Got into Hinsdale New Hamspshire yesterday and headed over to Hinsdale Greyhound Park.  I have to admit that Hinsdale has always held a special place in my heart because I have many happy memories of going there when my son was young and my sister would go along and we’d sit outside and watch the dog races.  Hinsdale is a nice track, a friendly place where families can spend an afternoon watching dogs run with the backdrop of a wooded New Hampshire hillside.

I always got the feeling that Hinsdale didn’t take itself too seriously and just wanted to provide you with a good time.  They have struggled to compete with the big fancy tracks that are more conveniently located for the population of Connecticutt and Massachusetts, but with so many tracks that they simulcast they have hung in there.  But rest assured, crowding is not a problem and you’ll always find a good seat.

Admittedly, the quality of their dog racing isn’t top grade but it is still fun to watch and the dogs still put on a good show and you can bet on them, so what’s not to like?  A lot of puppies get a good start at Hinsdale and some older dogs that are finishing out their racing careers get a chance to compete on a level they can handle and still have fun, because contrary to what some people would have you believe,  greyhounds do have fun racing.  It is what they do and there is no one whippng them, they run as fast as they want to because they want to run.  I love sitting outside at Hinsdale and watching the live races.  They also have good eats there that are reasonably priced and the club house offers a nice air conditioned break with big windows and big screens so you don’t miss any of the action.

Now they have blackjack and a poker room.  As you know old Willie doesn’t play poker so I won’t comment on it other than to say its there and people were playing at a few tables when i went there.  It wasn’t crowded on a thursday afternoon.  But there wasn’t a single blackjack table open.  I asked about the rules and I think I found one reason why no one was playing.  First the good news, blackjack pays 2-1.  But you can only double down on a 10 or 11 and the house wins all pushes except a blackjack!  Not good.  I hope they will change that, but until they do I won’t be sitting at a blackjack table there.  I realize the house is going to have the advantage but that is just too much of an edge for me to go up against.  You can split any pair but there is no surrender and no insurance.

In their defense this is new for Hinsdale Greyhound Park so maybe they figured they would give themselves a big edge to be cautious, but they need to loosen up a little, in my opinion.  If a player just wants to sit down and try to get lucky by all means hit the blackjack tables, but with those rules, you’re in for some tough sledding.  I hope they will change those rules soon.  Vegas strip rules would be a good start.  I’d also like to see a blackjack tournament.  That would be a good way to get people involved more in blackjack.  Many people are familiar with poker tournaments now and a few blackjack tournaments would introduce the game to some new players as well as giving a real chance to win to some regular blackjack players.

So how did I do playing the dogs yesterday?  I got there late after driving for hours including a stop at the Manchester airport.  I played two races at Palm Beach, the 12th an A race and the last race, a C race.  I hit the quinella in the A race for 35$ and the winner in the last race for  $8.40.  I’m heading back today for the live racing even though it is raining.  Maybe I’ll be able to figure out a track bias.  I know I’ll have fun and they are simulcasting Palm Beach and Lincoln so I’ll play the top grade races at those tracks and some of the Hinsdale live races and have a good meal.

One of the special things about today will be that my 8 yr old neice will be seeing greyhouds race for the first time.  I know she will like it and like I said, its a family friendly place so we’ll have a good time.

I was a card counter and worked in Atlantic City and Foxwoods.  I can’t say I was real successful at it because I’m just not that patient.  I could make money, but man sitting there for hours waiting for the right moment and then only eeking out a small profit margin over the casino, just didn’t work for me.  I started looking for other ways to make money at blackjack and worked on it for many hours.  I never had a blackjack simulator, I’m not even sure this could be tested with one, but if it could that would be interesting.  I’d like to know if anyone else works this way.  It is based on mini-streaks.

There are two low cards for every face card in the deck, for instance, 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 are the low cards and 10,J,Q,K  are the face cards.  Because of their power Aces must be considered  separately (in my opinion).  There are 12 cards for every ace in the deck; all the low cards and all the face cards.  It is kind of hard to keep track of how many aces have gone by as opposed to how many cards have been played overall, if you are using this method.  When I was seriously counting cards I knew how many aces went by, but it is a lot of work.  So  when I started “casual counting” I only guessed at the ace count, but kept track of the lows and highs by simply scanning the table and pairing low cards and then canceling them with a high card. I went from hand to hand and paired low cards then looked for a high card to cancel the pair out.  If the person sitting beside me had 7-3-10 it canceled out.  If the next person had 2-3-4-J then it was “light” one.  But if the next person had Q-K then that canceled the light one out and became heavy one.  I did this right around the table and got quite fast at it.

I waited for an advantage to present itself after two hands.  That is, if there was an abundance of low cards on the table compared to the number of high cards for two consecutive hands I figured the time was right to increase my bet and refered to the deck as “heavy” meaning there was a higher ratio of high cards to low cards than usual.  I’d usually increase my bet by 50% to 100% over what I had been betting.  So if I had been playing for table minimums of $25 per hand, I’d increase it to $40-$50 when the deck was heavy.  Sometimes I would lose the hand but the deck would remain heavy because a higher ratio of low cards had come out on that hand.  Then I would increase my bet again, this time to $75.  I had some profitable sessions doing this and was ahead at it, but I realize it was unscientific and merely anecdotal.  When the deck became “light” having a higher ratio of low cards to high cards than normal, I’d decrease my bets and stick to the minimum bet allowed sometimes even sitting out a hand.

One of the reasons I did it was because it got so nasty in Atlantic City when they realized you were counting cards.  They’d start putting the cut card really low in the shoe and even tried some other nasty things to get rid of me.  I got tired of the fight and decided to try this method so I wouldn’t be so easy to spot as a counter.

I plan on using this method when we hit the casinos and wonder if any one out there has a comment about it.