Sunday, May 9th, 2010
Issue: 27   Editor: HowlingMadMika


The Casinos of Bootleggers: BlackJack WillSeanMakeBoss
BlackJack is a card game played in casinos in which you have to decide whether to “Hit” or “Stand”. Everytime you “Hit”, the dealer will give you another card until either the cards you have add up to more than 21, or you decide to “Stand” (or stop receiving anymore cards). Whoever has closest to 21 in the end without going over (or busting) wins. After winning, you double however much you decided to bet.

Average price of a BlackJack: The average price of a BlackJack right now is 23 points (or $460,000).

Average turnover of owning a BlackJack: While I was unable to get actual figures, players and BlackJack owners were able to inform me that the turnover of a BlackJack is relatively low. Owning a BlackJack is, more often than not, bad for your cash balance. Players were mostly sceptical of owning a BlackJack and would recommend either keeping an extremely low max bet until they are able to sell it or having a small amount of cash on hand, putting the max bet very high and hoping they make a big profit from it. The players didn’t seem to recommend buying a BlackJack at the current price, but instead believed that winning a BlackJack would be a better alternative.

BlackJack owners’ opinions on BlackJacks/if they’re worth it: After bootmailing several of the current BlackJack owners on what they thought of owning a BlackJack, I got a mixed response. xSox said “I am holding the BJ only for fun; not to make money or so. I just like holding casinos . I am not making any money out of it, it’s just for fun”, which would imply that xSox shared the same opinion as the majority of the players in that BlackJacks shouldn’t really be bought or won if you intend to make a profit out of them. hollywoodundead, however, seemed to think that the BlackJack was worth the price he paid when he said “I bought it for 10 points and I bought it today and I just won 5K”.

Opinion of gamblers on how easy BlackJacks profitability/chance of winning when gambling: Most of the players seemed to think that BlackJack was an easy casino to win small amounts of cash on. Wolverine told a story of when he was a Scum, “When I was Scum, I needed 10K and a duesey to do my first OC. It took hours but I made the 25K to buy a car and the 10K gas money doing BlackJack. It took like an hour or two but that is how I afforded to do my first OC this round”. Wolverine certainly seemed to think that BlackJacks were just an easy way of making cash because he referred to BlackJacks as a “small change bank” and even shared a strategy when low ranked players who were in his position might find useful: “If I need to make a small amount of money like 10-35K I can "earn it" by playing BlackJack for a couple of hours steady betting 150-300-625-1250-2500. Sooner or later you hit a few Blackjacks to bump up the average so you make like $300 average per time of doubling.” Perhaps new players should try this strategy to see if they can make some money! The Buzz takes no responsibility for any cash you might lose trying it, though! As the discussion continued, the players brought up the problem with the fact that most BlackJack owners keep a very low max bet because they know how easy the casino would be to win if they set it higher. Players who were wealthier complained that they are useless to them as they can only make small change out of them.

Conclusion: The impression I was given through contacting people about the casino, is that if you’re a low ranked, new player with no money then BlackJack is probably the best casino for you to try your luck on. However, as you gain more cash, you will realise that the max bets aren’t enough for you to bother gambling on the BlackJack anymore and should turn to other casinos with harder odds to win but potentially more profitability. From a BlackJack owner’s point of view, they are not recommended to buy at the moment, but if you win a BlackJack, you have three options; sell as soon as possible to someone willing to buy it, keep the max low and try to make a very small profit very slowly or bank your cash and set the max to unlimited in the hope someone gambles a lot of money and loses. Join us next week when I’ll be looking at one of the most renowned casinos on Bootleggers; Keno.