micheleandtom.com

Most people visit the beautiful lake district of Argentina for, well, the lakes and the mountains and all of that jazz.

Tom and I wonder why tourists focus on that nature stuff when they can go to the local casino and play craps? Below, please find our report for those of you wishing to travel to Bariloche to shoot some dice.

Table Security Sucks. The stickman moves the dice out to the shooter and leaves them there the entire time that the dealers are paying bets, making it easy to switch dice if one was so inclined. They pay items out of order so that you can past post (put money down after the roll) very easily since the dealer is looking in the wrong direction. There is no boxman or floorman to supervise the action (they do have two cameras on the table though).

Single Odds Only. Don’t stack your money on the pass line or in the come — they only allow single odds. Needless to say, we caused a huge table-wide discussion amongst the dealers when we took odds on a come bet. They couldn’t figure out how to set up the bet.

You Need to Speak Spanish. I hadn’t really thought about it before we went, but craps, if you play it right, is a very verbal game that involves giving the dealer mucho information about what you want done with your bets and your money during a roll. The language barrier made it harder for Tom — too bad we hadn’t thought to have a little craps Spanish class prior to our outing! (Now there’s some niche Spanish.)

Lower Payoff on the 6 and 8. Normally, $12 wins you $14 if you make a place bet on the six or eight. In Bariloche, you needed to make a $10 bet to win $11. Not sure why they did this, but I suspect it was to make it easier for the dealers and players because it keeps everything in units of five. But, the odds are worse than they should be, making it a bad bet.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 16th, 2009 at 6:26 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.