Our love for gaming and entertainment will not stop. With that said, life goes on and we have to deal with what gets handed to us on a daily basis with the current situation surrounding the C-19 crisis.  I am not a full-time, part-time or any type of  advocate of politics by any means, but I do have my likes and my dislikes as well, the same as everyone of us does. But I will say that I'm quite impressed with the White House press conference that was on a few hours ago here and for reference it is Saturday March 21st.

The press conference that was at the White House with Donald Trump and his staff members, said a lot and was quite informative.  Like what Trump said, many administrations preceded himself and they did nothing or very little to stock inventory or address anything that we need to properly address and combat against the C-19 in the current crisis. Of course the majority of everybody is blaming it on him, when it's not his fault.

This whole crisis is simply unprecedented and thus we learn, we gain experience and we move forward. No matter how costly in health, life and the economy. Many crises pandemic events have happened in the past and unfortunately, the future holds other crisis events of unknown types, whether in the United States or other countries.

Sure in the United States we closed the majority of everything down in rapid speed, both voluntarily and involuntarily, but the fact is it was done and hopefully that will curve part of our problem here in the United States. What was done with the C-19 crisis prior to it reaching the United States and other countries such as China and parts of Europe, is a serious issue as well as what is here in the United States.  We have to live with this and we have to address it. DO YOUR PART!

What I see in the media with most reporters are blaming and finger-pointing and causing farther anxiety and problems.  I wasn't entirely happy with Trump's responses until today and what was detailed and spoke about in previous press conferences. The press conference today was reality and I wholeheartedly do not believe that any other president could have foreseen or avoided what we are currently experiencing and if they did we would not be experiencing everything we currently are.  We would be stocked up on everything we need and we would have known what course to take and we would have had all the resources already in place and we could have deployed them within a matter of hours.  But they were not there from the former presidents and Administrations, that is a sad fact.  So that alleviates blaming Trump for not being ready for this. I'm not going to debate the subject and that's all I wanted to say about it.

Bottom line is we did not have an advance warning that is the hardcore reason and what is happening is happening. There was no way to properly prepare for this unfortunate event and hopefully we will learn from what we have to endure.

So relax a bit,  do not be trying to do things that are just plain against Common Sense, help those that you can and be safe.   Think and be strong is the best you can do. Once the crisis is over things will get back to normal in due course.

Regardless, we are here and we will remain committed to running our forum and giving you an outlet for gaming communications and related matter. I do have some exciting and new avenues to add to our Forum here at BetSelection, in conjunction with one of our new commercial sponsors. We are currently planning for our gaming endeavors, exploits and interests at brick-and-mortar casinos which are reality related, with interaction to be brought into our Forum.

In the meantime be safe, take care of yourself and those around you.

Sincerely, Alrelax. Board Owner and Administrator.

There are numerous casino closing that will be taking place throughout the USA.  Some planned and some already in effect.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/hotels/2020/03/14/coronavirus-las-vegas-wynn-resorts-closing-poker-room-spas/5050232002/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/2020/03/13/coronavirus-layoffs-coming-mgm-resorts-employees-tourism-slows/5048991002/

https://www.cleveland.com/coronavirus/2020/03/ohios-casinos-racinos-must-shut-down-or-keep-customers-workers-below-a-total-of-100.html

https://www.al.com/news/2020/03/wind-creek-casinos-in-alabama-closing-for-24-hours-after-visitor-tests-positive-for-coronavirus.html

https://www.al.com/news/2020/03/wind-creek-casinos-in-alabama-closing-for-24-hours-after-visitor-tests-positive-for-coronavirus.html

https://www.pennlive.com/coronavirus/2020/03/pa-casino-closes-due-to-concern-of-coronavirus.html

The real baccarat so many, the highest majority of all real B&M Players I am extremely safe to say, have this attached to themselves:

"Baccarat sucks in many that see easy money and riches.  In live casinos there are a ton of excuses players blame for their loses, other players, rigged machine shuffles, fast dealers, etc.  But in all cases it is the player with delusions of fantasy."

What can a smart player do to really play the right way?

100% the game is patience, willpower, some type of progression/regression on wagers, money management methods you understand, use and religiously live by, and the experience that comes with losing in the past if one can change their own ways.  The more you win the more you lust in the game, the harder and tougher you make it for yourself.

A Credit Line is a Marker Account.  Period.

I have been questioned about and have knowledge of someone that actively writes on the internet and claims to be always winning, fully comped and plays on casino credit the game of baccarat, etc., etc., etc., and so on.  There is no definitive proof but the stories are detailed, strong and deep.  I know otherwise and I have over 40 years of experience, been writing here and often challenged and talked about.  I tried to eliminate much of the drama, fallacies of internet soap opera only testing theories that are portrayed as real, profitable and engaged by the member posting same, but are no more real than watching a TV show that is titled, 'Reality Show Such and Such'.

The person I am talking about has posted, among other things, that I will not publicly challenge or quote, incorporates into articles and statements about casino credit in Las Vegas into his writings.  Because a large part of his writings revolve around casino credit, markers, comps, etc., etc., his story is inaccurate, false and not portraying the real information about Casino Credit Markers, AKA: Credit Line Accounts.   

And simply, that is why all Casino Markers resemble checks!!!  What so many internet forum readers fail to realize!  A Casino Marker is a check, you do not pay it, you can get charged criminally.  There are not two types of credit accounts in well over 20 years, give or take a few. 

First of all, he claims if one has casino credit and not just check cashing privileges, they will be comped extra and, in and above others with front money account deposits and a so-called regular casino marker accounts, which he claims there are two types of credit accounts.  A true credit marker and a marker against your checking account, which he does classify as only a check cashing privilege. 

Which is totally not correct.  Maybe years ago it was, meaning prior to 2000, so it has been at least a min of 20 years that the current and only system of casino credit is in place.  Second, all casino credit is a Marker system against your bank account, nothing else.  Simply, you are backing up your agreement with the casino to pay your Marker upon departure from the property.  You do have 30 days in all cases, but if you do not pay, they will ACH or withdraw, cash your check in so many words or by electronic means these days, to pay your Marker.  If you check does not clear or if your bank account does not pay their ACH request, you are subject to criminal charges, in each and every case of casino credit agreements these days, period, end of story.   

A person can also deposit what they call Front Money, and also draw a marker against it.  You deposit a certain amount of money, whatever you want with the casino cage and then you request whatever portion of it you desire at the table.  The floor person will print a marker out, the same as they would on a credit line against your bank account as I described within this thread, and you sign it.  Your chips are then given to you and you are free to do what you desire with them.  Gamble them, redeposit to your Front Money or cash them out.  No one at the table will know the difference if it is Front Money Account or Credit Line.  People do this for numerous reasons.  Some of them are, they do not want to buy in with larger amounts of money at the table, they rather it all be on deposit for getting additional comps or casino host reasons because they were not established at the casino and needed to shoe their sincerity and ability to buy-in with a certain amount of money, etc.  Also for the CTR factors and so on, already being performed and filed.

As far as the comp thing.  Has nothing to do with Casino Credit, AKA Markers, etc.  Casino comps are issued through an automatic rating system of Time Played, Average Wager, and Type of Game.  Of course there are what they call discretionary comps and earned comps.  Years ago, prior to say 2008 or so, it was all different.  Now all has been changed.  Including the loss of earned points which was a great thing while it lasted, where players earned points and those points stayed for your retail use on the properties and your host would comp RFB&I items while you got to retain your points.  But no longer.  Much stricter now as the larger corporate casino chains, such as MGM and CET focuses so much on selling other non-casino department revenue producers such as restaurants, spa, night clubs, hotel rooms, etc., etc., and so on.  Before it was casino was everything, but like I said, that has all changed the past 12 years or so.  There is also other considerations for the larger players, such as how many people is in their party that are non-players.  How long has the person been coming to our property and what is his true averages, not just today or last trip or last month, etc. 

For those of you that think games do not matter in comp levels and issuance of comps, you are totally wrong.  Poker draws very little comp issuance, no matter what size wagers and money you have.  While large slot players would naturally draw the most.  Bac players draw larger depending on their history at the casino, etc. 

As far as levels of players, that would vary from casino property to casino property in large differences depending on the property, their table game action and limits.  But a $250,000.00 Front Money Deposit player would get more comp issuance in a comparison right off the bat, than a $250,000.00 Credit Marker player, because they casino see the cash and has no worries about collection, etc. 

Comps are difficult to understand for people that have no experience with them or little.  They vary with large comparison from one property to another.  However, the internet writer that I am referring to, makes numerous and blatantly incorrect statements about comps and their issuance by casino properties with preference to Credit Marker players, etc. 

Be careful what you read on the forums.  Most people cannot challenge properly the so-called VIP or high wagering players here, because there are so few that ever do read these forums, let alone being a member and writing on them. 

As far as opening a Credit Line, you have to have a checking/bank account and they will call them and verify such.  You have to have the same one for a bare min of 6 months and whatever your average daily balance in cash is, your Marker Account line will not be above that amount.  If you have an average daily cash balance for 6 months plus of say $61,200.00, I guarantee you, that almost all casinos will not issue you more than a $50,000.00 line.  Many will not do that, each casino chain has their own protocols as to a certain percentage of what your 6 month average daily cash collected balance will be set at, some or 90%, others are 75% and yet other might issue you a 50% line limit against your average bank balance, etc.  Also depends how long you have been playing at the casino and your history of play, etc.   

But in each and every case of Nevada casino Credit Line Marker Accounts, every single one of them will be a Marker Account against your bank account, PERIOD.  There are not two types of credit line accounts like the person is implying.  Such as a true credit unsecured line, where if you lose your money it will be a civil matter and no criminal charges can be filed and the casino cannot ACH or even attempt to withdraw the money from your bank account.  That does not exist any longer.  And as the person is trying to through misleading truths out there, the Credit Line Marker Account is NOT a check cashing privilege, as I already explained.   

I bring this up and post this info to write the real information and how the casinos operate, not to discredit, humiliate or chastise another forum member.

Here is a link to a current credit marker account application which spells it all out, I copy and pasted the important parts of it below for your ready reference:

https://assets.ctfassets.net/sahy2rpqbnsp/2E09h4GZI4yi6eoQAeSiaA/496c25714d6c418450d1f6b582e1dd6f/CasinoCredit_Application_2018.pdf

Here is one of the Las Vegas attorney firm that specialize in defense and assisting casino customers that do get sucked in and go on tilt.  They also explain it, feel free to Google, Casino Credit or Casino Markers in Las Vegas and research it all yourself:

https://www.thegerstenlawfirm.com/nevada-criminal-defense/2019/03/21/relying-on-casino-markers-to-gamble/

"A casino marker is not like a line of credit or a credit card.  In Nevada, it's treated as a personal check.  If you do not pay your markers, the casino deposits your check into your bank account to draw out the money you owe.  If you don't have sufficient funds to pay off the marker, the casino marker becomes a bad check under Nevada law.

