This reminds me of some time that I spent in Moscow a few years ago. I played quite a bit of blackjack and the behavior I saw at the tables could almost make for a good paper on the mentality of Russians. It’s an odd combination of gambling bravado and risk-aversion. The house allowed surrender and the locals would surrender waaaay too often, preferring to give up half their bet rather than take a chance of busting. The number of times I saw a player surrender rather than hit a 12 would make your head spin. They’d stand on 15 or 16 even facing a dealer face card. I just noted it as bad play, not for how it affected me.
I understand and play good basic strategy (although I had to look up how surrender affected play), but ended up in conflict with my fellow players quite a bit. They would chew me out for taking a card when I was supposed to and then follow the cards that would come out in order to see if I “ruined it for the table.” Of course, they wouldn’t take any notice of the times I would “save the table” with my (to them) reckless play.
For the most part I ignored it or tried to explain basic strategy, but one time I actually got pissed off. There was an extremely superstitous blowhard at the table. He had a system for everything and a thousand superstitions about how to bet and play. Even with his running commentary, and yes he spoke constantly, I coudn’t keep track of which superstition was determining his play, whether is was two black queens face up or a red 7 following a black 6 or what. It was insane.
Oh yeah, he also tried to demand that his winnings be paid out in the same format that he’d bet, i.e. if he bet $300 all in red chips and won, he didn’t want to be paid in green or black. Nooooo it had to be a huge stack of reds back to him. Play was held up at one point for about 10 minutes while the floor supervisor explained that they weren’t going to open a whole new rack just to get enough reds to pay him. And heaven forbid the dealer should touch his bet, say to straghten the stack or whatever.
Anyway, as interesting as it was to watch his shenanigans, after a few hours of sitting at the table with him bitching about my play, he finally crossed the line somehow and I snapped. I told that my money was mine, I would bet it as I damn well pleased. I reminded him that I hadn’t said anything about any of his dumbass plays and he needed to keep his opinions to himself. I even asked the supervisor to tell him to back off.
Oddly enough, he was quite pleasant after that and we eventually go to joking around and chit-chatting. Weird.
Playing blackjack in Russia was the opposite of what I generally see in US casinos: I was playing solid basic strategy and taking shit from the rest of the table who were playing by their gut. Most of the time blackjack can be a nice social gaming experience.
I could see an angle of playing intentionally extremely bad – such as hitting on 20 stuff like that. It’s basically saying “here! I literally am throwing away my money! I have enough money I don’t care about winning! NYA!” I can see that being rude. But it’s certainly not bad etiquette in and of itself.
Already did (post #58). I know I was late to the game, but I’d hoped to get dealt in for at least a couple hands. Maybe if I stick around, someone else will sit.
That’s actually pretty funny, but I think I’m saying that because I wasn’t there. If I had to play with him, I’d probably be annoyed as shit. I once had a woman ask me what my rainbow colored bracelet meant, and when I told her it was from an atheist group I’m a part of, she started proselytizing. I think it’s the only time I’ve ever told someone at the table to shut up, and I have seen my share of Chatty Cathies. Not in those words. I think I ended up saying, “Please don’t espouse your faith to me. I’m trying to give a good time,” in the most irritated tone of voice I could affect. She left.
I’d imagine. Obviously cultures differ, so what is polite in India may not be polite in Spain.
I call it the “I know you are, but what am I?” or, to use netspeak, “no u” gambit.
Back when early human society was formed, the Big Bang, (the point at which the first two humans capable of speach fucked) there should have been equal amounts of rude and anti-rude formed. These should have canceled out leaving a neutral society.
For centuries social theorists have sought to explain this apparent imbalance between rude and anti-rude. Recently their latest tool to probe the inner workings of society came online. Many folks feared it would create a sucking black hole that would rip society apart. It didnt, at least not yet, but it has allowed social theorists new insights. That new tool is Facebook.
By using Facebook the theorists have been able to finally prove the “ME Theory”. It is now apparent humans are surrounded by a cloud of virtual particles called “me-ons”. If you socially stimulate these “me-ons” with sufficent power they decay into real particles called tweets, twitters, pokes, updates, profiles, and a host of other exotic particles. Past social stimulations such as plays, magazines, and television hinted at these “me-ons” but the data was weak. Email and Instant messaging gave slightly stronger proof that “me-ons” existed but the fact those were generally two body social interactions made measurements difficult. Only when Facebook finally came online and massive quantities of “social interaction” could be initiated by a single body without any requirement of the receiving to also interact did the presence of “me-ons” become clear.
It has been obvious to theorist for years that if “me-ons” existed they would preferentially convert anti-rude to rude because in ME Theory a rude is composed of we-ons and me-ons while an anti-rude is composed of we-ons and them-ons. When an anti-rude is struck by a we-on, the them-ons are apparently destroyed and it becomes another rude composed of a we-on and me-on. And in ME Theory a me-on is massively stronger than a we-on.
