Casino-ology and Casino-ology 2
By Bill Zender
Book 1: 311pp., 2008, Huntington Press
Book 2: 311pp, 2011, Huntington Press
What if some rich uncle you had never met, but one who owned a major casino, called you up out-of-the blue and said he desperately needed you to take over as the Vice President of Table Game Operations at his Las Vegas location?
It would seem like a no-brainer to accept. But you’d probably realize the moment you agreed to take the position and hung up the phone that you knew nothing about table game management.
What would you do? Would you be inclined to Netflix binge watch: “Casino,” “Casino Royale,” “The Cooler,” “The Card Counter,” “21,” and “Rain Man”?
Big mistake. Each of these films are entertaining and worth watching. Unfortunately, not one of them offers any real-world advice about effective game supervision. It would be like watching the “Ocean’s 11” flicks to prepare for a career in Security/Surveillance. Worse, you may come away from the last three titles convinced that defeating card counters was your top priority.
It is no secret that I love books, especially books about casinos. But there are some issues in the publishing world about titles on casino management. When it comes to table games, there are dozens and dozens of excellent books covering all the table games, and another hundred or two specializing in the individual games of Blackjack, Roulette and Craps. There are even a handful that focus on understanding the carnival games in today’s pit.
But like the films above, many of these books are devoted to players “beating” table games, not the casino managing them. Again, from reading these you’ll again gain the perception that weeding out card counters and dice sliders was job number one.
Sadly, there are just a few books that actually talk about table game management. And one of them may make you re-think your uncle’s offer entirely. My favorite author on historical gaming is UNLV’s David G. Schwartz. A few years back, he put together a compendium of oral histories from a baker’s dozen of Pit professionals. In the last chapter of his book, “Tales from the Pit,” he asks this group of pros about their advice for “those starting out”. They were far from encouraging:
- “If you wanted to go into table games, you’d be making the wrong decision”
- “I would tell them to find a different vocation”
- “Well, I tell them they should go into Marketing”
- “Don’t stay in that position. Get your degree. It’s a fine job, but it’s not a forever job”
I take issue with some of that advice. Of course, every casino pro should try to get a degree if they can. But, I am positive that working in the Pit can certainly be an excellent “forever” job. I have several close friends who started in table games and retired after long, successful, and very rewarding careers. Their key to success was doing the job well.
You can match them by applying Occam’s Razor, or what is also known as the Principle of Parsimony. If you prefer Latin, it is stated as “Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.”
But maybe instead of using the big words I lifted from Wikipaedia and Google, just think of Occam’s Razor as: “The simplest explanation is usually the best one.”
Those are the exact lessons you’ll find by reading the two “Casino-ology” books by Bill Zender. Zender uses his 30+ years of casino experience (as a dealer, regulator, manager, owner and consultant), combined with an MBA and a fondness for math, to make some of the Pit’s most complicated issues seem simple.
For example, he has a wholly different approach to game protection. And it comes from other parts of his background: 1. He spends a lot of time chatting with and befriending advantage players and card counters (he, correctly, sees them as allies and game experts, rather than vampires and scammers). 2. He uses analytics to examine problems.
In the first few pages of his first 2008 book, he says, “No one element influences the profits, and profit potential, of any gaming device or game more than time and motion—in other words, the number of decisions the game of blackjack achieves over a given period of time.”
That’s not to say that he overlooks game protection – in fact, most of the following chapters are devoted to the details of dealing with card counters, past posters, marked cards and the like. It is just that he is convinced that improvements in the number of decisions per hour will have a more beneficial impact than any game protection scheme. That may sound like hearsay to many casino pros, but Zender walks the reader through the undeniable math behind his proclamation. I can’t think of a better application of Occam’s Razor.
But make no mistake, Zender does apply the same common-sense solutions to each of the many scams on the scene today, like False Shuffling Scams in Mini Baccarat. One of his simple tips on this subject is to urge Surveillance to see if any earlier “group of 30-plus cards are in the same order” as the suspected winning hands. With that and other measures he details, you can quickly spot today’s false shuffle scams and teams.
“Casino-ology 2” stresses the importance of staying informed. “The casino business is continuously evolving in technology and psychology and it’s imperative that casino managers stay up to the minute in reacting to all the developments.”
With this in mind, Zender tackles more arcane topics like “The Effect of Buy-In Churn on the Live-Game Hold Percentage,” and “Maximizing Your Profit Potential in Live Poker”. That latter topic again stresses the principle cited in the first few pages of Book 1: “increasing the rounds dealt per hour per table.”
I was amused that he tackled some unusual topics like why there is a better hold percentage in West Wendover, NV casinos (where I worked for several years) to a chapter on “Demystifying the iPhone”. I also admired him for trying to tackle the impossible no-win task he calls the “Finer Points of Dealer Scheduling”.
I’d love to see Zender pen “Casino-ology 3” to tackle this decade’s emergence of ETGs and examine the latest high-tech scams. I know he’s up to date, since he’s an active participant in the annual “World Game Protection Conference,” where good and bad actors share the latest news and views.
Until #3 comes out (hopefully soon), read these two books, and it’s nearly a guarantee that your table game profitability will improve.
If you’re in a hurry and really want to impress your uncle, secretly hire Zender as your outside consultant, and everyone will think you’re a genius.
Both books are available on Amazon, but I highly recommend you buy them directly from the publisher, Huntington Press. They are dedicated to seeking out gaming authors and publishing great books to make the industry better.