If the casino fails in its attempt to get the funds from your bank account, they notify you.  If you don't respond within ten (10) days, the casino notifies the Bad Check Unit of the Clark County District Attorney's Office.  (Yes, there is an entire unit dedicated to collecting unpaid casino markers.  In one recent year, the Unit reportedly pursued more than 2600 cases and made $2.2 million from marker cases.)"  From an attorney's firm web-site.

Parts of a current credit application are posted below, for any type of casino credit no matter how it is classified, casino markers or otherwise.  Check Cashing Privileges is NOT CASINO credit, that is entirely something else between yourself and the casino, but in most cases without application and allowed if a third party clears you, such as Tele-Check, or one of the other numerous check cashing guarantee services that each and every casino uses.  Do not mix the two up.


"I, the undersigned, hereby give Nevada Property 1 LLC dba The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas and its affiliates (CLV) authorization to obtain and verify my financial information (including but not limited to account balance information) from any source, obtain my financial and employment history, and exchange information with others about my financial and account experience with CLV. I agree not to hold CLV responsible or liable for the information released or for its use of any such information. I agree that CLV may retain and use the information on this application and any information it receives based on my authorization whether or not I am granted marker signing privileges.

As a condition to being granted marker signing privileges, I agree to sign credit instruments, also known as markers or checks (Markers) (e.g., chips, cash, or tokens) in the amount of the funds issued to me. Further, I authorize CLV to complete any of the following information on those markers: (1) name of payee, (2) a date, (3) name, account number and/or address of any of my banks and financial institutions, (4) electronic encoding of the above, and (5) as otherwise authorized by the law. The information inserted may be for any account from which I now or may in the future have the right to withdraw funds, regardless of whether that account now exists, and whether I provided the information on the account to CL.

I REPRESENT THAT AT THE TIME I SIGN ANY MARKER, I HAVE ON DEPOSIT IN ACCOUNTS ON WHICH I AM AN AUTHORIZED SIGNATORY FOR ALL PURPOSES, WITHOUT RESTRICTION, FUNDS SUFFICIENT TO PAY SUCH MARKER UPON DEMAND OR PRESENTMENT.

I acknowledge that irrespective of any currency exchange laws in the country in which I reside, I have the ability and intent to legally pay through my bank or financial institution the funds represented by the markers signed by me and given to CLV. I also acknowledge that an independent agent collecting front money deposits or payments on my outstanding balance is my agent and not an agent for CLV or any of its affiliates.

I agree that each Marker I sign is a separate transaction. If I receive the funds before I execute a marker, I promptly will sign a Marker when presented to me in the amount of the funds I received.

I agree that this application and all credit issued pursuant thereto will be governed, construed and interpreted pursuant to the laws of the State of Nevada and venue shall lie solely in that state. I agree that CLV may litigate any dispute involving the credit line, the debt or the payee in any court, state or federal, in Nevada. I submit to the jurisdiction of any court, state or federal, in the state of Nevada, and waive any requirement of presentment and waive any objection I may have to jurisdiction in such courts.

I hereby authorize CLV, in its sole discretion, to apply any and all chips I may redeem first to the reduction of any outstanding credit balance, with the remainder, if any, to be returned to me. In addition to any amounts authorized by law, I will pay interest at the rate of eighteen percent (18%) per annum, unless prohibited by Nevada law, and in such case at the highest amount permitted by Nevada law, from the date of issuance of the Marker (if dishonored by a financial institution) and all costs of collecting, including attorney's fees and court costs.

Warning: For the purposes of Nevada law, a credit instrument is identical to a personal check and may be deposited in or presented for payment to a bank or other financial institution on which the credit instrument is drawn. Willfully drawing or passing a credit instrument with the intent to defraud, including knowing that there are insufficient funds in an account upon which it may be drawn, is a crime in the State of Nevada which may result in criminal prosecution in addition to civil proceedings to collect the outstanding debt.

I certify that I am 21 years of age or older. I am aware that this application is required to be prepared by the Nevada State Gaming Control Board regulations of the State of Nevada, and I may be subject to civil or criminal liability if any material information provided by me is willfully false.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVO0BaoprHY&list=PL6Ak6Gde5WX87xNSwnxCg7cu6bF0LDJ67&index=24

Stay tuned.  Check back later for our pictures.  The staff at work.

Behind the scenes at BetSelection and what the staff does for you.

We just really wanted you guys to know, "We do not monkey around"!

[attachimg=1]

[attachimg=3]

[attachimg=4]

[attachimg=5]

[attachimg=6]

[attachimg=7]

[attachimg=7]

[attachimg=8]

[attachimg=9]

[attachimg=10]

[attachimg=11]

[attachimg=12]

[attachimg=13]

[attachimg=14]

[attachimg=15]

[attachimg=16]

[attachimg=17]

[attachimg=18]

[attachimg=19]

[attachimg=20]

[attachimg=21]

Baccarat is no different than business or war or anything else that is about money, competition and challenge.  With that  said:

Someone at a Bac event this past weekend summed it all up after he hit it hard and took half the dealer's rack and cashed out.

"You do not attack the game with one piece, you line up your forces.  The same as a good chess player does when he engages".

I like what he said.  Good analogy. 

So many people, I think I can safely say the highest majority of all players, still believe there are magical scheduled grind it out or wait for an opportunity to make a few units, type of play that will lead them to their Bac riches. 

An absolute great read!  Not one doubt about it.  Alrelax.

"Reprinted with permission from the New Yorker Magazine"

THE GOD OF GAMBLERS
Las Vegas and Macau.

In the late summer of 2007, a fifty-year-old former barber named Siu Yun Ping began making regular visits from his village, in Hong Kong, to the city of Macau, the only Chinese territory where it is legal to gamble in a casino. Macau sits on a horn of rocky coastline, where the Pearl River washes into the South China Sea. It's about a third the size of Manhattan, covering a tropical peninsula and a pair of islands that look, on a map, like crumbs flaking off the mainland. Chairman Mao banned gambling in China long ago, but it endures in Macau because of a wrinkle of history: the city was a Portuguese colony for nearly five hundred years, and when it returned to Chinese control, in 1999, it was entitled to retain some of the flamboyantly libertine traditions that led W. H. Auden to christen it "a weed from Catholic Europe." The infusion of China's new riches triggered an unprecedented surge of construction, and by 2006 Macau's casino revenues had surpassed those of Las Vegas, until then the world's largest gambling town. Today, the quantity of money passing through Macau exceeds that of Las Vegas five times over.

Siu Yun Ping or Brother Ping, as friends called him, had known little good fortune. He grew up in the tin-roofed hut of a squatters, settlement on the mudflats of rural Hong Kong. The year he was born, a fatal flood swept through the neighborhood; subsequent years brought drought, then typhoons. "It was as though the gods wished to destroy us by driving us mad," a local official recalled in his memoirs. Siu had five siblings, and his education ended in primary school. When he wasn't cutting hair, he found employment as a tailor and a construction worker. Gambling was technically illegal in Hong Kong, but, as in many Chinese communities, it was a low-key fixture of life, and, by the age of nine, he was pushing his way into the crowd to watch local card games. At thirteen, he was playing for small stakes, and an underground gambling den hired him to hang around and keep an eye on the players hands.  "I'm good at observing people's movements," he told me recently. "Whenever I saw someone cheating, I told the boss."

As an adult, he continued to play cards, though with little success. He was an unglamorous presence, trim and wiry, with plump cheeks, bushy hair, and the fast, watchful eyes of a man accustomed to looking out for himself. He married at nineteen, had three children, divorced, and married again. Around his home village, Fuk Hing, which means Celebrating Fortune, he was also known by a nickname that he did not much care for: Lang Tou Ping, or Inveterate Gambler Ping.

While working as a barber, he befriended a skinny local teen-ager named Wong Kam-ming. Wong had grown up in the same district, one of the poorest in Hong Kong, and had also dropped out of school to find work. They occasionally met for supper at a cafe where Wong worked for his mother. Siu was trying to become a small-town developer, building and selling houses among the paddy fields near his village, and Wong opened his own restaurant. They didn't see each other often, but Siu said that they were "like brothers." They became especially close in recent years, when Wong began working on the side in Macau, as a 'junket agent,' recruiting gamblers, giving them lines of credit, and earning commissions on how much they bet. One of the people he recruited was Siu.

Once or twice a week, Siu boarded the public ferry for an hour-long trip across the rolling gray waters of the Pearl River estuary. Seventy thousand people turned up each day to try their luck, more than half of them from mainland China. He had no illusions about whether his habit was in his favor. "Out of every ten people who gamble, maybe three will win," Siu said. "And when those three keep on gambling only one will win." He played baccarat, the Chinese gamblers favorite. (It offers slightly better odds than the alternatives, and is easy to master.) The punto banco style, favored in Macau, involves no skill; the result is determined as soon as the cards are dealt.

In August of 2007, within weeks of beginning his regular trips, Siu hit a hot streak. Some days, he won thousands of dollars. Others, he took home hundreds of thousands. With Wong's recommendation, he was invited into opulent V.I.P. rooms, which are open only to the biggest bettors, and he became a regular on the high rollers, helicopter trips across the water. The more he played, the more Wong earned in commissions and tips. As winter approached, Siu's success set in motion a chain of events that eventually reached Las Vegas and showed why Macau is a place where it's easy to get in over your head, whether you're a former barber in Hong Kong or one of the richest men in America.

Gambling towns are shrines to self-invention. In the eighteen-sixties, Monaco was a tiny backwater in financial distress after losing most of its land to France; then it built a casino, and became one of the world's wealthiest places. Las Vegas was a desert outpost battered by sandstorms and flash floods, a land that the "Lord had forgotten," in the view of nineteenth-century Mormon missionaries, who abandoned it, before it grew into the city that now attracts more people each year than Mecca. Hal Rothman, the late historian of the American West, wrote that Las Vegas posed the same question to every visitor: "What do you want to be, and what will you pay to be it?"

The ferry to Macau is greeted by a crowd of touts. When I arrived not long ago, I encountered a figure in a rotund cartoon-dog suit, waving strenuously in the heat. He was a mascot from Macau's Venetian resort, a cousin of the Las Vegas resort of the same name and the dog suit was adorned with the striped shirt and straw hat of a gondolier. Beyond, the city rose in layers of steep hillsides jammed with high-rise apartment blocks, the remnants of a Portuguese fort, and lush groves of Chinese banyan trees. In the crowd, a young woman handed out a Chinese advertisement for 'USA Direct,' which offers a toll-free number for Mandarin speakers to buy American real estate at cut-rate prices.

