View Royal Casino -- Victoria, BC

Quote: Wizard

Seems to me the city might make less money off cruise ship traffic with a casino, for these reasons:
1. There is already a casino on the cruise ships.
2. I've noticed the patrons in cruise ship casinos tend to be small bettors.

Seems like one of those "No Brainer" things. So probably the casino proposed for that dock area is really aimed at local residents and the real estate interests don't want to admit that.

Quote: Wizard

Seems to me the city might make less money off cruise ship traffic with a casino, for these reasons:

1. There is already a casino on the cruise ships.

From all I've heard about casinos on cruise ships, I'd save my money for a land casino with better rules and payouts.

Quote:

2. I've noticed the patrons in cruise ship casinos tend to be small bettors.

No way around that, except maybe to make a flea-type casino like Casino Royale on the Strip, or a Vegas-type low-end locals joint. But maybe all that is covered by existing casinos? In any case a grind joint is not quite the best investment these days.

Quote:

3. Said patrons might leave more money behind doing other activities, of which there are plenty to choose from.

Can't argue with that. people tend to do certain things in certain palces. I gamble in Vegas, for example, and if for some reason i ever tooka cruise, I'd look for other thigns to do.

Quote: Nareed

From all I've heard about casinos on cruise ships, I'd save my money for a land casino with better rules and payouts.

The video poker on cruise ships have extremely stingy pay tables. I would expect the slots are set very low as well, given the captive audience. The rake in poker is also very high, as I recall 10% on Norwegian. However, the table games follow fairly standard rules.

A Victoria casino might capture some sharp machine players, boycotting the ship casinos, but in my opinion most players don't bother to consider the rules and will just play wherever is convenient.

Quote: Wizard

The video poker on cruise ships have extremely stingy pay tables. I would expect the slots are set very low as well, given the captive audience.

So even at a rip-off joint, VP is the least worst alternative :)

Quote:

The rake in poker is also very high, as I recall 10% on Norwegian. However, the table games follow fairly standard rules.

I remember hearing 6:5 and 2x odds for BJ and craps respectively. By my low-low roller standards, 2x on craps is not good.

Quote:

A Victoria casino might capture some sharp machine players, boycotting the ship casinos, but in my opinion most players don't bother to consider the rules and will just play wherever is convenient.

There's that. I recall puzzling over why the craps table at the Fremont, with 2x odds max, saw any action at all, given that MSS nearby offers 20x, and any of the other nearby casinos offers at leas 3,4,5x.

Quote: Nareed

There's that. I recall puzzling over why the craps table at the Fremont, with 2x odds max, saw any action at all, given that MSS nearby offers 20x, and any of the other nearby casinos offers at least 3,4,5x.

Yep, and others close by the FSE, like the El C at 10x, even according to the Wizards survey 4 Queens is 5x.

Here is an exterior shot of the View Royal casino. If there is any royal view in the vicinity, I didn't see it.



In related Victoria news, please see my blog entry about spindle hunting.

Quote: Alan

Yep, and others close by the FSE, like the El C at 10x, even according to the Wizards survey 4 Queens is 5x.

Exactly.

So part of it is as the Wizard says: people will play where it's convenient.

The other part, I suspect, is that prop bets are as bad as elsewhere. I really don't pay much attention to them. Usually I play pass or don't pass, maybe come or don't come, all with as high odds as I dare to risk, and sometimes I'll either place the 6 and/or 8, or lay the 4 and/or 10.

Point is I wouldn't play craps at 2x if something better were available enarby. and probably not at all, except maybe to apss the time and with very low stakes. But plenty of people do.

Quote: Wizard

Regarding the question about craps, I asked the supervisor about it. He said a much larger casino in Vancouver had a craps table at one time and it didn't get enough customers to play it, so they took it out. Based on that experience, they never put one in at the Victoria casino. Strange that they would have Texas Shootout but not craps. Then again, I think for many years dice games were illegal in Canadian casinos, so perhaps our friends up north have not had a chance to get to know the game yet.

The casino in Vancouver that used to have craps and no longer does is the 'Edgewater' downtown. This is the casino that was looking at building a major casino and hotel since the lease is coming up where they are, unfortunately it was turned down by the city.

There are 4 casinos in greater Vancouver that have one craps table: the 'River Rock, 'Grand Villa, 'Starlight and 'Boulevard'. They are all in the suburbs and 10 to 15 miles from downtown. They are all larger than the downtown casino with the River Rock being the largest with over 100 tables and about 1000 slots. The craps tables typically don't open until noon or later and shut down around 1:00 depending on day of the week and how busy they are. All tables are $5 minimum so they are easy on the budget. The other table games are 24/7 with very few $5 tables. Odds are 3x4x5x.

To return to the question about the cost of using the wrong basic strategy card posted at the tables here are my results:

Surrender errors: 0.088%
Split errors: 0.016%
Double errors: 0.004%
Total errors: 0.108%

So 81% of the cost of errors is not surrendering when you're supposed to. For those who may never visit the View Royal this should still go to show the value of surrendering.

I lived in BC from October 2005 to July 2006. Craps had been out there a few months or so at least upon my arrival. I worked at Boulevard and they were rather happy to have someone with dice experience although not enough to have me sit box or deal. *shrug*

The casino that was supposed to be built ended up getting 86ed from what I'm told and with a moratorium imposed on Greater Vancouver so far as building new ones. It likely would have done well from the cruise ship employees since a great deal of them gamble. Go into a casino in the Caribbean if there's a ship in port and a large chunk of the staff can be found there. Just ask Halifax, Nova Scotia; Paradise Island, Bahamas; Philippsburg, St. Maarten; etc.

Craps has done very well in Niagara Falls, Orillia (Ontario) and in some other jurisdictions but it seems, from someone who has sat box and dealt in many jurisdictions, that the learning curve is so steep that most can't be bothered when they can just follow "the book" (poorly...) with regards to $5 BJ. If you can get someone to play with a crew that wants to teach, you can hook some of the younger folk but the average age of dice players now is well over 35, IMHO.

View Royal is a quaint little joint but, if you want BC gaming excitement, go to River Rock or Boulevard.