Two days to go and no, we don't leave Sunday morning. Our flight leaves out of Austin early Saturday morning, which according to the way I count the days down is T-2. In fact, our flight leaves in just over 48 hours from now. Tonight (Thursday) is packing time and tomorrow, I'll be taking the afternoon off. Taking wifey out to a light lunch on Friday, followed up by 90 minute massages for the two of us. Later, we'll go out to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants - Outback Steakhouse. Then back home to relax before trying to get a few hours sleep before heading to the airport Saturday morning. I still need to speak to our host (hopefully this evening) to set up a limo to pick us up at the airport and we need dinner reservations for two of our four nights. T-2
Good luck cruiser! And don't forget to ask about the renovations at the Tropicana. Those guys in the construction forum will love you forever if you can get them any info.
Tell your host to make sure there's plenty of fresh decks and lots of black chips ready for you at the tables... Out of curiousity, what rules and how many decks do you look for before you sit down?
Doc, At the Tropicana, I play only at the $25 min tables. The rules here are more favorable to the player than at a lesser minimum $ table. On these tables, the house edge is .33, 6 decks using a shoe, and max bet of $2000 (this is never a problem ). Rules: S17 (dealer stands of soft seventeen), DS (double down allowed after splitting, except after splitting aces), and LS (late surrender). These are certainly rules I can live and play by. For the most part, the dealers are friendly as are the pit supervisors. When I was at the Trop in late September, they added a new rule that there was no mid shoe entry. At first, I liked the rule which prevented players from sitting down at a shoe in progress and after playing a couple hands, they leave. Personally, that bugs me. In the past, if I'm playing one on one against the dealer and someone wants to join the table, they usually ask if I rather they wait for the next shoe. If I'm doing really well with this shoe, I'll ask them to wait for the next shoe. Personally, I always prefer to wait for a fresh shoe. If I'm getting my butt kicked, I tell them it's fine with me if they want to start playing right away. By the end of that 4 day trip, the 'no mid shoe entry' rule was at the discretion of the pit supervisor. The problem it caused was that if someone is playing for hours and they head to the rest room during a shuffle but didn't make it back in time, they had to sit out that next shoe. Then they modified the rule such that a 'regular' could sit down at mid shoe since the 'regulars' didn't sit for a couple hands and leave - rather, they tend to play for several shoes and more likely several hours. It will be interesting to see if they have this rule or some modified version of it when I go back Saturday. T-2
Thanks, cruiser, you described the game I'm going to try to find in February. In theory, Bellagio, MGM and Mirage have those rules on a 6 deck shoe, but in practice, probably only on the higher min. tables.