Macau, whose population is half a million, feels like China amplified and miniaturized. It is animated by the same formula of ambition and speed and risk, but the sheer volume of money and people passing through has distilled the mixture into an extract so potent that it can seem to be either the city's greatest strength or its greatest liability. A generation ago, Macau made fireworks, toys, and plastic flowers. Today, the factories are gone, the average citizen earns more than the average European, and the gap between the rich and the poor is vast and widening. Construction is ceaseless, and at night welders torches flare from scaffolding overhead. Underfoot, the sidewalks are littered with faces on discarded handbills that promise the companionship of "girls from every continent."

American casino companies have raced to move in. In 2006, Steve Wynn, who led a revival of Las Vegas in the nineteen-nineties, opened a casino in Macau; he makes more than two-thirds of his global profits there. He is learning to speak Chinese, and he talks about moving his corporate headquarters to Macau. "We're really a Chinese company now, not an American company," he has said. Macau has become especially attractive to American corporations in the last few years. In Nevada, after tourism sank in 2008, gaming revenue plunged by nearly twenty per cent in two years, the largest decline in the state's history. It later improved, but Nevada still has the highest unemployment and foreclosure rates in the country. Gary Loveman, the chairman of Caesars Entertainment, was one of the few casino bosses who passed up a chance to build in Macau. "Big mistake," he said later. "I was wrong, I was really wrong." Even by China's standards, the speed of Macau's growth is breathtaking; for a decade, the economy has ballooned, on average, nineteen per cent a year, nearly twice as fast as mainland China's. In 2010, high rollers in Macau wagered about six hundred billion dollars, roughly the amount of cash withdrawn from all the A.T.M.s in America in a year.

The United States government has come to believe that the cash changing hands on the tables in Macau is only a small part of the picture. "The growth of gambling in Macau, fueled by money from mainland Chinese gamblers and the growth of U.S.-owned casinos, has been accompanied by widespread corruption, organized crime, and money laundering," according to the 2011 annual report by the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China. The place has emerged as the 'Macau Laundry Service,' as U.S. diplomats put it in an internal cable in 2009. Juan Zarate was a senior counter terrorism official in the Bush Administration who worked on sanctioning a private bank in Macau that allegedly facilitated, among other things, the financing of nuclear proliferation by North Korea. "Anyone who knows anything about anti-money laundering understands both the inherent and the real risks in Macau," Zarate said. "You have an admixture of commercial-financial activity, a way station for people and goods, a casino sector, all in a potentially volatile regional environment.? David Asher, who was a State Department senior adviser for East Asian and Pacific Affairs in the Bush Administration, calls Macau 'a cesspool' of financial crimes. "It's gone from being out of a James Bond movie to being out of  "The Bourne Identity,"  he said.

Intrigue, of one kind or another, has clung to Macau's history since the city's founding myths, which described an act of elegant deception: In 1564, local Chinese fishermen sought the help of a visiting Portuguese fleet for a battle against pirates; the Portuguese disguised their cannon inside Chinese boats and waylaid the bandits at sea. In gratitude, the Chinese granted permission to the Portuguese to stay on the peninsula. Macau became a vital stop between India and Japan, but, eventually, nearby Hong Kong built a better port and Macau found alternative specialties: opium, prostitution, and gambling. When the Dutch-born writer Hendrik de Leeuw visited, in the nineteen-thirties, for his book "Cities of Sin," he included it as home to 'all the riffraff of the world, the drunken ship masters; the flotsam of the sea, the derelicts, and more shameless, beautiful, savage women than any port in the world. It is a hell.'

Until recently, Macau looked as much Mediterranean as Chinese, with baroque Catholic churches and rows of cafes shaded by drooping palms, where old 'migr's sipped cafe da manh' over the Journal Tribuna. These days, the city also evokes a touch of the Persian Gulf. Government tax revenue is often more than double the budget, and, like Kuwait, Macau distributes occasional checks to its residents under a program named the Wealth Partaking Scheme. (Last year: eight hundred and seventy-five dollars per person.) Unemployment is below three per cent. "What Las Vegas did in seventy-five years, we are doing in fifteen," Paulo Azevedo, the publisher of Macau Business and other local magazines, told me. The rush has left the city short of many things" taxis, roads, housing, medical services. "For dental, I have to go to Thailand," Azevedo said. One month, Macau came close to running out of coins. The casinos have reordered the rhythms of life and work, in ways that are not universally celebrated. Au Kam San, a member of Macau's Legislative Assembly, who works as a high-school teacher, told me, "My students have said, I can go get a job in a casino right now and earn more than my teacher."?

A short drive from the ferry, Steve Wynn has a complex with two hotels, where the Louis Vuitton outlet is said to generate more sales per square foot than any other Louis Vuitton outlet worldwide. Walking past a tank of luminescent jellyfish, which require a specially designed curtain to sleep at night, the casino official who was showing me the place told me that Chinese clientele demand a heightened level of luxury, because "everyone is a president or a chairman." We stopped into the complex's newest Michelin-starred restaurant, which has an in-house poet who writes a personal verse for every V.I.P. I asked about a tiny white leather stool beside each table, and a staff member explained, "That's for your handbag."

In catering to his clients, Wynn has embraced Chinese notions of luck and fortune with the passion of a convert. When the hotel discovered that the number of private rooms in its spa was four, an unfortunate number, because it sounds, in Chinese, like 'death' designers added a line of fake doors across the hall, to suggest a total of eight, which is closer to "get rich." In Las Vegas, Wynn made his name pushing luxury over camp, Picasso, say, over Wayne Newton, but his hotel in Macau still has a place for what casino designers call the 'wow feature.' Once an hour, tourists gather in the lobby to watch a hole open in the floor. A giant animatronic dragon climbs out, coiling into the air, red eyes blazing, smoke pouring from its nostrils.

Games of chance have been a part of Chinese history since the Xia dynasty (2000-1500 B.C.). The government often imposed rules against them, and yet officials themselves were the ones who gambled the most, Desmond Lam, a marketing professor at the University of Macau, told me. "They would get stripped of their titles, caned, jailed, exiled, but we still see the trend across the dynasties." Parsing Chinese appetites for risk is a modest academic niche, with applications beyond the world of casinos. "When I was growing up," Lam said, "my family always gambled at holidays, funerals, that's just what we did" so I wanted to know: Why do Chinese communities gamble?  Lam and I were taking a walking tour of the City of Dreams, a casino complex that uses the promotional tagline "Sign Up, Play, Change Your Life." After six years of studies and surveys, Lam views each gambling table as a 'microscopic battle,' a standoff between science and faith. On one side is the casino, which can reliably calculate its advantage to two decimal points. On the other is a collection of Chinese beliefs about fate and superstition, which, Lam says, "people know are irrational but are part of the culture." He ticked off some received wisdom: To improve the odds, wear red underwear and switch on all the lights before leaving home. To prevent a losing streak, avoid the sight of nuns and monks when travelling to the casino. Never use the main entrance. Always find a side door.

The City of Dreams smells of perfume, cigarettes, and rug shampoo. Chinese gamblers rarely drink when money is on the line, and the low, festive hum is broken now and then by the sound of someone pounding the table in delight or anguish, or exhorting the cards to obey. One night, I settled into the scrum around a baccarat game in which a slim man with heavy eyebrows and a red face shining with sweat was performing 'the squeeze' slowly peeling up the edge of his card, while the man beside him shouted "Blow! Blow!" to wish away a high number. When the slim man had peeled enough to see the digit, his face twisted in disgust and he tossed the card across the table.

"Americans tend to see themselves in control of their fate, while Chinese see fate as something external," Lam said. "To alter fate, the Chinese feel they need to do things to acquire more luck." In surveys, Chinese casino gamblers tend to view bets as investments and investments as bets. The stock market and real estate, in the Chinese view, are scarcely different from a casino. The behavioral scientists Elke Weber and Christopher Hsee have compared Chinese and American approaches to financial risk. In a series of experiments, they found that Chinese investors overwhelmingly described themselves as more cautious than Americans. But when they were tested the stereotype proved to be a fallacy, and the Chinese took consistently larger risks than Westerners of comparable wealth. (The gap applies only to investing; asked about decisions in health care and education, the groups were indistinguishable.)

Living in China, I've come to expect that Chinese friends make financial decisions that I find uncomfortably risky: launching businesses with their savings, moving across the country without the assurance of a job. One explanation, which Weber and Hsee call "the cushion hypothesis," is that traditionally large Chinese family networks afford people confidence that they can turn to others for help if a risk does not succeed. Another theory is more specific to the boom years. "The economic reforms undertaken by Deng Xiaoping were a gamble in themselves," Ricardo Siu, a business professor at the University of Macau, told me. "So people got the idea that taking a risk is not just O.K., it has utility." For those who have come from poverty to the middle class, he added, "the thinking may be, If I lose half my money, well, I've lived through that. I won't be poor again. And in several years I can earn it back. But if I win, I'm a millionaire!"

In the case of Inveterate Gambler Ping, success drew attention. About four months into Siu's streak, a gossip column in the Apple Daily, a popular Hong Kong paper, took note of a mysterious figure making the rounds in Macau, said to be amassing a fortune as large as a hundred and fifty million dollars. "Is he extremely lucky or does he have the real magic touch"? the paper asked in January, 2008. The next day, a member of Hong Kong?s legislature, Chim Pui Chung a devoted gambler himself "told the paper that he had heard people hailing the new high roller as the 'God of Gamblers,' borrowed from the title of a Hong Kong movie starring Chow Yun-fat."

A streak of that scale was also likely to attract suspicion. Macau garners its share of creative casino cheats; last summer, local police arrested members of a gang accused of embedding miniature cameras into card-shuffling machines. Too much success can be cause for distrust. A casino's advantage in baccarat "about 1.15 per cent", ordains that the chances of winning all but evaporate for a gambler after thirty thousand hands. A dedicated player can draw a thousand hands in a weekend and come out ahead, but after seven months almost nobody should go home a winner.

Not long after the article appeared dubbing Siu the God of Gamblers, his twenty-year-old son received a series of anonymous threatening phone calls. Then one night someone slipped into Celebrating Fortune village and tried to set the family house on fire. Finally, Siu's friend Wong Kam-ming, who had introduced him to several V.I.P. rooms, received an angry call. The man on the other end demanded a meeting to discuss the question of Inveterate Gambler Ping's having cheated.

Nobody embodies Macau's reputation for self-invention more thoroughly than Stanley Ho, a tall, elegant ninety-year-old tycoon who once dated starlets and dancers, excelled at the tango, and was chauffeured around Hong Kong in a Rolls-Royce with the license plate "HK-1."  After his father lost the family fortune in the stock market, Ho got his start during the Second World War with a trading company in Macau. "By the end of the war, I'd earned over a million dollars having started with just ten", he said later. He expanded into airlines, real estate, and shipping, and in 1962 he and associates took over Macau's casinos, gaining a monopoly that lasted forty years and made him one of Asia's richest men. In his choice of business partners, he was non-judgmental; he ran horse racing under the Shah of Iran, a gaming boat under Ferdinand Marcos, and an island casino under Kim Jong Il. Intelligence agents were desperate to cultivate Ho for his connections, but the late Dan Grove, a retired F.B.I. agent who served in Hong Kong, told me, "Nobody ever got past first base."

