"power of the pen" ?

please elaborate. No idea.

There was a time when floor-people were given a stamp (sometimes a pen with a stamp) and/or comp slips that allowed them to somewhat arbitrarily issue comps for food/beverage/shows when they felt it was appropriate. As the practice evolved, it was frequently viewed as a perk by both management and employees, and used to sign for personal use as well as for family and friends. When the bean counters started closely monitoring the cost of comps, a lot of people cut back by not issuing comps to customers (go figure). Some job descriptions and promotions were valued by the associated "power of the pen". This practice declined as the use of players cards expanded.

Nice read on the fallacies, sheetwise, and the terminology in that post would go over virtually every slot players head.

This is a nice academic paper on how slot machines work and are designed to suck people in:

http://www.nh.gov/gsc/calendar/docum...igan_dixon.pdf

Thanks for the link -- I haven't seen that one before.

Do you bet sports online? In Vegas? Through agents?

In your experience, when management sees someone or a group of people betting in a way that elicits an "okay what the **** is going on here what are these guys up to" sort of reaction, what is the first thing that you think would happen? Assume they're playing a game that is considered a complete unbeatable sucker game.

How many backoffs happen because management is like "I don't know what the hell is going on but I'm putting a stop to it"?

If that actually occurs, what do you think is the ratio of APs:squares that are on the ass end of the backoffs?

Overall, how many gamblers get backed off relative to APs? Let's assume it's a non-psycho property that doesn't just randomly back people off who happen to vary bets from time to time.

What is the saddest gambling story you know of?

How many people have you worked with (both outside and inside) that, while skilled, are at heart nothing more than stone cold degenerates?

Have you seen a player go over the table and attack a dealer and do serious damage or vice versa?

How many times have you seen someone reach in the bank and take off?

Best scam of a dealer/employee stealing from the house

Through agents - vig is always negotiable.

Usually they will either notify the sky (and just about all floor presence will disappear), or walk right up and closely observe the game. As a player, I would interpret no visible observation as trouble if the stakes were high -- how to interpret the pit hovering depends how much money is in play. I will always walk the pits before I play so that I have an idea what action is on the floor -- that gives me some idea of the relative attention I deserve as a player.

If they don't know what's going on they're likely to change the game -- dealer, cards, dice, ball, stop-card, etc. -- but not stop it. As far as counters, there's usually someone in the club who can accurately ID the average counter by play within 20-30 minutes. Most people think they can ID a counter from a gambler by spread, but very few can -- and they will usually get an opinion from someone "smarter" before they make a move just on spread. It will definitely draw attention and take their observation to the next level -- but it's not enough to stop the game in any decent club. Which is why an AP has to be very skilled in how they present their wagers. The more indexes you play, the more likely you are to fly under the radar -- so it's generally the better players that will get a pass. Just don't "pitch a tent"

In 21 they're probably getting 5:1 or better APs/AP wannabes. I haven't seen squares backed off in years. They're not as ignorant of the game as they used to be -- and they're not as smart as they think they are.

I don't see "gamblers" getting backed off, although I've seen games where there are so many change-ups that they leave. A lot of small clubs have their limits set much higher than what they're comfortable playing, and may account for a lot of the stories. Personally, I don't want to be the biggest action in the club -- that restricts the hours and locations I play, and possibly my perceptions.

There are always sad stories, but there's little you can do about it. On the inside, you would serve local players who regularly lost their paychecks and then had breakdowns. Sometimes we would call friends to collect them. Sometimes you could convince them to leave when they were on a rare upswing, but they would just go give it to the neighbors. On the outside there were the APs who pushed their limits or played games they didn't really understand -- so it was seen on both sides. Gambling is just like cocaine or alcohol to some people, and there's not a lot you can do -- if anything. Some people can't control it. Stu was clean when I knew him, or at least controlling his habits -- and look how that turned out. Gambling was the upside of his life. I didn't know him on the downside, but it's one of the saddest stories I've heard. After a while you have to just block it out -- but sometimes there are kids involved, and it's hard.

People who can't maintain don't last on the inside -- period. Sometimes they're hanging on by a thread, but they're maintaining. On the outside, maybe one in ten of the people who have proven they are capable actually go on to be advantage players -- and those are the people who have made the first cut, which is closer to 1:100.

I haven't seen either, but that was just coincidence -- they occasionally happened. I did see a guy reach into the cage and grab a few thousand -- he made it almost 20 feet toward the door.

Like any business, you can get hit anywhere there's cash or inventory -- the coffee shop, the bar, or the gift shop. In the club, the slots were always the most vulnerable and favorite targets -- and every crew seemed to be intimately familiar with the camera angles. Technology has all but closed those vulnerabilities, but it just opened up new opportunities for people who are tech savvy. The pit is the one place where transactions have historically been "unrecorded" -- and losses can not be identified in any meaningful way. That's changing too, but in virtually every pit -- to this day -- the only way to reconstruct a game is video -- and monitoring a game, in man hours invested is a one-to-one proposition at best. It may be worth reconstructing a game that took a severe loss, but it's really hard to identify a dealer "leaking" a couple hundred a day -- especially if they're running breaks. These are the scams that are the hardest to identify, and I suppose what you mean by "best". There are as many ways to make a table leak as there are to skin a cat, and unfortunately all of the best attributes in an employee can easily be interpreted as warning signs from a security viewpoint. Controlling this is an area where management becomes an art, but not a subject I can get into here.

Are you regularly betting off numbers in sports or are you only using your models to find value? IE with only the following info - if pinnacle has rockies vs. phillies at +163/-174 do you bet rockies at your local shop if they are hanging +174?

Do you focus on full game bets or derivatives?

"In many years I'll make less than 100 significant wagers, and only 400-500 wagers total -- so it's really a desk job." This intrigues me and has led to the questions above.