Baccarat True Believers vs. Con-Artists

That's the best casino for Roulette on the west coast. They have 9 live tables. They also have one 80 seat stadium with terminals all running from one wheel. There's a new casino near Portland Oregon that has more tables but they put a computer monitor on a stand where the one slot is open for sitting on the dealer's side. It's like there are two best seats to have and they clobbered one of them. Dumb guys. They took away one of the two only seats where you can reach all bet locations, the middle side seat and the dealer side on the edge of the corner. I tried to tell them when they came asking for advice and improvements. Then Covid-19 happened. It would be nice to see that they took my advice. It's a well known group of people that have the largest most successful casino operations in the states. This casino near Portland is the Ilani. Can't wait until all this virus stuff lays down.

 

There was a time when Vegas casinos took a similar attitude towards VP players. In fact I was asked to be extra high profile once in return for being allowed to play. Bob Dancer was required to blog about his wins in return for not being 86 from several places. And when I had the radio show several casinos sponsored us so long as we talked about our successes at their properties.

I actually had an issue with that as I was under an NDA with my team and could mention any plays. LOL...

The thinking was obviously if people saw other people winning they'd be more likely to gamble. So far as I know it worked. Over the years though as staff got cycled out the new people got butt hurt about our profit and didn't honor the old deals.

All it ever took was one penny-pinching accountant that looked only at our individual records and didn't factor in overall increase of business. Very myopic thinking.

 

I had the real managers of the MIT BJ on my radio show. Delightful people.

On the movie twenty one I asked how close they got it to the reality. They said the book was about half right and the movie tossed out that half. It was a near total fabrication with the hand signals being the only correct thing in the whole film.

 

Never ignore a message if you dislike the messenger .

 

Cool, I never knew Eliot had a YT channel.

 

If only more people followed this. I was raised in a family where right was right. We used logic and syllogism to resolve all issues and even as a five year old I won a few arguments, with the only punishment being a pat on the back and a thank you for pointing out the error in my parents judgment. (+Indian Dinner to celebrate)

The wider world does not seem to operate on this paradigm.

I have suffered from growing up in a functional family my whole life, as I always expected things to be fair.

 

I'm sure Prof. Eliot Jacobson thinks highly of you too Mr Gordon Ramsey.

 

P.S. You may know I was a violinist and piano player and my mother gave me the genetic gift of a phiso-idetic memory. She won her first piano competition without having ever played the piano. I was shown dice manipulation by a guy that wanted me to back a team. He had practiced for two years to get to his level of competency on a craps table he had in his garage.

I watched what he was doing and duplicated it on my third try. (Mom would have got it in one)

We did not end up doing business, because I refused to do anything illegal and also because he was so angry I could do in min what took him years to learn.

Story of my life.

Mom as well. She taught several professional Tennis Players that ended up being world famous. She never played Tennis...the regular pros hated her. When she won that piano competition the other contestants fingered her for something she didn't do and the teachers locked her in a closet for three days with no food or water after beating her. This was in a cresh in South Africa... She was French and the Staff was English.

 

Spike, I have watched this video and so far as I can tell the information is sound at least so far as the things he talks bout which are provable and can give an edge.

He obviously nay-says intuition and anything to do with betting patterns and shoe tracking.

After talking to you I'm on the fence about all that. I think we mathematicians don't give enough credence to intuition. It is an ephemeral concept we with which we have trouble. It is however almost undeniable.

That having been said, what he says about the ways to beat baccarat are sound. You should not dismiss them off-hand because he opens with things that contradict your views. He could be wrong, it does not mean he's wrong about everything.

Someone can be wrong about many things and still be right about others.

Argumentum ad Logicum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy

 

Frank, funny story about the memory thing. I was working where every day we would be go over certain aspects of the job. In a job where everyone of us was supposed to be observant I kept noticing when it was a certain guys turn. He not only didn't need the paper work but quoted it word for word. He tilted his head a little like he was looking in the air.

