read a book on this game.


Visit Frank's website at frankscoblete.com. Frank Scoblete’s newest books are I Am a Dice Controller: Inside the World of Advantage-Play Craps, I Am a Card Counter: Inside the World of Advantage-Play Blackjack and Confessions of a Wayward Catholic. Frank’s books are available on Amazon.com, Kindle, Barnes and Noble, and at bookstores. Visit his website at frankscoblete.com.