Virtual me-ons in the past could sometimes spontaeously appear, but it took the massive social stimulating power of Facebook to produce them in large numbers, hence the recent massive rise in the observable amounts of rude.
Let’s say you go to a black tie dinner party. Halfway into the cocktail hour, while you’re in the middle of a treatise on why Sartre was the precurssor to the Scooby Doo cartoon series, a guy you’ve never met, strips down runs around the room naked, flaps his arms and starts screaming “look at me, I’m a bird! I’m a bird! whooop whooop whooop!” then shoves a handfull of dollar bills into his anus and rolls around on the ground.
The other guests get upset, security is called, and he’s asked to stop.
Now, you can look at it in two ways. 1) Logically, this guy has done nothing that affects me or my life in any fashion. What he chose to do with his money is his choice alone and does not harm me or my money in any manner. Therefore, he should remain free to do such an activity.
2) Dude. He just harshed the buzz of the entire crowd of partygoers. That’s some seriously rude behavior right there.
Yes it’s true that playing unstrategically at 3rd base makes no difference in the long run and no difference due to the randomness inherent in the cards. Yes, people should realize this. But they don’t. People aren’t all completely logical all the time and you can either shove rocks in your mouth and shout against the roaring of the river to try to convince people of this or just sit back and accept it. Most people just accept it because life is too tiring to contemplate the alternative. And by accepting it, you have to also accept that people will view the behavior as rude and you have to accept that you doing the same just to piss them off is also rude.
So if it was you as the naked dude at the party shoving dollar bills up your anus and exclaiming “what’s the problem, yo, my decision doesn’t affect you!” well, no. But you’re still being rude.
Please. You evaded because you knew your argument was BS. When I pinned you down to having to justify your original statement by quoting the original thing you were replying to, you decided to take your ball and go home rather than respond.
It wasn’t elegant but I wasn’t going to persue it beyond that, since it was obvious that you were unable to defend your argument. But don’t pull this crap like I came up with some sort of “no u” argument when it’s clear that it ended because you were unable to justify your argument.
Enderw24, stop. Mores, expectations and other people’s delicate little sensibilities have nothing to do with whether or not behavior is rude. Is there measurable harm done? Yes or no. If no, it cannot be rude. It’s that simple.
I understand the point you’re trying to make and I don’t completely disagree, although I don’t think the situations are analogous. Someone doing this stuff is certainly disruptive and causing some sort of harm, even if it isn’t lasting or physical or anything like that. I think the more apt comparison to this would be someone taking too long to make decisions or just generally being a distraction at the blackjack table, which would be actually disruptive.
There are rational reasons to come to the conclusion that such behavior is rude. However, the only reason that anyone views the “taking a dealer’s bust card” type behavior as rude or assholish is because they don’t understand what’s actually going on in that situation. They think you actually made a decision which has resulted in a scenario that has wronged them.
If this were actually true, if you had wronged them somehow, then they would have a legitimate complaint. It isn’t, true, however. It’s an artifact of their inability to grasp some basic stuff about reality.
But it’s common. Lots of people think this way. That’s how casinos make money. So it becomes something of a social standard that you can violate. But that doesn’t mean it’s defensible or reasonable or that the person doing their thing is doing anything wrong.
What if you remove the element of the person making the “wrong” move? Let’s say the person has 12 against a dealer 9 - the clear move is to hit. The person takes a 10 (and busts) and the dealer ends up having 6 in the hole, and draws a 5. That person, had they stayed, would’ve made the dealer draw 9+6+10 and a bust, but they took the dealer’s bust card. But instead, his hitting lead to the dealer having 20 and beating everyone else. Is that person being rude?
Well…at non-continuous shuffle tables, card counters can make an educated guess. If they really can count under the stress of live action, which most can’t. I can’t count cards with any degree of accuracy. I don’t play often enough, and I do not have the time/will to practice enough to even come close to being accurate. I’ll try for a shoe or two, but damn…that’s a lot of work and sorta takes the fun out of the game for me.
I’d hope it goes without saying that it’s rude to do something — anything, really, from hitting in blackjack to wearing a green shirt — with the deliberate intent of pissing people off.
If you’re splitting tens or hitting hard 18 because you know that doing so will annoy the people around you, then yeah, you’re being a dick. If you’re doing it because that’s the way you enjoy playing blackjack, though, then there’s nothing rude about it. There’s no automatic onus on you to live up to others’ arbitrary expectations, and failing to do so in no way makes you an asshole.
If you can find me a guy who honestly doesn’t think he’s affecting others with a naked ass-money-stuffing table dance, I’ll make a value judgment on him then; my conclusion will probably involve institutionalization.