I finally asked him one day if he had a photographic memory. Of course he told me the correct terminology. I asked what he saw It looks like your looking at the page. He said I am. I see the page and every word, comma, period, paragraph indention.

I got to say to this day I think that is cool. But its something I'll never truly understand. I loved telling others he had it because of their reaction. I couldn't believe they didn't pick up his behavior..

The dice thing.... I actually saw the whip worked years ago. The guy came up to the table with a very well endowed young lady.. And they were almost out... She kept leaning way over the table and the dealers eyes were popping out of their heads. The guy put a chip on don't pass and a black on twelve. Did the whip and hit it the first time. The dealers still looking down her blouse paid him and returned the dice. He put another black on twelve.... Boom whipped it and missed.... Third try another black and hit..... again dealers paid him and he took off.....

Of course when I got home I looked up what he was doing and found out the throw was the whip and it can land you in jail..... I would be stupid to try it.... but he got paid quick....

 

Yes that's exactly correct on the memory thing. It's so weird. I glanced at our school assignment and memorized it but I did not have time to read it. When the teacher called on me I stood up and gazed into the sky for a second. She asked, "did you read it?" I said not yet, ok got it page 45 second paragraph and then rattled off all the info on Kit Carson.

Freaked everyone out. BTW: I no longer try to use that form of memory. It does not last as long as really learning something. Oh and how weird is this, since I lost right eye to cancer I can't do it anymore. Poor vision has effected my memory since most of my memory was visual.

 

Your family used solo-gism to resolve issues?

 

Frank sorry to hear that. If you did chemo a lot of things change also. Glad your still here.

 

It was a small one behind my retina and they got it with a laser. So no chemo. I also had one on my back that I cut off myself as I saw no reason to pay for the surgery. I got called to a progressive play when I was in the middle of preforming the procedure on myself. I made the play.

How's that for work ethic.

Hot tip if you mix a tiny amount 2-3 drops of DMSO on one of those Lidocane patches they give you for back pain it dumps the entirety of the patch into your system all at once. It's dangerous so I don't recommend it if you can afford surgery...but it totally works for self home surgery.

 

I had no idea dmso was legal now. I remember the ban on it in the seventies.
Good to know...

 

"Blood and Thunder" by Hampton Sides is a terrific read about the life of Kit Carson, a remarkable guy. Maybe we could turn this thread into a book club?

J

P.S. too bad about about your eye, Frank. I've read a few of your threads. Maybe you'd like to start a new thread called "The Frank Kneeland Story." It would be a good place to begin your autobiography.

 

Forget the "shoe" . Consider the session method. Be guided by win goal and loss limit no matter at which

point one enters the game .

 

It's still being written. I might be on the last chapter. I will publish after passing

 

Since you asked here's a story from my teens:

ANYTHING WORTH DOING IS WORTH OVERDOING

• Anyone that knows me as an adult may have noticed that I have a tendency to do things very well, or not at all. Nearly every hobby I’ve ever had became a vocation at one point or another. If tasked with cooking one Indian Dish, it was only weeks until I had an entire pantry dedicated to raw spices, that I roasted and ground to create my own masalas from scratch. But have I always been this way? Yes actually—here’s the funniest stories involving critters.
  

ANTHONY & CLEOPATRA

I’d been pining for a pet my whole life, but due to my family’s jet-set lifestyle and moving to a new country every six months, it had not been possible until we moved to Las Vegas and my father passed away. My mother clearly understood the positive effect a pet could have on a child, especially one that was going through loss. I remember a saying of hers, “The only thing that gets you over the last one is the next one” and while that saying is more typically attributed to romantic attachments, it applies to any situation where something new can take your mind off of something lost. Unfortunately, she was allergic to most standard pets.


After, I’m sure, a great deal of cost/benefit analysis to which I was not privy, she settled on a couple of Hamsters. She wanted something cute, cuddly, and non-allergenic, but above all, something small that wouldn’t take up too much space. Hamsters fit the bill nicely, that is until you add “The Frankie Factor”.