For years, foreign governments have suspected Ho of being too cozy with Chinese organized crime. Regulators have thwarted his family's efforts to run casinos in the U.S. and Australia. In 2009, New Jersey regulators decided that a joint venture between MGM Resorts International and Ho's daughter Pansy failed the state's requirement that casinos avoid business with "notorious or unsavory persons." Far more surprising is what happened afterward, when New Jersey gave MGM an ultimatum: cut ties with the Ho family or lose a stake in Atlantic City's highest-grossing casino. MGM chose Macau, and it is now selling its stake in Atlantic City.

Stanley Ho's monopoly expired in 2002, three years after China took control, and foreign competitors surged in to obtain licenses. The first new casino to open was the Sands Macao, backed by Sheldon Adelson, of Las Vegas, whom Forbes ranks as the seventh-richest person in the United States. Adelson is Stanley Ho's physical opposite, small and heavy, with pale-red hair. Where Ho avoided overt declarations of power, Adelson has described himself as the "largest investor of any kind in the history of China." The son of a cabdriver from Lithuania, Adelson grew up in the Boston suburb of Dorchester, and ran a spate of businesses with erratic success, packaging toiletries for hotels, selling a chemical spray to clear ice from windshields, before his break, in 1979, when he launched Comdex, a computer trade show. He later bought the old Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, created America's largest privately owned convention center, and enriched himself with a signature strategy of pairing casinos with exhibition centers.

More than a decade ago, he coveted Macau as a gateway to 1.3 billion Chinese nationals, and he successfully courted Chinese leaders in Beijing by emphasizing his influence in Republican politics. (He is a frequent donor to right-wing causes in the United States and Israel. He and his relatives drew attention in the Republican Presidential contest this year by giving $16.5 million to a Super PAC that supported Newt Gingrich, representing all but five per cent of the money that the group raised.) He told people that Macau would someday help him overtake Bill Gates and Warren Buffett in wealth. A crowd of thousands turned up on the Sands opening day, in May, 2004, lured in part by false newspaper reports of free gambling chips for the first bettors. Tom Smock, the casino?s general counsel at the time, watched as the building?s tall metal front doors began to give way from the pressure of the crowd. "Every time a hinge broke, the crowd roared with approval," Smock said. "They ripped every door off the hinges at that front entrance. That's how the casino opened, and they poured in."

Within a year, the Sands Macao had recouped its construction costs, of two hundred and sixty-five million dollars, and Adelson embarked on an idea that he described as coming to him in a dream: to replicate the Las Vegas Strip on a stretch of open sea between two islands in Macau. His company constructed a landfill out of three million cubic metres of sand, he named it the Cotai Strip, for Coloane and Taipa, the islands that it fused together and he opened the $2.4-billion Venetian Macao, a supersized replica of the Las Vegas Venetian, with the largest casino floor in the world.

Unlike Las Vegas, where most of the profits come from coins fed into slot machines, three-quarters of the revenue in Macau is derived from the enormous bets made in the V.I.P. rooms, where high rollers play around the clock. Casinos rely on outside companies, known as 'junkets,' to solve some of the practical problems inherent in running a casino in Macau. It is illegal to advertise gambling in mainland China, and Chinese citizens are barred from carrying more than the equivalent of about three thousand dollars on any single trip to Macau. Most troubling, from the casinos perspective, is that it's illegal to try to collect a gambling debt in the People's Republic. Working through junket operators is a legal bypass around those problems, because the operators will recruit rich customers from across China, issue them credit, and then handle the complicated business of collection. The system is an attractive arrangement for customers who need to secrete large quantities of cash out of China. If a corrupt official or executive wants to hide the proceeds, a junket is a way to hand over cash on one side of the border and recover it on the other, in chips that can then be played and cashed out in clean foreign currency. (Another option is to smuggle it by hand across Macau?s relaxed borders, a practice known in laundering circles as 'smurfing,' for the army of small-time couriers involved.)

While the junket industry has many law-abiding members, it has, for decades, been susceptible to the involvement of organized crime. Triads, which grew out of nineteenth-century Chinese political societies, had always been involved in loan-sharking and prostitution, and had made their presence felt on the edges of Macau's casinos, but in recent years triads had become more business-oriented. Triad violence in Macau and Hong Kong has declined over the past decade, because triads have increasingly set aside squabbles over drugs and petty crime in order to pursue the range of new criminal opportunities associated with a more prosperous China, including money laundering, financial fraud, and gambling. Gangsters are becoming "gray entrepreneurs," as criminologists put it, and it was more difficult to distinguish between triads that had gone into business and businesses that were acting like triads. Some mob bosses still adhere to the old ranks of gangsterdom, 'dragon heads,' at the top; 'red poles,' overseeing operations, but many follow the ancient rituals only perfunctorily: the thirty-six oaths, the cocktail of blood and rice liquor. Some younger gang members resort to cribbing from the rituals in gangster movies.

Steve Vickers is a former commander of the Royal Hong Kong police's Criminal Intelligence Bureau. "I know of no Chinese junket operator that doesn't have some association with triads," he told me. A thirty-nine-year-old junket agent said that when he entered the business, in his mid-twenties, triad membership was effectively a job requirement, but in the past decade it has broadened to include anyone who "can bring in money and customers." To find clients in a country that is minting more millionaires each year than any other, some of his peers scour the business press looking for new tycoons. "Nowadays, in Macau, if a person doesn't gamble at least a few hundred thousand dollars, then he isn't even a real customer," he said. What happens if a customer doesn't pay up? "We go to the city where he is and call him up. Then, if necessary, we wait there for a couple of days. Just to put some pressure on him."

In recent years, U.S. federal agencies, including the F.B.I., the Secret Service, and the Internal Revenue Service, have become increasingly familiar with Macau. In an elaborate smuggling investigation that ended in 2005, undercover F.B.I. agents infiltrated a ring that included a Macau citizen named Jyimin Horng, who was accused of importing into the U.S. millions of dollars, worth of counterfeit cigarettes, methamphetamines, and high-quality fake currency known as "supernotes," believed to originate in North Korea. Undercover agents wired Horng payments in Macau in exchange for fake bills at a rate of thirty cents for each phony dollar, smuggled in large bolts of fabric and boxes of toys.

When an F.B.I. agent named Jack Garcia posed as a representative of Colombian FARC guerrillas and asked for weapons, Horng sent him a catalogue, and Garcia ordered anti-tank missiles, grenade launchers, submachine guns, and AK-47s. To lure Horng and others to the United States for arrest, the agency staged a mock wedding for a male and a female agent involved in the sting. Horng and other guests received elegant invitations to a celebration aboard a yacht moored off Cape May, New Jersey.

"I was the best man," Garcia, who is now retired, told me. "We picked them up for the bachelor party and drove them straight to the F.B.I. office." Fifty-nine people were arrested. (Horng pleaded guilty and is serving three and a half to four years.) Based on that case and on other information, the Treasury Department blacklisted Banco Delta Asia, in Macau, for participating in money laundering. The bank denied the claim, but it has been barred from access to the U.S. financial system.

Eight years ago, when American-run casinos arrived in Macau, observers predicted that the scrutiny of Wall Street and state regulators would drive organized crime out of Macau's gambling industry. But the junket industry has not shed its links to triads, and junkets operate in every U.S.-owned casino in Macau, largely because they are able to collect debts in China. American casinos insist that they strictly adhere to laws in Macau and the United States to prevent money laundering and the involvement of organized crime. But even those standards have left the casinos at risk. Macau law, for instance, requires identification for any casino transaction above the equivalent of sixty-one thousand dollars, a threshold that is six times higher than that for casinos in the United States.

Grove, the former F.B.I. agent, headed security for the Sands Macao in its early years. He said that American casinos instituted background checks, international accounting standards, and other good-faith efforts to prevent the encroachment of organized crime, but triads found inventive solutions. "They'd even try and get in through the meat contracts at the steak house," he said. With Las Vegas ailing, casinos can't afford to sever contracts with the most profitable junkets and lose access to the clients they deliver. As a result, Steve Vickers told me, unless a company has the will and the strategy to get rid of the triads, "you're constantly on the back foot, constantly worried what these guys are going to do next."

A few weeks after Siu Yun Ping's house was set on fire, a group of men were summoned to a meeting in a parking lot on the outskirts of Hong Kong. The meeting had been called by See Wah-lun, a thickset, thirty-year-old mid-level member of one of China's most famous triads, the Wo Hop To.

See Wah-lun told his men about a plan to extort Siu. As one of them later described it in court, "A boss wanted a man to return some money." The boss was Cheung Chi-tai, a gang leader who was well known to Hong Kong police and U.S. authorities. In the words of a Hong Kong judge, Verina Bokhary, Cheung could 'have a say in things' in a V.I.P. room at the Sands Macao, one of the places where Siu had made his baccarat fortune.

See Wah-lun unveiled a straightforward plot: they would send Siu a message by ambushing his friend Wong, pinning his car between two others and then hustling him over to a nearby village, where a secluded, run-down building would be prepared with gloves, hoods, knives, and extendable police batons. The plan was to break Wong's legs and hands, but then See called his guys back and told them that it was being upgraded to murder, so Siu would know they were serious and hand over his winnings.

The gang balked. One of the recruits asked, "Do we have to be that serious"?

See was taken aback. "The boss tells you to do it, are you not going to do it"? he said.

Another of the chosen assassins complained that he was supposed to be a guest at a wedding that evening. A third, Lau Ming-yee, had a pregnant girlfriend and financial troubles, and yet he was being asked to do the job gratis. "If you are not going to pay someone, then how would that someone help you"? he said later.

It didn't help that Lau happened to know the intended victim from years before, when he worked as a delivery boy and dropped off food at Wong's village. "Everyone was shocked by the idea of killing anybody, never mind somebody some of us knew," Lau said.

When See asked him to take part in the murder, Lau hesitated. The boss was incensed. "What the tock you have to think about"? he said.

Lau seemed to relent, and agreed to help with the murder. In reality, he had become an informer for the police. In the predawn hours before the attack, he called his police handler, met him near the Temple Under a Big Tree, and told him about the murder plot and about Siu. In his statement to the police, Lau said, "I am the father of a child and I want to be a responsible man."