If you go golfing at pretty much 99% of the courses out there, you have to wear a collared shirt.
No tank tops, no bare chests, no even a really nice blank t-shirt.
Why? It can’t possibly affect your game to wear it. It can’t possibly affect another player’s game to see you wearing or not wearing it. Logically there’s absolutely no justification for this rule.
But you wear it because the club says you wear it. And not doing so is rude.
Multiple issues at play here. First off, if the club doesn’t want to let me play golf unless I’m wearing a collared shirt, that’s its call. If the casino doesn’t want to let me play blackjack unless I agree not to split tens, same deal. If I don’t want to abide by those rules, I shouldn’t be there at all; rudeness doesn’t enter into it.
However, in the analogous situation to the real-world casino, the hypothetical country club says I can wear whatever shirt I want, and it’s the other golfers who have taken it upon themselves to decide that there’s a “rule” that says my shirt has to have a collar. They then proceed to get pissed off at me because I happen to be wearing a t-shirt.
In this case, if anyone’s being rude, it’s the ones who are going out of their way to formulate baseless requirements, apply them to others, and get all het up when the world doesn’t suit their preferences.
The equivilant is that there are certain social mores and behaviors you conform to despite there being no logical reason for doing so, because it’s what’s expected of you. To not do so is, at best, a faux pas and, at worst, pretty darn rude.
You can be the non-conformist you want. That’s awesome for you. But you’re still being rude.
Do you play blackjack? This is a serious question; I am not trying to be snide. If I wanted to be snide, I am not very subtle, and would make some abrasive comment, then cease paying attention to you altogether.
The reason why I ask is because if you play often, you’d know continually making off-the-wall bets irritates people at the table. It causes them no harm, similar to the way it causes no harm for me to keep a pile of fingernail clippings near my chips. Rude, and perhaps a little creepy, but there is no damage done to anybody’s money or anything else, aside from the way they feel, if I hit on 20, leave nail clippings by my chips, or belch loudly every time I win a hand. Anyone who splits tens over and over again, hits on 17 when the dealer’s face card is 2, and so on, is super-noob, is deliberately pissing people off, or doesn’t care if people are bothered either way. It is not polite behavior. It is also not the same thing as wearing a blue shirt, unless you are going some place where people have a hatred of blue shirts. I can see no logical reason to hate blue shirts, but I do realize wearing one in their presence is impolite. Now if you don’t give a shit about whether or not it’s polite, and your line of thought is that they’re not being reasonable, so let them be annoyed, then very well. There are a lot of things we do in society that are not precisely rational for the sole purpose of being polite, and if you don’t want to play along unless there is a logical reason to do so, then hey, we’re all adults. We get to behave however we like, but don’t be surprised when people think you’re rude.
I was a casino dealer for about five years in the 1990’s in the state of Mississippi. I have a lot of stories to tell from that time.
A lot of players liked to sit in the first seat or the last seat. The first seat (the player who receives the first card) is called “first base” and the last seat is called “third base”. To a dealer, it is a lot of work to have to move around the body to accomodate these people. It is much easier for people to sit in the middle of the table. But no, these morons have to sit on the end.
“Bust cards”. God how I hated this term. Or, the basic rules of strategy. Yes, when a dealer has a 4, 5 or 6 showing, it is not advisable to hit on a hand of over 12. Inexperienced players will do this a lot, with other people complaining loudly. “You took his bust card!” “I would of won if it wasn’t for you.”
Myself? I rarely played blackjack because I thought it was a braindead thing to do. However, sometimes I played. The only reckless thing I do when I play is sometimes I will “double down” on my 12 against the dealer’s 6. Why not? I am betting that the dealer wont give me a face card. If I get an Ace to Nine, I am not in any worse position than I was before. However, the other players ill piss and moan and howl if I do this.
Dealer shuffles were a pain in the ass. We had 6 deck shoes and we had to shuffle the cards. Of course, there was a procedure on how to do this. Take the deck, break it into fours, shuffle two piles, then the other two piles, put the two piles together, shuffle the two piles into one stack, and then break down the deck and do it over again. Harrah’s shuffle was easy, while Horseshoe’s was a pain in the ass, with something called “lacing the deck”. When I was on swing shift, we were so busy, no one much paid attention to me. When I moved to Graveyard, the supervisor told me I shuffled incorrectly (for whatever reason).
Just having to be in close proximity to these people, many of whom are intoxicated, who smoke etc. The casino allows rudeness by customers to staff that would be unheard of elsewhere. There was this infamous player who would play blackjack and would be extremely rude and menacing to the dealers, even supposedly telling one pregnant girl that he hopes her baby died. Casino never acted because the guy was spending tens of thousands of dollars a session. There was another idiot whose family owns a string of convenient stores who would come into the casino intoxicated in the middle of the night and would just scream, not at people perse, but the sound of his own voice. “GET ME A DRINK!!” or “YEE HAW!” or other nonsense at 200 decibels. Finally the manager told him to chill out or leave.
