Grinding!

So I went and played some blackjack at a different local casino on the recommendation of a friend last night and ended up staying well into the early morning.  I showed up at Harrah's Rincon casino a little after 9pm.  A little after 6am this morning, I finally cashed out a 4k winner and came home to crash.  Fortunately, I am on vacation all this week, and my sister-in-law and her two kids are visiting.

The casino is quite a drive from my house, almost an hour.  The rules for the double deck blackjack there are the same as Barona, hit soft 17, double any two, double after split, late surrender, re-split aces.  However, there are some other significant differences, which I am not sure if I will go back there again or not.  The penetration is very good.  They hand cut the stub, as opposed to Barona which uses a notch in its discard rack to get a pretty consistent cut off of about 35 to 40 cards.  Some of the dealers at Rincon were cutting down to 20 cards or so.  So that's great, but here are the things I dislike about it.  The high-limit room is rather small, doesn't have a convenient restroom near it, the night I was there the table max was 3000, I couldn't find any 9/6 full pay jacks or better video poker, they change cards every two hours, and the floor person informed me he couldn't allow the dealer to drop the deck any time I felt like it.  The biggest annoyances to me are of course the constant deck changes every 2 hours, and the small table max.  Last night I was spreading from 100 to 1600, which is fairly conservative for me.  At Barona I was spreading from 500 to 4000, with the occasional table max bet of 10,000.  At Rincon, I don't think I can play that big, which limits its attractiveness to me.

In reality I actually only won $2900 on the night total.  I won 4k playing blackjack, but had to pay the wife tax of 500.  Then I lost 500 on video poker, before I realized that I was getting short paid and was actually playing 8/5 jacks or better instead of 9/6 jacks or better.  8/5 JoB returns 97.29%, while 9/6 JoB returns 99.54%.  That's a big difference in return!  Then while waiting for the card change to finish, I put 100 on banker in baccarat.  First hand I pulled a natural 9, but tied with the player.  Next hand, I pulled a natural 8, and lost to a player natural 9!

Lastly, I noticed that one of the floor persons working the early am shift, was some guy I went to high school with.  Not sure if he recognized me or my name, but I remembered him.