Subject: Trip Report: Par-a-Dice Riverboat Casino Monday January 15th 1996
From: neal@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Jerry Neal)
Date: 1996/01/16
Message-Id: <4dh4vd$28g@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Keywords: Trip Report Blackjack
Newsgroups: rec.gambling.blackjack
Summary: Trip Report Monday January 15, 1996.


Took advantage of the MLK holiday to go play a little Blackjack over in
Peoria at the Par-a-Dice. I figured it might be a little crowded, but it
was worse than I expected. For the first time since I started going there,
every table was in play by mid-afternoon. If you got up, it might be as
much as a half an hour before you could sit down again, so I decided to just
dig in and play in one spot as much as possible. Even the $25.00 tables
were packed. One of the dealers thought it odd, since they weren't near
that busy last year, and most places don't give you MLK day for a holiday
here, but after a month of snow and ice, the mild winter respite had everybody
eager to get out. I hadn't played here in about 7 weeks, I was definately
in the mood to play a bit against real dealers instead of a computer.
The boat advertises $3.00 Blackjack on the 9:00 am cruise. This amounted to
only one very tightly packed table today.

At one point, I commented to the dealer that it was always crowded at the
Blackjack tables, why didn't they open more, and she said, "We have a shortage
of dealers". Well by afternoon at least they found more, all the tables were
finally opened. On my previous trip, the pit was offering our dealer the
afternoon off even though the place was crowded, they like to keep the tables
packed and discourage head-up play.

I started at 8:30 am, as soon as the boat opened and played until 6:00 pm
that evening, by then the crowds were starting to thin a bit, making me wish
I had came that evening, which had been my alternate plan. At least, in
the evening, you gotta go home when the boat closes. I get into playing, and
usually stay longer than I should when I go in the morning.

Early in the day at the $10.00 dollar table, I was getting penetration to
one deck, pretty good, but by afternoon they were back to cutting off at
1.5 decks. Penetration used to be consistantly at one deck, but has stayed
nearer the 1.5 deck level lately.

Most of the afternoon, I had John and Dave, both from Peoria, for dealers
at one of the $5.00 tables. After taking a bath at one of the ten dollar
table in the morning, I hoped to get most of it back by careful play and a
little luck in the afternoon. I played for the next 6 hours and ended up
about $40.00 ahead of where I was when I started with these two dealers, the
game stayed even all afternoon, cheap and pleasant entertainment overall.

John is fairly entertaining and pleasant, has a bit of a know-it-all atitude
about Blackjack, "...well, I've been dealing here for over two years and I
don't care what the book says, you NEVER split 4's". I explained that you
should split them if the game allowed DAS, but he was not impressed. "Well,
what if you don't have anything to double on, then what did you do." I let
it pass. Dave was a little quieter, he just dealt the cards and let the
players play their hands.

The talk turned to winning streaks, and the crazy things people do. One
woman was so wrought up in winning, she wouldn't leave the table for anything,
even when nature called. Rather than end up with soggy seats all over the
Blackjack area, security removed her from the boat.

I never did recover from my morning pounding, but just before I left, I played
about $5.00 in my favorite $.25 Haywire machine. Hit it for $100.00, which
was just about how far down I was that morning in Blackjack. So the whole
day was close to a break-even proposition. This is the one riverboat I almost
never do well, too bad it is the closest one to my home. Nice boat, though,
I've seen some pretty good sessions by other players, the rules aren't that
bad overall, it's one of the few places here that stands on all 17's. The
no resplits rule is frustrating, seems like here is where I wind up with
three-of-a-kinds, I hardly ever get the opportunity to resplit in the Quad
Cities.

Next Stop: Tunica Mississippi in two weeks.


______________________________________________________________________________
.------.
|J.------. "You count 16 Tens, and what do ya' get?
| |A | ..Another day older, and deeper in debt."
| | /\ |
| | \/ | - Apologies to Tennessee Ernie Ford
'-| A| Jerry Neal
'------' the River Country Gambler....
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