The police arrested five gangsters, and in a trial that fall Lau, who had been placed in protective custody, testified against them. They maintained their innocence, but all were convicted of conspiracy to commit grievous bodily harm and acting as members of a triad. See, the ringleader, was sentenced on additional charges of conspiring to commit murder and recruiting others to carry it out. The five men are now serving between eight and a half and fourteen years. At one point, Siu himself was arrested, on suspicion of involvement in the plot to kill his friend Wong. But he was 'released unconditionally,' the judge said, after police concluded that "he was not involved in any such plot." During the investigation, police also detained Cheung Chi-tai, the triad leader, but he did not spend long in custody. According to John Haynes, See's defense attorney, Cheung, called his lawyer and refused to answer any questions, and as a result he escaped being charged with anything.  At sentencing, Haynes lamented that the "small potatoes" were going to jail while the 'big boss . . . now sits comfortably, free from any charges, in Macau.'

Siu and Wong testified at the trial, and they were asked to estimate how much Siu had amassed during his five-month winning streak. It was a complicated question, because high rollers in Macau often make side bets that are many times larger than the chips on the table. (In a side bet, a player and a junket agent secretly agree that every hundred-dollar chip, say, is worth a thousand or ten thousand, and then they settle wins and losses in private.) In total, he estimated that he had won the equivalent of thirteen million U.S. dollars. Wong put the figure at seventy-seven million.

The notion that a former barber had won as much as seventy-seven million dollars and outlasted the mobsters charged with getting it back, attracted the attention of members of the Hong Kong press, and they pursued the God of Gamblers as a minor curiosity, though he declined interviews. A year after the trial, the Hong Kong magazine Next published an article alleging that Siu had cheated, by finding a way to manipulate the side-betting system. The article claimed that he had paid off an underling who recorded players, ups and downs, in order to boost his wins and minimize his losses. The casino hadn't detected the fraud, the magazine surmised, because side bets were off the books, and the junkets hadn't anticipated that a gambler might risk trying to buy off a staff member. Siu never responded to the article. In any case, local reporters discovered, he had disappeared.

The God of Gamblers case had all but vanished from the Hong Kong crime pages when, in March, 2010, a Reuters investigation, published in collaboration with Matt Isaacs, of the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California, Berkeley, re-examined the trial and seized on a crucial detail: If the triad boss Cheung Chi-tai had "a say in things" in a V.I.P. room at the Sands Macao, as Judge Bokhary had put it, and potentially other links to the industry, then the relationship appeared to be "one of the first documented examples" of mob involvement in a U.S.-backed casino in Macau, Reuters wrote. That link could put Sands at risk of violating Nevada laws barring casino companies from associating with figures who "discredit" the industry, not only on Nevada soil but anywhere.

The Las Vegas Sands was quick to issue a statement that Cheung was "not listed as a director or shareholder" in any of its V.I.P. rooms, but, after it conducted an internal investigation, its lawyers stated that Cheung had indeed been found to be operating as a 'guarantor' of V.I.P. rooms at one of the company's casinos. (A guarantor, who puts up money to lend to players, was not routinely subject to the background checks applied to directors and shareholders, according to a former Sands executive.)

Sands's trouble with Macau got more complicated that fall, when a former executive, Steve Jacobs, filed a wrongful-termination lawsuit that made a range of accusations against Sheldon Adelson. Jacobs said that he and Adelson had discussed the God of Gamblers case, and the allegation that triads were involved with Sands's casinos; over Jacobs's objections, he said, Adelson sought to "aggressively grow the junket business" anyway. Jacobs's suit also accused Sands of hiring a Macau legislator in a way that could put it at risk of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. In its responses, Sands denied all the accusations and said that Jacobs was the one who had failed to distance the company from Cheung, the triad boss.

In March, 2011, Sands disclosed that it was being investigated by the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission for potential violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Adelson vehemently denied any wrongdoing. "When the smoke clears, I am absolutely. not one hundred per cent but one thousand per cent, positive that there won't be any fire below it," he said. "They want to get all my e-mails. I don't have a computer. And I don't use e-mails. I'm not an e-mail type of person." (He declined to comment for this account.)

For Adelson and his peers, doing business in Macau is turning out to be opaque and intricate in ways outside their control. They expected to take the strategies that had brought them success in the United States and apply them to Macau. Instead, their corporate fortunes now hinge in part on the decisions of the Communist Party and corrupt officials and Chinese triads. But U.S. casino operators are not about to quit Macau. "The bottom line is this," Vickers, who is now the head of Steve Vickers & Associates, a risk-consultancy firm, said. "Is the conduct of a United States-listed company compatible with doing business with junket operators in Macau?  And the answer might simply be not to list in America."

Even if Macau can pass muster with Wall Street and U.S. regulators, the bigger question may be what it portends for China, whether its roguish success rides on the kinds of epic corruption that the Party recognizes as one of its most urgent threats.

China could bring Macau's boom to an end by fiat; citizens need a special permit to go to Macau, and China opens and closes the flow of visitors at will. When, in 2008, it reduced the number of visas, revenue dropped sharply during the financial crisis; Sands stock lost ninety-nine per cent of its value, wiping out more than twenty billion dollars of Adelson's family fortune. (The value later recovered.)

But cracking down on Macau poses political problems. Some officials in Beijing are keen to maintain the enclave's economic success, because it shows the breakaway island of Taiwan the potential benefits of a return to the motherland. Moreover, Macau is a place where China's new millionaires can indulge in the gains of their prosperity, which is one of the rewards guaranteed by the unwritten bargain between Chinese leaders and their people for a generation: Don't concern yourself with the state's inner workings, and the state will not overly concern itself with yours. On a return flight from Macau to Beijing, I sat beside a former military officer, who now owns real estate and a string of factories. He visits Macau once a month ('to let off steam'), and he spent much of the flight scrutinizing his latest acquisition: a twelve-thousand-dollar cell phone, encased in alligator skin and equipped with a button that connects him to a full-time concierge, to make dinner and handle travel arrangements.

Macau is poised for another dramatic expansion. A high-speed train line is under construction that will link it with cities as far north as Beijing, and the world's longest sea bridge, connecting Macau to Hong Kong, is set to open in three or four years, reducing the ferry crossing to a half-hour drive by car. Even as the federal investigations continue, few people in Macau have both the interest and the capacity to impose greater control over the system. Manuel Joaquim das Neves, Macau's top casino regulator, told me that foreign criticism will not alter the way of doing things in Macau. "Macau is not Las Vegas, Singapore, or, indeed, any other jurisdiction," he said, adding, "Macau has attracted more than twenty billion dollars in foreign investment in the casino industry alone. In short, the public interest has been well served." Jos Maria Pereira Coutinho, a liberal member of the Legislative Assembly, is less impressed with the industry. "The government is incompetent," he said. More than eight out of every ten dollars of government revenue comes from casinos, and Coutinho says that the annual payments to citizens are a 'drug,' to 'keep their mouths shut.' I asked whether lawmakers will push for more urgent changes. He laughed, and said, "In the Legislative Assembly, a nuclear bomb could pass through and everything would go slowly and calmly."

The files of the God of Gamblers case can be read as a string of accidents, good and bad: Siu's run at the baccarat table; Wong's luck to be assigned an assassin with a conscience; Adelson's misfortune that reporters noticed an obscure murder plot involving his casino. But the tale, viewed another way, depends as little on luck as a casino does. It is, rather, about the fierce collision of self-interests. If Las Vegas is a burlesque of America, the ethos of our time run amok, as Hal Rothman, the historian, put it, then Macau is a caricature of China's boom, its opportunities and rackets, its erratic sorting of winners and losers.

Four years after Siu hit his hot streak, I got word through a friend in Hong Kong that he might be back in his old neighborhood, not far from the dismantled squatters camps where he grew up. He was said to have worked out a deal for protection from another triad, the Wo Shing Wo. I took the train to see him. His neighborhood lies in a lush river delta framed by green hills on the horizon. The summer heat had broken and construction seemed to be under way everywhere, as old villages were being converted into enclaves of villas and cul-de-sacs with names like the Prestige and Sky Blue and Full Silver Garden.

I met Siu at a construction site near a scrap-metal yard, surrounded by marshy fields of water chestnuts and lilies, crosshatched by footpaths. He was building fourteen houses whose modern design, heavy on stainless steel and black granite, would have looked at home in Sacramento or Atlanta. The complex will be called the Pinnacle. Siu was wearing a droopy yellow golf shirt, jeans, and muddy sneakers. He seemed subdued, and his voice was raspy. He was barely distinguishable from his crew, tanned, bony, middle-aged men from across the Chinese countryside. When I arrived, it was quitting time, and one of them was naked, giving himself a bird bath from a bucket of soapy water. Siu and I sat on folding chairs beside a line of drying laundry and gazed out over the unfinished houses.

I asked where he had gone into hiding, and he smiled. "All over China," he said. "I drove everywhere by myself. Sometimes I stayed in five-star hotels, sometimes in tiny places. I liked Inner Mongolia the best. Eventually, I went up to the mountains of Jiangxi for eight months. When it began to snow, I nearly froze. I went down from the mountains and came home."

I asked if he had cheated at baccarat. "The reporters just listened to rumors from people who wanted their money back," he said. "Everybody says I was playing tricks at the table. It's not true. I wasn't. When I gambled, there must have been ten people with their eyes on me at any time. How am I supposed to play tricks"?

His denial left open a range of possibilities for manipulating the game, and theories abound. A lawyer for one of the defendants surmises that Siu may have been a minor player in a larger con, pitting one triad against another. But he said that, ultimately, "there is so much cheating going on. How can you know the truth"?

Siu seemed unconcerned about his safety. "I'm in my mid-fifties, and I'll live to be, what, seventy"? he said. "So I've got only another decade or so. What do I have to lose? I'm not afraid." He fell silent for a moment. "If they come for me, I can go for them, too," he added.

He'd stopped going to Macau. The decision was for his kids, he said. "I don't want them to gamble. Two of them have bachelor's degrees, one has a master's. They don't swear. They're good kids." He went on, "You have to be highly sensitive to be a good gambler. I don't recommend it to everybody. Everyone called me Inveterate Gambler Ping. But I never liked that, because I was never addicted. I gambled because I knew I could win."