A lot of players thinks it is some kind of “magic” that the dealer wins all the time.
There is no magic to it. If I wanted to get rid of the players, I would move very fast and not give people time to react. You did not have to be friendly to the customers, you could just take their money and deal. However, doing so wont make you any money.
Casinos are cheap motherfuckers, raking in the cash while paying it’s floor staff not that much money. I made $5.00 an hour plus tips, which came out to about $13-17 bucks an hour. Most casinos pool their tips, then divide them up per worker per hour. Although this is how the casino sets it up, they are actually in competition with the dealers for the money. Of course, my tips come from the customer’s who are fighting the odds to try to win money. If you tip, I will help you with your hand and work with you. If you are a tightass, I will take your money and beat on you like Mike Tyson on an old lady.
Another thing about this system was how many hours people worked. Dealers did not like to stand around empty or “dead tables” because these hours would diminish our tip rate. My first casino, Harrah’s was awful about this. MF’ers kept dead tables open all night, they didn’t give a shit. When I moved over to Horseshoe, they were much better at gauging peak periods and closing games which made our rate much higher.
When playing any casino, it is always good to ask the dealer in the middle of the night if they are going to close their game or not. Maybe that dealer is finished with his shift and wants to get out of there an hour early. Many times the casino would not have enough staff on graveyard for us, which forced us to work overtime, which really sucked. I’ve done 10, 11 hour days from say 8 PM to 6 AM because of lack of relief staff. Again, since they merely paid us minimum wage, they really didn’t care if we liked it or not. Again, **Harrah’s **was awful about this. (If you gamble, don’t go to Harrah’s, they suck ass and treat their employees like crap.)
Casino chips are called "checks’ for some reason. A tip are called “tokes”, a big spender is called “A whale” while a poor gambler who doesn’t tip is called “fleas.” As in, “I have two fleas on my game.” etc.
Three games that dealers HATE TO DEAL! We call these “carnival games”, Carnival games are the extra games that is not 21, craps, roulette or baccarat.
*Let it Ride (also known as Let it Die). Damn we hated this game. On the layout are three betting holes. A player has to put an equal amount of money on the three betting circles, for example $5 $5 $5. The player gets three cards, the dealer gets two cards. If the player has a winning hand (pair of 10’s or better) he tucks the cards down. If he has less than a pair of tens, he can pull back one bet (which means the dealer has to reach over and pull it back). Then the dealer will pull one card, the loser, I mean player will pull back their second bet, then I expose my second community card. Pain in the ass to deal. Many of the retarded who would play this shit would always say “Give me a no-brainer.”, hence my great dislike of the tern, “no brainer”.
Caribbean Stud. This was another retarded game. Many times the odds were so bad that most people stayed away from it. The player makes a bet, say $5. The dealer will deal the player five cards, the player will look at the cards and decides either to fold or make another wager, which must be twice the original bet (or $10)
The dealer has to open with a pair of Kings. if the dealer can open, and if the player has a higher hand, they will win both bets, with the back bet getting even money, 2-1, 3-1 and up depending on the hand. There is a side bet called a Progressive. it costs $1 to play it. To be in the progressive makes one eligible to win more money, with winning a Royal Flush worth at least $200,000.
The dealers hate this game because it is boring and requires one to constantly make change for people to play the progressive. We used slot tokens on top of that, which were heavier and dirtier than normal clay chips.
The Big Wheel or Big 6. This game sucked because almost no one played it, and there wasn’t much to do excpet stand around for eight hours praying for the boss to close it. Many dealers think they are being punished for some misdeed. Actually a dealer welcomes players to sit on the thing to keep them company. However, the odds are so horrid, one shouldn’t go near it.
What are you trying to say here? Dealers are mechanical - they simply deal the cards according to a precise procedure with no personal infleunce at all. They are not exerting supernatural forces over the deck. Now “help you with your hand” as far as recommending an action to people makes sense (although are you saying you refuse to help bad tippers or even give them bad advice?), but what are you saying as far as “work with you” vs “take your money”? Do you think you have some sort of control over which players win or lose?
I always thought this was peculiar. Of course the idiot players will blame the dealers for the way the cards come down - abuse them, even. Or they’ll say “oh they’re bringing in their best dealer, the cooler” or other such nonsense. And I usually feel bad for the dealers - they’re just dealing the cards, they didn’t just stomp your puppy to death like you’re treating them.
But then I see dealers seemingly buy into this mentality, as if they did indeed have some sort of magical control over who wins or loses. You seem to be displaying that here, unless I’m misreading you.
