WoV meetup - July 31 - Wheeling, WV

A WoV meetup for gambling enthusiasts and others is scheduled for Saturday 31 July at 1:00 P.M. at the Wheeling Island casino in Wheeling, West Virginia. (About halfway between Columbus, OH and Pittsburgh). Meet at the bar across from the table games pit. This is an informal meetup to discuss gambling strategy and play some of the good games at Wheeling Island. (Double deck blackjack and $2 craps, if it's available). Anyone is welcome to attend. If you care to, please post an RSVP in this thread for coordination purposes.

Probables/Possibles so far:

teddys
OneAngryDwarf

I would love to join, but unfortunately that time does not work in my schedule.

Have fun and good luck.

Thanks for making it official. :-) BTW, I guess my report from a few months ago regarding not having $2 craps anymore was inaccurate, so I apologize for that. It's still not nearly as much fun without the 10x odds to go with it, though.

Tiltpoul -- no problem. Feel free to come by later. I'll be there for a couple hours at least.

thanks for getting my hopes up opening this thread :(

i assumed it was going to be at a location in las vegas.

anyways, i hope all you guys have a good time.

Quote: teddys

A WoV meetup for gambling enthusiasts and others is scheduled for Saturday 31 July at 1:00 P.M. at the Wheeling Island casino in Wheeling, West Virginia. (About halfway between Columbus, OH and Pittsburgh). Meet at the bar across from the table games pit. This is an informal meetup to discuss gambling strategy and play some of the good games at Wheeling Island. (Double deck blackjack and $2 craps, if it's available). Anyone is welcome to attend. If you care to, please post an RSVP in this thread for coordination purposes.

Probables/Possibles so far:

teddys
OneAngryDwarf
AZDuffman?

This and next weekend do not work for me, but I would like to do this sometime. Can we set a date in Sept?

I will have left town by then and OneAngryDwarf will have too. Feel free to set something up on your own. Seems to be a lot of Midwest-ish people on the board. Looks like it's just going to be small meetup this time. I'll let yinz know how it goes.

Edit: OneAngryDwarf -- I might be at the DD blackjack table rather than the bar. If I can, I'll try to hold you a spot for 1 PM. Otherwise, same deal.

Quote: teddys

I will have left town by then and OneAngryDwarf will have too. Feel free to set something up on your own. Seems to be a lot of Midwest-ish people on the board. Looks like it's just going to be small meetup this time. I'll let yinz know how it goes.

Edit: OneAngryDwarf -- I might be at the DD blackjack table rather than the bar. If I can, I'll try to hold you a spot for 1 PM. Otherwise, same deal.

What about late august?

In a word, this meetup happened. I arrived in Wheeling in the early morning and played the double deck game for about 2.5 hours, losing about 1.5 units. As usual, no one was counting or spreading, and the dealer was dealing about 75% of the pack. OneAngryDwarf sat down at the game, played, and left without me recognizing him until the designated meetup time. By that point, I had earned $1.40 in comps (thank you, Wheeling Island!), so I got a discount on my Italian sub sandwich with fries. OneAngryDwarf ordered a Caesar salad. We traded some stories and card counting strategy, then hit the craps table. Unfortunately, they did not have the $2 minimums; It was $5. I played two points with max odds (3x4x5x) and OneAngryDwarf played a couple points with odds and the six and eight. He did better than me; I lost about $100 and he won $85. The double deck game was full so we played a shoe game for a while, won, and then moved on the DD. In lieu of counting (OneAngryDwarf had some real horror stories about his counting days), we flat bet quarters, and I won a couple hundred, up $350 for the day, which was good enough for me to call it a day. I told OneAngryDwarf about the 500x odds at Harrah's Joliet, and he said he would like to play those some day, so perhaps that will be the next meetup spot. After the meetup I went on by myself to Meadows in Pennsylvania (dropped $650 on the coldest craps table I've ever seen in my life), and Rivers in Pittsburgh (lost $300 on BJ). I then stopped by Wheeling again on the way back and made about $400 in BJ and another $100 in craps, so was about even for the trip. It was a fun meetup and I wish OneAngryDwarf best of luck in his upcoming endeavor. I myself will also be moving on from the area in a week or two, so this might be my last trip to Wheeling in a while.