Night was falling, and Siu offered me a lift back to the station in his black Lexus S.U.V., parked in the dirt beside us. "There used to be a helicopter taking me to the Venetian anytime I wanted to go," he said. "Now I'm getting my feet dirty. Real estate is even more lucrative. It's better than gambling or drugs or anything." He pointed out the new houses in progress. "It costs a few million to build one of these, and then I can sell it for ten million."

https://www.pokernews.com/news/2020/02/nora-awkwafina-lum-kelly-sun-phil-ivey-movie-36630.htm

https://www.beatthefish.com/awkwafina-to-play-phil-iveys-edge-sorting-partner-in-the-baccarat-machine/

Oh yeah, Major crimes that we all had to deal with:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Hill


Hill agreed to take a polygraph test. While senators and other authorities noted that polygraph results cannot be relied upon and are inadmissible in courts, Hill's results did support her statements.[19] Thomas did not take a polygraph test. He made a vehement and complete denial, saying that he was being subjected to a "high-tech lynching for uppity blacks" by white liberals who were seeking to block a black conservative from taking a seat on the Supreme Court.[20][21] After extensive debate, the United States Senate confirmed Thomas to the Supreme Court by a vote of 52/48, the narrowest margin since the 19th century.[17][22]


But please, lets not forget about:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton_sexual_misconduct_allegations

Bill Clinton, the 42nd President of the United States (1993/2001), has been publicly accused of sexual misconduct by four women: Juanita Broaddrick accused Clinton of raping her in 1978; Leslie Millwee[1] accused Clinton of sexually assaulting her in 1980; Paula Jones accused Clinton of exposing himself to her in 1991 as well as sexually harassing her; and Kathleen Willey accused Clinton of groping her without her consent in 1993. The Jones allegations became public in 1994, during Clinton's first term as president, while Willey's and Broaddrick's accusations became public in 1999, toward the end of Clinton's second term. Millwee did not make her accusations until 2016.

Clinton has adamantly denied all four accusations. Through his representatives, Clinton has responded to the allegations by casting doubt on the credibility of the accusers, noting that (in the case of Broaddrick and Willey) they previously testified under oath that Clinton never made unwanted advances. Several witnesses close to Willey and Jones have stated that the two women described their encounter with Clinton as consensual.[2][3][4]

Of all the allegations made against him, Clinton has only admitted extramarital relationships with Monica Lewinsky and Gennifer Flowers, both of which have generally been accepted as consensual. However, some commentators have nonetheless characterized Clinton's affair with Lewinsky, who was at the time a White House intern, as sexual misconduct because of the vast power imbalance between a president and an intern; Lewinsky was 22 at the time and described the relationship as completely consensual.[5] In 2018, Lewinsky herself began to question her long-standing view that her relationship with Clinton had been consensual, characterizing the relationship as a "gross abuse of power" wherein the power differential between the two was so great that "consent might well be rendered moot."[6]

Charges of sexual misconduct on Bill Clinton's part resurfaced during the 2016 presidential campaign of his wife, Hillary Clinton. When a lewd recording of Hillary's opponent Donald Trump discussing the ability to grope women when in power was released during the campaign, Bill Clinton's accusers, Broaddrick, Willey, and Jones, reemerged as critics of Hillary Clinton, accusing her of enabling her husband's alleged sexual assaults on them. They appeared as guests at the second 2016 presidential debate and referenced Bill Clinton in pre-debate statements.

During the 1990s, most Democrats suspended judgment on the three accusations or stated that they believed Clinton's denials. In the wake of the Harve, etc., etc.


And about the title, Slick Willie.  I only copied it, I did not invent it, that was invented many many years ago for Bill 'Slick Willie' Clinton and other Slick Willies, by peers, the Democrats.

RE:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slick_Willie

Let's go a bit deeper into the possible factors that come into play, consciously or subconsciously:

1)  Interpretations/Misinterpretations

2)  Visions/Beliefs

3)  Feelings/Mindset

4)  Bankroll & Related


#1)   Playing with the Shoe
        [It is always best to 'play the shoe'.  At times it is extremely difficult and almost impossible depending on the other factors occurring, but overall it is always best]

        Stats Trying to Change
        [Once the shoe gets underway an experienced player will be able to visually see that almost every shoe cannot match other ones and while many will set their own stats, others will be a replica of previous shoes.  Keep your mind open to what the shoe is doing-do not say it will stop at so-and-so or try to produce XYC, B's and/or P's.  Be 100% neutral, the shoe is doing all the work and producing all the decisions---you are not!]

        Equals Out/Lopsided
        [To me, this is one of the greatest and easiest traits to follow or not to follow.  The highest bulk of shoes will equal out at the end.  Within a few hands of each other.  But, my advise, is to only use that to gauge your wagers and bear in mind that the side you are about to wager on, could do anything.  Sounds unintelligent of course, but to me it is my tap on the should telling me, no guarantee.  Lopsided shoes do come, although not as often as the equaling out ones, but they certainly do.  To me, after 40 to 55% of the shoe is out, the equaling out is prevalent very so often with the, 20-28, 21-28, 22-28, 22-29, 23-29, 24-29, 25-29, 26-29, 26-30, 26-31, 27-31, 28-31, 29-31, 29-32, 30-32, 31-32, 32-32.  Then something along the lines as, 33-32, 33-33, 34-33, 34-34.  Happens so frequently, don't pay attention to those exact numbers, can be identified in the 20's as well]


        Events to Happen
        [Numerous events as we all have discussed on the board.  Some will happen and many will not.  When they do, recognize them and ride what they present.  Don't wait until it is a sure thing in everyone's minds, because only one thing will happen at that point, it will not be a sure thing any longer]

        Events That Happened
        [Events that already happened can repeat themselves, keep an open mind, although when those events are of a longer nature in number of hands, they are less likely to repeat themselves within the shoe]

        Statistical Reliance
        [Kind of related to Stats To Change above, but I am referring more to those players that rely strictly on the numbers as they are presenting themselves in Stats.  Be careful and although I am a fan of wagering within the reliance to produce itself and either 'make-up' or decelerate a certain side, to me this is a good gauge to add to my bag of thoughts]

#2)  Playing for the Cut or the Repeats
       [While it is a strategy of many, be careful as to when you employ this.  I have done well at times with this and it is probably the number thought of 'wager' in this game.  I am referring to wagering for opposite last decision or the repeating win of the B or P once again]

       Chop/Alternating  and  Repeats/Streaks
       [Lots of players lose on the 'chop-chop' wager, meaning-B-P-B-P-B-P-B, etc.  So easy and comes frequently.  Capitalize on it and then stop. Streaks, I am a firm believer of sticking on the streaks or the strong runs until they fall off.  Lost the last wager, it's all good!  I like the strong/streaks, etc., especially after there has been a period of weak sections for quite sometime and then it goes one or two more on the repeat]

       Trends and Patterns
       [Trends and Patterns happen all the time.  Either weak or strong.  There are believers in this and non-believers.  It is easy to say it is all random and no one can tell anything at anytime.  Correct to a certain point, the exact same as you never know where that cop is going to be sitting on the highway with his radar.  Might be there and might not be there.  But we all know, or should know, there is going to be trends and patterns]

       Superstitions
       [Try to avoid them and don't get caught up in them.  Many will announce their own and while some people live by them, they cannot influence the shoe that actually has no part of them]

       Other Players Actions/Wagers
       [There are pros and cons to wagering with or against other players.  I have written about them on this board.  One thing that I am personally a huge fan of is good camaraderie]

       Dealers
      [I have written about Dealers in another thread on this board, there are many different types and almost every regular player will attest to that!  Some will be attributed with helping players and others will be chastised for almost never letting players win.  Some are the proverbial 'cooler' and some are down right 'mean'.  Most know what they are doing and there is usually one or two at most properties that always make mistakes.  The list goes on.  IMO, if you don't get along with the way the dealer projects him/herself, don't play, wait for the next dealer, SERIOUSLY!]

       Bank of '3' Shoes (re: similarity)
       [I am sure this is challenged by many, but I have found in groups of 3 shoes at a casino they are usually, more than 50% of the times, similar in nature.  I did not say exact, I said similar.  For myself, I have profited from this and I use it as a guide, not gospel and not science.  That is why so many thing are misinterpreted on here!  And, BTW--I use most things as a 'guide' not as science-a rule-gospel and mechanical systems, there is a huge difference!]

      Downfall/Upside of Available Chip Stack (smaller 100% available/larger w/stop)
       [To me, I see downfalls and upsides to the various chip stack players use.  Some players will downright grind and win small amounts in order to be able to build up their stacks and then cash out chips all along like they never had them there.  Some will buy back in when they lose their smaller stacks and many will not.  But, like I said, there are obvious advantages to many in their stack sizes.  Some players, will have that boost and play better with a larger stack, not many IMO thou.  I play better with a moderate size stack and I like putting higher domination chips away and cashing them out as if the chip never existed and the cash is not available]

#3)  Clear Minded/Clouded-Obscured
        [I seriously believe this is important and utmost from the beginning.  I don't feel enough players really realize this.  Have a clear mind and you will have the ability to fully concentrate and realize what is happening, which at the baccarat table is not always that easy]

        Gut Feelings
        [If you are an experienced player and you 'have seen it all', you have a great value IMO.  I absolutely believe and value a good 'gut-feeling'.  Not those feelings based upon thinking it all though and reasoning, just that good old 'gut-feeling'.  They are there in many and they are very real]

        Open Minded/Closed Minded
        [Kind of similar to 'Clear Minded/Obscured above but just being 100% Open Minded.  In this game more than any other, that is vitally important.  It will help you for so many reasons and allow you to visually see and feel a quick moving game that changes up and has tons and tons of circumstances that either happen or don't happen in each shoe.  That is why it takes a player to really have an Open Mind to play better.  Having a Closed Mind will just have a negative effect, plain and simple]

        Preconceived Protocols Employed
        [Very dangerous in every way!  Your expected systems cannot and will not prevail in this game.  Not really much sense to discussing it, but you will lose much greater than you win.  A few hands here and there might fuel a player's thirst and quest when he gets lucky using this but he will suffer]
           
#4)  Drawdown
       [Don't get confused with 'Stop Loss'.  This should be the maximum decrease you will allow in your wagering attack.  You can still wager, as I said a Drawdown is not a Stop Loss.  However, a player has to be careful as to the amount of his buy-in he is willing to risk and aggressively go after the point where he will hopefully start winning.  For example, I might have a 10 unit Stop Loss for my initial 40 unit buy in.  I might also employ a 15 unit drawdown for my progressions or plain initial win.  Units can be different value for the Stop Loss and the Drawdown]   [Since to me, this is also a very important area, I copied the following from an article about Drawdown:  However, we should estimate and predict correctly the drawdown in our money management decisions.  The betting amount for these losing bets must always be available.  Obviously, our total capital must be much more than the maximum drawdown, so that we don't go bankrupt.  In addition, after taking the drawdown into account, there should be enough money to continue betting at the same pace according to our betting system, without any decrease in the bet size.  Moreover, enough capital must be available for the next drawdown curve.]

