Games We Loved to Play

10 February 2022

By Royal Flushes

CINDY: We have played some great games over the decades. And some rotten ones because there was nothing better.

ABBY: It’s been decades! The time goes fast, doesn’t it?

CINDY: The cruise ships often had so-so games. You’d make your bets really low so the house edges didn’t kill you. They had you trapped and if you wanted to play then you played the games you would never play in a regular casino. Blackjack was not good at all. You were limited in which hands you could double and whether you could split pairs or not. Craps was traditional double odds and you couldn’t push the house on place bets. No $25 six and eights.

ABBY: We wouldn’t play the slots. Who knew what they returned? The casino wouldn’t tell anyone – obviously.

CINDY: Okay, let’s name some of the games we thought were outstanding. From the very beginning of our careers! There certainly were some.

CINDY: The craps games in Tunica maybe about twenty years ago. No craps game ever matched those. You had 100X odds with a five-dollar minimum bet. You could back it with $500!

ABBY: We split our money on those bets.

CINDY: Craps heaven. Never saw those games again when they finished in Tunica.

ABBY: The single-deck blackjack game at the Maxim Hotel in Vegas in the early 1990s. They dealt out all but one card!

CINDY: We were casino babies then.

ABBY: They had every rule including surrender. Doubles and splits, three times. A basic strategy player had an edge! Wow!

CINDY: There were a lot of single-deck games in Vegas in those days, not the crummy 6-5 games they have now.

ABBY: I think the comps were better too; at least that’s how I remember it.

CINDY: Do you remember that the professional wrestlers stayed there during one of our trips? Some of them were really, really big guys. They just played craps.

ABBY: A lot of Vegas casinos also had the French roulette game of a single zero. That reduced the house edge by about a half percent. I don’t remember if they had en prison.

CINDY: I don’t think so. I actually don’t remember that clearly either. Still, a good roulette game.

ABBY: Atlantic City had surrender on the even-money bets. That reduced the house edge in half on the double-zero game.

CINDY: I think they still have that.

ABBY: I know roulette is a popular game and it is somewhat slow and leisurely, which is a good thing. I once thought it would lose its popularity but I was totally wrong about that.

CINDY: Remember the Aladdin would give you a free ace when you entered a blackjack game? Boy, that helped the bottom line since the game was the great single-deck game.

ABBY: Of days gone by.

CINDY: I guess there were other games too. I just don’t remember them now.

ABBY: No.