I had an interesting experience cashing out at the Bellagio cage this morning.

I had turned about 10k into 35k over the course of a couple late night / early morning blackjack sessions at the tail end of all night poker sessions.

I go to the cage to cash out my chips I had accumulated this week during my trip, and the table games manager (I think that's what her name tag said) comes to me and tells me, "We are going to go ahead and cash you out, but we are flat betting you".

I just said "Ok", because it is their business and they can do whatever the hell they want -- however, if someone were to review my play they would see their is no doubt I wasn't counting. I was barely paying attention to the cards, tipping extravagantly, etc. I just like to vary my bet wildly since I have a lot of gamble and it's the only chance one has to win in my opinion. It seems they just got super lazy and thought "poker player does pretty good at blackjack, we better not let him play anymore".

Even more insulting though was the line "We are going to go ahead and cash you out... but..." Of course you are going to cash me out, I won the chips fair and square! Is that a line that is supposed to make me feel like they are doing me a favor or something???

You can be certain I will be telling everyone I know not to play at the Bellagio because if you win they won't let you play anymore.

You know that, but they don't.

When you wildly vary your bets then win a whole bunch, the assumption is that you've found a novel way to cheat.

Someone's probably combing through the whole shoe with a scanning electron microscope to try to figure out how you marked the cards.

Both times I played were a few days ago, I would think if they suspected cheating they would have already done that?

Also, if they suspected cheating, why would they allow me to play with a flat bet?

I emailed the Bellagio today asking to be put in touch with someone for an explanation and/or to do an actual review of my play where I am pretty sure it would be obvious I was not counting or cheating, we'll see how that goes. Knowing that place, they will probably just ban me rather than have to provide any sort of customer service.

Most of my big bets were made at the beginning of shoes, and it was a shoe deck not a hand pitch, so no way they could suspect I was marking cards or something. I think someone was just lazy.

I will be giving all my gambling action to CET from now on and only playing poker at MGM properties I think. CET has never given me any grief when I have had the occasional big win.

Simply put casinos don't like to lose and they can stop or modulate the action of anyone suspected of "too much winning" whenever they want.
Even if the game involved is roulette, craps or baccarat, let's figure out about bj.

Additionally, even many automatic machines are instructed to stop the action or "alert" the live personnel to watch you when betting at the pace and/or the limits they don't want to.

From casinos perspective and bj aside, gambling games are unbeatable but...you never know.

And they are totally right. ;-)

Do you have an M reward card?

Yes, and I was playing with it. When someone came to talk to me I figured it was a host going to try to get me to come back on a comped stay!

Ok, thanks.
Which kind of card do you get?
For what I know nobody has ever being bothered to play any game getting a Gold or a Platinum card.

Not even that big a win. People on that side of the table didn't get their jobs by being smart.

Agreed.

Considering you play a high variance style you'd think they would invite you back not ban you LOL

This isn't terribly surprising. My take on MGM's "game protection" policy is if you win huge while moving bets around they ask Joe Random in security if you're counting. Now Joe can say

1) Naw, he's cool bro. If Joe's wrong and you beat the casino big time then Joe gets fired.

2) Yeah, he's <counting, hole carding, psychic>. Toss him out bro. Joe gets a pat on the back and an atta boy 100% of the time.


Joe is always going to pick 2)

bpb is 100% here. RWM21 and other long time experts in the field repeatedly make the same claim. Don't take too much of the cashier's rhetoric into account because s/he doesn't know what s/he's talking about. It's like the average paperwork person at an auto mechanic addressing your complicated engine problem... just relaying information.

Bellagio is aggressive / easily threatened and often kicks out players they should want to keep in action because, as bpb pointed out, the middle management pit or surveillance guy has nothing to lose. No one is going to approach these people post-facto and say OMG! You kicked out $300/hour in theoretical. It's always a pat on the back in recognition of doing a job even if the job is being done poorly. The Hard Rock motherf'ing backed off Ben Affleck!

Don't be threatened to go back and play at the B. Who knows if there's a note on your MLife card and what it might say if there is. You might not like CET as much unless you get a host who likes you. IDK if you can even find good (S17, DAS, RSA, Surrender) six deck games even at $100 min at CET properties.

KK, what ended up happening with this? Did they ever respond to your email?

Nope, radio silence.

As a former suit I can tell you what probably happened. Your play was monitored. You were moving your money essentially with the count and may have thrown in a couple camouflage or weird/bad plays. Surveillance was either watching your game at the time or went back and replayed it and since you were moving your money so much they just decided to go ahead and flat bet you. 25K isn't much especially for the Bellagio- that's weird. Sucks you got backed off. Just either flat bet or go play somewhere else. No one wants to play sh*tty 6/5 BJ anyway.

Were you playing any side bets? Average bet? Highest amount bet during the shoe?


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Endo, your comment suggests they implied a threat to steal from him despite no evidence of cheating, which reflects very poorly on them.

you guys have got to learn how casinos think and treat their employees when someone wins big.
so best to smile and just say okay and leave for awhile. they forget if you dont make it something to remember. and the person who backed you off may not even have entered it so after he is gone or on another shift all is forgotten.

Do casinos seriously back off people they think are psychic?

People who moved up in security from being a goon aren't necessarily the brightest folks around.

but if they were psychic, they'd know the Casinos were going to back them off ahead of time...