Quote:
Originally Posted by Guy Incognito
Do you concentrate your play at CP itself, or other CET properties? I was wondering which of them had the best BJ rules (S17, DAS, surrender).
Yes and no.
In Vegas, now, I try to focus my play at Caesars (and that is where my host is), but I've stayed at every property except Harrahs at one point or another. However, the more concentrated my play has been, the better offers I've had.
All else being equal, you naturally want to play at the places with the best rules. S17, DAS, RSA, late surrender and obviously 3:2. Interestingly, not all CET properties, even in Vegas have this. Ballys is the least expensive min bet to get these rules (50) and Caesars is the most expensive (200). Cromwell and Flamingo also have good rules.
If you have to lose a rule in a shoe game, losing RSA is actually better than losing S17 (eg. Rio is S17, DAS, Surrender, no RSA); Harrahs also has this but it's 8-deck instead of 6 which makes a measurable difference on this rule).
But, I also play outside of Vegas. I'm in SoCal, so I play at Harrahs So Cal, Laughlin, and Tahoe, none of which have all of the good rules, but their promotions are sometimes much better. The good thing about these places is that you can be an important player to them for much less money. At Caesars Palace you can literally have a guy next to you betting 5k a hand. Just being a black chip player at the other casinos makes you one of their top players and it means that you can get added incentives (Eg. a folio for your room that is spent BEFORE reward credits).
Caesars always claims that concentrating your play doesn't help, but the anecdotal experience of myself and anyone I've ever talked to is the opposite. You WILL get offers from where you play and the more you concentrate your play there, the better offers you get.
But, depending on your goals, there might be other things that matter. For example, if I take my girlfriend (who doesn't gamble) with me, she's going to like Tahoe a lot better than Vegas. Airfare + Suite + Tahoe environment might be positive Life EV for me compared to a Augustus Room + Better rules in Vegas.
Lastly, I should mention Free Play because ALL IS NOT CREATED EQUAL. $100 in Free play in Vegas is more valuable than say $130 Promo chips in SoCal because of the way they do it. In vegas, it's play till you lose, so $100 free play is worth almost $100. But, promo chips (like soCal) are not. If you win, then they'll pay the $130, but they'll take the promo chips. So $130 in soCal promo chips is worth less than $65. It might seem like a small thing, but if your goal is to take advantage of all that Caesars is offering, you don't want to misevaluate the worth of various offers.