       Stop Loss
       [Some players have them and some do not.  I take a 'Stop Loss' at meaning--what will I stop my play at during a shoe or section.  Others will say a 'Stop Loss' means--how many hands or how much will they accept losing before they walk away.  Locally where I reside, I play considerable smaller at the local casinos than what I do in Vegas, Southern California or Atlantic City.  So, what I bring is my buy-in, not my gaming bankroll.  I am okay with losing my buy-in if I have a bad night, it is not my bankroll and does not mean I am broke, etc.  Set what you are comfortable with for each]

       Win Management/Reserve
      [It is vitally important that you manage your win money and place something into reserves, not only for your bankroll but for other purposes out side of your bankroll.  It is far too personal for me to tell you what and how, but once you figure it out, your conscious should be happier]

       Money Management
       [I have written about this and mine after I win, is a 1/3rd, 1/3rd, 1/3rd money split to manage my winning and remainder of my buy-in.  I have detailed this in other posts and after playing for many years, this is my single greatest factor that has helped me hold win money]

       Progressions
       [There is a heck of a lot of threads mentioning progressions on this board and every other board.  It is a subjective topic.  I have found that 1-3-2-6 and/or 1-3-2-4 has assisted me tremendously with some flat-betting fitted in-between.  IMO it is extremely difficult to hold win money and build up without some type of progressions.  It does not have to be a set progression, I only employ a set progression now because it helps me stick to it and it is kind of programmed inside of me.  Another one of my greatest factors that has helped me be more successful than losing]

https://www.foxnews.com/health/norovirus-outbreak-louisiana-casino-200-sick-investigation.amp

Sit back, take the time to view each one of the videos I choose to put for relevance to the bac shoe posted here from the other night.  Yes, it was fantastic, in fact?past fantastic. 

You really need a cocktail glass with some ice, fill it with Disaronno and have a nice cold bottle of Pellegrino water as well.  Watch the videos and then view the picture of the shoe. 

You have to be at the table, have the ability to recognize what is being presented and know when to stop as well.  There are no magical systems or structured wagering that will allow you to win consistently.  When it is time to smack the casino, it will represent itself to those that have the neutral ability to realize it and wager with the shoe instead of against it or wait it out for those unintelligent as F**K virtual bets. 

The first one is parallel to what a few of us did.  And yes, those of us that know each other at the table recite a few of the lyrics as we are doing it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kjgwjh4H7wg

The next one, focus on those two girls singing, just as we 3rd Banker and we all started wagering heavy on the F-7 to present itself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBUe_v6Mi70



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBUe_v6Mi70

The dealers were switching and a dealer, I will call her, M came in.  Just as she was about to tap out the dealer that started it all, this song came on.  Don't forget this casino the dealers keep their own tips, at times their tips could equal $500-$1,000.00 for a few shoes of Bac dealt.  M is a well-known dealer with lots of style and never swoops away the lost bets, knows when not to say anything as well as gives those great winks, smiles, head nods and everything else along those lines:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJskIJGEsd8


Yes, there were 3 Koreans at the table, I think this is more than appropriate and two of them had over $500.00 on that second F-7 that hit on the 21st hand! And yes, table was rocking!:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFqlwAWuMTg

This little video story fits the run of 6 Bankers with the 5 consecutive naturals for the Banker.  By the way, every hand for the Players side was either a 7 or a Natural 8, LOL.  And when M was pulling those naturals and sliding us the cards, all the Natural Player 8s that were flopped first, she was citing a face card and a 9 or something else equaling 9 as she was sliding us the cards, every time, and she was saying, "Burning Down the House"!:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg73GKm7GgI

This song fits:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj231TLCbD4

Add I dedicate this one to M, thank you for your style and your absolute great head nods and winks when you flopped so many winning cards for us!:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkMmlHNvlR8

The last song is a great one and fits as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xjf8F3v18DY


And here is a shot of the shoe, when M got tapped out and we all decided it was time to cash out.  Yes, I wish they could all be like this but they will never be!

[attachimg=1]

Check out the 3 fantastic Bead Plate lines, like solid, fool-proof and we all recognized those as they were happening.  Yes we all followed those 3 lines.

A Very Special Dedication

To one of the greatest roulette players, roulette teacher, tutor, physicist, theorist, and ESP Professor extraordinaire galore!  Oh yeah, the absolute greatest rock climber as well. 

Without any further ado, here is my dedication to him:

The only thing left out here in this clip is the greatest posting on the message board with his tablet in his hand while swinging and jumping without any ropes whatsoever from rock ledge to rock ledge.  He really does climb those 50,000 to 100,000 foot cliffs he so often writes about and posts on the boards at the SAME TIME!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0KzvD-0rx0

Next in my dedication is a glimpse inside of his RV that he travels from casino to casino in, taking them down for millions at their roulette tables while never attracting the attention of the pit bosses and floor supervisors because he always uses red chips, yes it is true.  And here is an exclusive glimpse of his RV that Jorge had online before he sold this unit to our friend:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuLFxRNotGI

My dedication now moves on to one of his casino sessions where he got a tad bit upset.  Although he normally plays roulette and once in a while baccarat, I caught him here at the Poker table one night.  I will not pass judgement, but needless to say, he brought attention to himself with the pit bosses and the floor supervisors.  This was on the west coast while he was RV?ing around, after this he took off for Atlantic City is what I was told.  By the way, our friend got upset because they accused him of using a system to win numerous previous hands just before this clip was shot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-lC93Vq_9Q


Now we move on the Atlantic City, New Jersey.  A few days after his session above, he was discovered in the Tropicana at Atlantic City and he was taking them down for millions.  So, the pit bosses and floor supervisors all got together and made the decision just to get rid of him.  I was there to catch it on my phone cam and here it is:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knWxtPnc8ss

I also caught him with the ESP thing, here is a glimpse into the great ones insight involving ESP Predictions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4awQktsC3W8

Anyone remember ABSCAM here?

How many Democrats were present in ABSCAM?  How many Republicans?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abscam

US Senator Harrison A. Williams (D-NJ)
US Representative Frank Thompson (D-NJ)
US Representative John Jenrette (D-SC)
US Representative Richard Kelly (R-FL)
US Representative Raymond Lederer (D-PA)
US Representative Michael "Ozzie" Myers (D-PA)
US Representative John M. Murphy (D-NY)
Five other government officials were convicted, including:

Mayor of Camden, New Jersey, Angelo Errichetti (D)
Philadelphia, PA City Council President George X. Schwartz (D)
Philadelphia, PA City Councilman Harry Jannotti (D)
Philadelphia, PA City Councilman Louis Johanson (D)
An inspector for the US Immigration and Naturalization Service was also convicted

And yes, Atlantic City Casinos were the topic:

....."Each congressman who was approached would be given a large sum of money in exchange for "private immigration bills" to allow foreigners associated with Abdul Enterprises into the country and for building permits and licenses for casinos in Atlantic City, among other investment arrangements.[10] Among the casino projects involved were the Ritz-Carlton Atlantic City,[11] the Dunes Hotel and Casino (Atlantic City),[12] the Penthouse Boardwalk Hotel and Casino, and the sheikh's fictional casino.[13] The first political figure ensnared in the phony investment scheme was Camden mayor Angelo Errichetti. In exchange for monetary kickbacks, Errichetti told the sheikhs' representatives "I'll give you Atlantic City." Errichetti helped to recruit several government officials and United States congressmen who were willing to grant political favors in exchange for monetary bribes (originally $100,000 but then reduced to $50,000)......"

Why is it?  Maybe someone or some people can shed some light on this?

I have wondered for some time now, why someone that knows their profession, career, etc., so well and is seemingly intelligent and well-seasoned, do things that are less than acceptable and definitely on the wrong side of protocol? 

Here is the perfect example.  Take a well-seasoned detective like, 'Big Nick' and look at what he does with the donut he tosses into the hot-zone. 

:30 to 1:23.  Please look, it is just wrong, so wrong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnIvJCngTpo

All people want is what they want. Regardless of logic and Common Sense.

There is a huge spread between belief and reality and I cannot close that Gap.

I really cannot!  Alrelax.

Wins and wins.  Losses and losses.  Goes through periods of winning large amounts on a fairly consistent basis.  Then does the exact same thing with losing. 

However, when he loses he most noticeably continues his buy-ins with aggressive and consistent actions.  Cannot wait, cannot walk away.  At times, but sporadic at best, he would recoup and when he did, most noticeably he would still continue his play seeking winning money.  Even if he did, his whole cycle would just repeat itself once again until he lost. 

A few times he would cash out and walk away, but I mean---seldom. 

This went on for a good year or better.  Just the other night, I pass him on the way to the Bac room.  I ask him if he won.  He shook his head no.  He said, "I have to stop and reset".  "I have to stop for several weeks, I cannot think in there any longer", he also told me. 

He was a multi thousand dollar buy-in type of player.  Usually bringing $5,000.00 to $10,000.00 and buying in with $1,000.00 to $3,000.00 at a time. 

Yes, at times he would buy in with a single transaction of $2,000.00 and quickly get up to $5,000.00 or even $8,000-$10,000.00.  But he would generally, few exceptions, stay and continue his play.  Losing all the win money as well as his buy in and continued buy ins.  About the only time he would generally leave with win money or a sizeable win, was when he recouped his loss he just experienced and was late in the evening after several hours of play.  And generally he only recouped his losses from that session. 

The look on his face and his actions the other night were extremely noticeable, if you were acquainted with this individual.  When I got to the Bac room it was late into the evening.  He already told me, that he lost.  He bought back in with $100.00 and then $60.00. I have never once witnessed him with less than a $500.00 buy in, not once.  But these two small buy ins, both of which I have never seen him do in the past, out of all the times I have played at the same table while he was there.  And this is at a $25.00 min table. 

I got him off to the side and mentioned about my own Money Management Method with wins and levels and plateaus, etc.  He firmly agreed and told me without hesitation, that he knows all that but he just cannot apply it with willpower at the table.

Food for thought.   

What a joke, the process of answering questions from Senators.  What a waste of time, writing it down, handing it off, waiting for the card to be passed, reading them out loud.  What the hell? 

Seriously, I have to look at this process like a baccarat player that needs, say a one line or a two line card to win and anything else losses for him.  He gets a face card and turns it on all four sides peeking at it, that same black line is on all four sides no matter what, but he still continues to peek and peel the card numerous times.  The same exact process, a complete waste of time!

Okay, anyway I saw last night the following 2 questions being read out loud and read by the Chief Justice:

"The next question from Senator Banker from New York is:  Will the Banker repeat itself with the next hand being dealt because the Banker side won a hand following a tie event"?

Then the very next question was:

"The next question from Senator Player from California is:  Will the Player repeat itself with the next hand being dealt because the Player won a hand following the Banker side losing with 3 face cards to 2 face cards and an Ace for the Players side"?

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/5y9sui/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah-the-magical--wonderful-road-to-impeachment---pelosi-greenlights-impeachment-articles-against-trump

2:15AM.  Closing up the restaurant and on the way to the casino with three buddies we'll see what happens.   Promise to post a picture or two in the morning...

Bac shoe the other night:

 
[attachimg=1]

We divided it up into three Sections.  We followed the Sections as they were presented, basically 95% anyways. 

Section A:  Produced a classic strong Player beginning and followed shortly thereafter with a strong Banker.  First F-7 of the shoe.

Section B:  Produced 15 Chop-Chops.  Do not pay attention to the doubles.