She had been very careful to get two boys that we named Cesar & Anthony. She didn’t want them pumping out litters of babies and turning our house into the Star Trek episode “Trouble With Tribbles”. How careful had she been? Not careful enough! Two months later Cesar gave birth to eight beautiful little hamsters with very unusual colorations, as they were a mix of short and long hair varieties.


Step one was renaming Cesar to Cleopatra. Step two was figuring out what to do with all these tiny adorable little baby hamsters. They don’t stay babies for very long and can breed themselves after only two months. They are basically tibbles. Mom called the pet store to complain about the error and they politely agreed to take them off our hands. Yay.


After a month of raising them to near adulthood, we took them in and handed them over. The gal behind the register handed us money in exchange. Huh...that was unexpected. Mom had thought they were simply going to take them for free, not pay us.


On the way home both of us joked about becoming hamster breeders, but it was just that, a joke. Five dollars a baby wasn’t worth the effort. At least we knew what to do the next time Cleo had a litter, turn it into $40 bucks--oh baby…!


Two days later the pet shop called and asked if we had any more of those adorable fluffy pink & lavender hamsters with the white feet and white faces. We did actually as Cleo had given birth a day before to ten more babies. It seems that despite having nearly sixty hamsters to choose from in their shop, ours had sold out before any of the others had been chosen. They even had people coming in and asking for our breed after seeing one of them at a friend's house. This was great news, but five bucks a fluff ball was still not a viable business opportunity.


We toyed with the idea of becoming hamster breeders all that night, and it reminded my Mom of a story from her childhood she hadn’t thought about for 50 years. Apparently, her kin on Reunion Island had been the ones originally responsible for breeding all the colors of Budgies (love birds) that are now popular. After an appropriate amount of nostalgic musings into reviving the family traditions, the idea was nixed for financial non-viability and no other.


A week later when the manager of the pet store called and offered us $25 a hamster and alea iacta est, the die was cast. The avalanche had already begun; it was far too late for the pebbles to vote.


Anthony & Cleo were still our “go to progenitors”, but we kept a few of their children to add breeding pairs and found that the mutation held pretty stable. One of Anthony’s son’s that was born premature and had to be hand fed turned out to be the best for producing the lilac long hair breed that paid the most. We named him “Little-Tike” and he followed dad around and tried to be just like his old man.


I know it’s anthropomorphising, but I swear to you I witnessed manly parenting behaviors with my own eyes. Just as LT was getting of age, six of the females in our habitat went into heat on the same day. Anthony went into the main public area and sniffed the lady’s butts and then uncharacteristically left. He went and found his son, LT and then pushed him down the habitrail corridors until he fell out like toothpaste out of a tube into the common area. He then gave LT “an example” of what to do and refused to take a turn on any of the other females until his son had “learned the lesson”. He wasn’t the only one. Mom never had to explain the birds and the bees to me...I knew hamsters.


I reinvested 25% of the profits in additional habitrail accessories and eventually filled an entire room of our house with cages, and wheels, and spinners, and play rooms all connected with tubes and tunnels like something out of an Eicher Sketch with impossible perspectives. We even got a write up in Homes & Gardens.


Little Tike died at age 3, and when Anthony found him dead he refused to eat and followed soon after three days later. Cleo was still healthy, but refused to mate with anyone else. She guarded the bed she had shared with Anthony as though she was waiting for him to return and became violent, even if approached by her own offspring. I had to put her in her own cage, she did not last long. An era had ended.


We sold the inventory and equipment for a fair amount of money, but it was no consolation. I missed my three unique hamsters, Anthony, Cleopatra, and Little Tike. I still do to this day.


My mother said, “You know, nothing gets you over the last one, except for the next one”. Spiny was to be next. Spiny was a spider.

 

It's now sold at some Health food stores as a lineament. You have to wash EVERYTHING OFF YOUR SKIN even soap before applying it as anything on your skin gets absorbed into your blood stream.