Tripling down at Vegas World

This thread should take some down a memory lane. Bear with me...

Back in the day, Vegas World offered "vacation packages". Among other things, these included "table action chips" which were the core value of the package. These chips were good for one even money play, and were then removed, win or lose. Basically that meant the chips were worth about half their face value.

The challenge was to determine the most profitable way to play out these chips. As Blackjack Forum informed us, the blackjack at Vegas World was "Weird, Not Good!" A main problem was that table action chip bettors were only paid even money on blackjacks, which would give the house about a 3% edge... not good, indeed. But Vegas World was the original home of Double Exposure, and according to Stanford Wong the house edge there was much better. I used to sit at the table with a photocopy of Wong's basic strategy chart... no one seemed to mind. And on Double Exposure, blackjacks paid even money anyway, so table action chips were not being penalized. But it got better...

Back then I met an Asian card counter, who pointed out that table action chips had a big advantage in play over real chips. When doubling down on table action, you were allowed to put up real casino chips to complete the double. This effectively tripled the value of your bet. I figured that should wipe out the house advantage completely, maybe pushing it to the player's side by 1% or more.

This advantage was almost enough to make me consider offering to buy table action from strangers (but not quite). Turned out my favorite play was to "triple down" on a blackjack against a dealer stiff. Wong's basic strategy for Double Exposure did recommend doubling on soft 20 versus dealer 13 thru 16, though not on a blackjack. I thought the extra value of a triple down made it the right play. In any case, it often worked nicely for me, and I enjoyed the ruckus it would cause when the dealer would call out, "Doubling on blackjack!".

Comments? And I'm curious, any other old timers remember doing this kind of thing?

I read about the Vegas World Vacation packages, but never participated. By the time I made my first pilgrimage, the Strat was already open.
I appreciate stories like that. Thanks.

I’m experienced in these actions. There are a few tricks there. Basically, you want to use these chips when you are more likely to lose and when you are more likely to win a higher odds.