Also, I experienced Pittsburgh traffic, and I agree with everything that has been said on this board. I am now convinced that everyone who lives in Pittsburgh is a person who came to visit one time and just couldn't find their way out. (This almost happened to me -- it's like Brigadoon!)

Thanks for the writeup Ted. Sorry to hear about your bad luck in PA, and getting caught up in the traffic--my suggestion of an alternate route admittedly wasn't the clearest. (This also happened to be a very bad weekend as the Fort Pitt Tunnel was closed...traffic is frequently bad, but it's not usually THAT bad, I swear.)

In any event, we did have a lot of fun taking advantage of Wheeling's excellent DD game (S17 and Surrender!). I agree with Teddy about their stinginess when it comes to comps, though. I went to the buffet shortly after he left, and used up all $12 of my comp dollars towards it--still having to pay the remaining $7 myself. This after fairly frequent visits for the past 5 months!

Sorry I couldn't meet up with you guys last night. However, I went today. Played some craps (one guy was working the 4th point on the fire, and was hitting numbers, so I made out pretty well). Switched to the shoe game and then moved over to DD where I caught one good shoe before the table filled up with inexperienced players.

I decided to go down and play poker in the ghost town that is now the poker room downstairs. Overall, I enjoy Wheeling Island, but it will be a shame when they start changing their layouts.

Glad to hear that, Tiltpoul. I also made four unique points on my roll, but I don't think anybody was betting the Fire Bet. Good for them, I hardly noticed it. That's where I made the bulk of my money. Agreed, it will suck when (if) they change their layout. Maybe I'll have to make one last visit down there.

OneAngryDwarf, thanks for the commisserations, but it wasn't your fault for the luck or the traffic. I was actually impressed by the dealers at both Meadows and Rivers -- everybody seemed very young and chipper. The blackjack dealers were actually calling out the totals for every hand they dealt. Not long before that stops and the only ones left are the grumpy old burnouts :) The traffic was weird. I circled around downtown and Southside looking for the entrance to Liberty Tunnels for about 45 minutes, then crawled my way through the South Hills for another 45. I got to see a lot of the city, though, including the Carson Street partiers :-0.

It was fun playing with someone who actually knew basic strategy and whether to surrender or split 8,8 against an ace in a DD, S17 game. I think these meetups are a fun idea. Hope to see more of them in the future.

Quote: teddys

OneAngryDwarf, thanks for the commisserations, but it wasn't your fault for the luck or the traffic. I was actually impressed by the dealers at both Meadows and Rivers -- everybody seemed very young and chipper. The blackjack dealers were actually calling out the totals for every hand they dealt. Not long before that stops and the only ones left are the grumpy old burnouts :) The traffic was weird. I circled around downtown and Southside looking for the entrance to Liberty Tunnels for about 45 minutes, then crawled my way through the South Hills for another 45. I got to see a lot of the city, though, including the Carson Street partiers :-0.

45 Mins crawling thru Southside on a Sat? You got off easy, my friend :-) Actually, glad you enjoyed the city of my birth. As to the Rivers Dealers, the management stressed all the way, from the interview day, that personality was what they wanted. Idea being you can teach a personable person to deal but you can't give a lump a better personality. Even when I missed the second audition it was stressed it was because of technical skills and not a bad personality so please try again. I have it on good authority that management knows the dealers are new and working on technical skill but being personable will improve. Good to hear they are doing well. Rumor was that Meadows was even harder to get into, even though everyone expects Meadows to be the "grind joint" of the two.


Anyone else local who wants to meet at one of the WV casinos (I need lower limits for now) let me know. I've been considering starting a meetup.com group and it would be nice to test-drive what works in such a get-together.