Shuffle of Doom

I was in the high limit pit today on a $200 blackjack game. It started with a young, russian man who was betting $225 and not tipping. I could tell because he would put his $12.50 on top of his bet after a blackjack. I changed my shuffle to what other dealers swear will destroy a person and I did a pretty good job of taking the majority of his money. Let that be a lesson to always tip. Everyone on break congratulated me on a job well done. It is always good to free up the tables for people that do tip.

The next person and the only other person I got was a man from Tulsa, Oklahoma. He complained constantly, even when he pushed. In fact, he was up $2,000 and would still complain. He was swearing and throwing his cards. To his credit though, it was about an hour before he said, "un-fucking-believable" and then the standard "you're killing me". However, his anger was never directed at me, but at the cards, so I never changed my shuffle to the shuffle of doom. He was tipping very rarely, $5 here and there, but the potential was there for him to be a good tipper.

At one point, he had two "8's" against my "9" with $600 up. He talked about what to do for about 10 minutes. He debated about whether to split them or just hit. He took out his card and consulted it. He went over statistics in his head. He tried to remember what cards had come out before. He consulted his son-in-law who said, "just make a bloody decision" (he was from England). He asked the floor supervisor, who said to split them. He hemmed and hawed and then split them. The card that came next on his "8" was a "3" making it a possible double down hand. This caused the floor supervisor and another dealer to break out laughing imagining another 10 minutes for a decision. He doubled down and got a "10". On his next hand he got a "10" to make "18". I, of course, busted. He then began to tip me every hand at $10 a pop. All in all, it worked out. End result: He made $10,000 and the dealers made about $600.