Tale At The Table

By John Grochowski on Monday May 23, 2016

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I’m always looking for tales of unusual things that happen in casinos. One came my way from a reader who wanted to share his experience with a big cash player.

“I once saw a person buy in at a craps table for $10,000 – all in $20 bills!” he wrote. “It was just me and another player. The new guy wanted the table for himself and a $50 minimum bet.

“We were allowed to keep playing at $10 minimum until the counting was done. That took a while! We were comped $25 by the pit boss for not continuing to play. We watched for a while, then I left for dinner.

“The next day I asked a pit boss what the results were. He said the player lost $20,000 (must have bought in again) and had lost another $20,000 days before. No wonder they treated him like gold, he was gold for them!”

It’s the all in $20 bills part of the reader’s story that gets me. It takes 500 $20 bills to make $10,000. Even at casino cash counting speed, you could get in a few rolls of the dice before an accurate count was finished and verified.

I’ve run into requests from other players to raise the table minimum, though nothing as extreme as a player buying in for $10,000 in cash. Once, I was having a pretty good run at a $25 blackjack table, playing head-to-head with the dealer and spreading my bets from $25 to $125.

The pit supervisor called my dealer for a short conference, and the dealer returned and asked me, “A lot of your hands are for $50 and up. Would you mind if we raised this to a $50 table? A man and woman over there want a $50 table, and this is where there’s space.”

I told her I wasn’t comfortable with a $50 minimum, but would be happy to have the couple at the table if I could be grandfathered in at $25 for another half hour. That satisfied everyone, and the move was made.