Section C:  Produced two F-7s.  Soon as it made that 3rd banker with that one being an F-7, everyone went heavy on the Banker, real heavy!  Counting the one cut to the Players side and the fall-off to the Player the second time, there were 5 good hits on the Banker side. 

Other Notes:  Every single natural for the Players side cut, except for the one just before the 6 Bankers came out at the end of Section A, where the Players made a double.  After a few I urged my comrades to adhere to the, 'Player will most likely cut' presentments, which it was doing.  (When it is repeatedly doing something, follow it, IMO). 

Just playing the chop-chop after Section A, would have produced 16 chops for you and you would have lost only 2 to those doubles. 

Another Board Member said:

"Such aggressive progressions will win till losing all back in one bad stretch. Not wise at all".

I Said:

"You are correct and countless people will no doubt give it all back.

I do not. A few of the people there will not either. Others will no doubt, just fuel for their fire that will wipe them out and cause worse financial harm.

H-Money has finally gotten over it, I do believe. I have written about the subject of real money management method immensely on the board here. Money Management Method is everything.

I live by my one-third, one-third, one-third MMM of my wins application. That has helped my game enormously and I would have to put it at the very top of what is most important, while I'm sitting there thinking what is going to happen with the rest of the shoe or the rest of the session".

Some Background of something I wrote in regards to my position and M.M.M. to get ahead in the game of Baccarat:

"What is Pounce-On-It??

Game On!  There, but not there.  Seconds--Minutes--Hours.  A few hands or numerous hands.  One or two shoes.  Never a long, unlimited time, IMO and my experience.

When it comes--it is the absolute heaven and organismic moments of the game.  If you play with your head down into your hand that is propped up on the table and you expect to lose, or you are playing with a mechanical strategy built up from some kind of criteria of playing those cuts, where as the person is wagering for the opposite side, please skip reading this and just block me on here because we will never see eye-to-eye and you have nothing to learn from me and I have nothing to learn from yourself.

Otherwise, experience it--treasure the pounce on it moments and take advantage of them, because that is the cream and the cherry on top of the cake, within this game.  I emphasis the cream and the cherry big time!

But, and a large but.  Do not live for them or bet only them every time.  Attempting to do so, will break you.  Just like those people that wager every hand with the Fortune 7s, the Panda 8s and the other ones that pay 200:1, etc. You will win and you will lose.  Again, and I have repeatedly said it.  If you keep wagering for something in baccarat you will lose, sometimes the same night and always after a series of playing.  You will never come out ahead unless you play all sides, alternate your wagering, use positive progressive very aggressively and use negative progressions extremely sparingly and more.   

Game on, is a difficult situation to catch all the time, actually IMO, impossible.  Because the game of baccarat is open to interpretation by each of us, we are influenced by many different things, such as:

   Our experience(s)
   Other players
   Dealers
   Our own perceptions
   Our dreams and goals
   Our greed
   Not stopping during a good thing (greed/think we can get more)
   Not stopping during a bad thing (have to get it back, thinking you can)
   Following the fallacy of wrong info and data that will not apply to the
    shoe you are playing, not that it is wrong, just will not apply.

Those, along with others will disallow yourself to 'pounce-on-it' when others are or you very well could have been!

And so many more things for each of us.

Take Friday night for instance.  The Thursday night session I postponed until Friday night because  I had to do something else and I would have been too tired to drive back and open the business in the morning.  My buddy and I went.  Speculation?  Yes.  Hype and talk on the way to the casino?  Sure.  But do we always do what we plan or say we are going to do?  Of course not, the same as an NFL game I can only imagine.

And, as I wrote about and boasted a bit on the board here with the $5k plus win on Friday night playing a total of 4 hands.  Will there always be a '143' F-7 outcome with the same leading up to events?  Hell no!  And I don't expect it to.   But, that one did come around through friendship, playing together and being in the right place at the right time.  Nothing else.  No magic.  However, there is a point here I am getting to.  And that was the 2 following hands!  We 'pounced on it', both my buddy and I with table max wagers on the banker side.  That is the positive side of camaraderie and the pouncing on it at work.  We overpowered the shoe.  Not that we changed it, just overpowered it with our wins, that we would have won $100.00 as easily as we did $2,000.00 per wager.  Our screaming, yelling, clowning around, putting cash on the table for the dealer if she makes an F-7 (dealers keep their own tips at this place) and all that.  That F-7 would have come about anyway, yes.  But the aura changes, the mood gets going, win is in the air, etc.  Even if we were betting for a streak, and a streak comes.  We can do those things on every single hand and when it is time to cut the streak, the streak will end no matter what anyone says or does.  But we can overpower the shoe with the right frame-of-mind.

But, you have to let it go.  As I say, reset and refresh, it is the only way to be successful and have your game ready each time. Experiencing the best and accepting the worst. That is why I am convinced about the smaller buy-ins and the buy-in is 100% risk money.  I do not subscribe to the worthless theory, IMO--of 'loss stop', like - 4 or -6 units and stop.  Senseless, IMO.  I do well with the buy-in as pure 'risk'.  I know overall my wins are countless times greater than my buy-ins.  And as long as I, employ 99.9% of the times use and follow my M.M. system, I will stay ahead--well ahead of the losses baccarat will incur.

We are mature--but you have to have that 'peace' within your self when you lose a buy-in.  You cannot sit there and continue to buy-in repeatedly in the thought, that you will recoup your losses right then and there.  That is the exact reason that my other buddy H-Money lost in excess of $50,000.00 of his own money in a very short period of time.  Even when he won certain sections of his sessions, he would continue and continue to play and eventually lose the win, the buy in and whatever else he had available.  That is the way this game is.  If you don't realize it, play that way and come back in a few months and then maybe learn something?

Like I said, H-Money did not believe me and follow me.  It cost him $50k to $60k of his 'blood sweat and tears' savings.  Welcome to reality, pure 100% reality.

What you do and win within any section of the shoe or the entire shoe, you very well might not be able to do with later or the next session.  Period.  If you believe you can, any casino will welcome you and take care of you in the way of comps and promotions because they know 100% what will happen.

As well, as I have said many times--"What you win doing in one shoe--you will lose in another one and possibly even the same one".  That is why every system that is pre-scheduled and conceived from a criteria that the player waits for a certain event--will ultimately lose more than he wins".

It was said on our board here: "I wonder that most of the players do not progress in knowledge or skill even slightly after wasting decades".

How very true!  Absolutely and without question.  Not only in baccarat, but in so many other aspects of business as well, no different. 

Here, my response.  Something I read a while back, made a copy and shelved.  Fits right in and provides such an insight to many things.

"There is a world of difference between a person who has a big problem and a person who makes a problem big.  For several years I would do between 20 and 30 hours of counseling a week.  I soon discovered that the people who came to see me were not necessarily the ones who had the most problems.  They were the ones who were problem conscious and found their difficulties stressful.  Naive at first, I would try to fix their problems, only to discover that they would go out and find others.

A study of three hundred highly successful people, people like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Helen Keller, Winston Churchill, Albert Schweitzer, Mahatma Gandhi, and Albert Einstein, reveals that one-fourth had handicaps, such as blindness, deafness or crippled limbs.  Three-fourths had either been born into poverty, came from broken homes, or at least came from exceedingly tense or disturbed situations. 

Why did the achievers overcome problems, while millions and millions are overwhelmed by theirs?  They refused to hold on to the common excuses for failure.  They turned their stumbling blocks into stepping-stones.  They realized they could not determine every circumstance in life or whatever it was they were attempting to get done, but they could determine their choice of attitude toward every circumstance.

The Los Angeles Times recently ran this quote:  "If you can smile whenever anything goes wrong, you are either a nitwit or a repairman."  I would add: or a leader in the making--one who realizes that the only problem you have is the one you allow to be a problem because of your wrong reaction to it.  Problems can stop you temporarily.  You are the only one who can do it permanently."

Finally, the camaraderie and the heads played together, old school style, rather than the always wagering for the 'CUT' type of player.  Oh yeah, there was 2 players that continually played for the CUT and one got wiped out and the other walked almost even, everyone else made 10-to-30 fold their buy ins. 

Here was the board almost at the end of the shoe. 

[attachimg=1]

I tried to edit the picture but the tablet I am on is bad with the colors.  I tired, sorry they are not standing out bright.  Anyway, I circled some of the things we all agreed on at the time.  (I have cruised and read some of the Bac ideas and stories on other sites and they are all of the beginner and fallacy type of wagering to the 1,000,000th power!  We do not play that way and sorry for the non-believers and the constant challengers, but the way to profitably play Bac is more old-school and with risk capital that is a small percentage of one's bankroll as I have defined in another thread, sorry---but that is the only real comfortable and long-term way to capitalize on this game).

Bead Plate.  Look at the plate, I tried to circle the ones we all agreed on and the ones where almost all of our wagers were heavy, positively progressed and we won almost every one of those. 

The first Sections.  9 Bankers Vs. 23 Players.  There were a few people that believe the Bankers will always prevail thought school, just wager Bankers and you will win long term.  Complete horse garbage!  For those that did, they would have been lucky to make up their losses in the remaining Sections.  9 Bankers/23 Players, then onward to 22 Bankers Vs. 14 Players. 

F-7s.  5 Total in this shoe.  Hands 10 and 11.  Back to back.  Notice those were immediately after a Natural 9 Players which most of the time the F-7 does appear after a strong short burst of Players as I have mentioned and wrote about numerous times.  A fact.  3rd F7 was Hand 36 after another Natural Player 9.  4th and 5th F7s.  Amazing, but right there, look.  back to back once again after another Natural Player 9.

LOW TIES 0-1-2-3-4.  I have written about this countless times.  A fact.  Low ties tends to allow the shoe presentments to clump up strong, no matter if the clumping is streaks of repeats, naturals CUT, Chop Chop, 1's and 2's, etc., etc., and so on.  Find the threads and articles I have written, learn and profit. 

There are plenty of other things within this shoe, but you know what, I am going to quote another member here:  "....... I see no progress at all on any of the forums these days towards bettering our chances to win. People either gave up on this or a few are busy in churning old school proven failure ideas. Whenever I come up with some innovation and feel like discussing to members here, I see no progress and it feels like talking to wall here. Other forums have more chit chat but many members are foul-mouth and there is no attempt to control that by admins. This forum is the most disciplined one but apart from the admin himself, asymbac, Victor and myself nobody is even writing a single post for months".

I do feel like I am talking to a wall many times as wall, in fact--greater than 'many times'.  The new school way of high tech, score boarding, CUTS, and all that, etc., etc. and as well, the chastising and humiliation drama with the foul mouth drama queens that is so blatantly obvious as a standard.  Most thought or claimed it was just here, but a short cruise around the internet gambling forums, LOL--pretty much mainstream and almost all the same exact players/members.