ChumpChange's Blog

Blazing 7's BJ at local casino

April 24th, 2023
My local casino made every BJ table a Blazing 7's table with a $5 side bet. Current JP's are >$15K, <$7K, and <$3K. I'll have to assume all these larger payouts are gonna require tax forms. Table minimums are $25. There might be one $15 BJ game & a $25 Spanish 21 game that aren't involved.

The MS Stud game and associated games have new displays, and the $130K+ JP has been lowered to just under $64K with a $1 ante bet (maybe somebody won?). There's also a $50K max. payout but the table minimum is above $10. They have max bets of $500, or up to $5,000 a hand, so get a 10 to 1 full house on that! They no longer have a 10% payout for the next lower hands, they have 3 separate progressives going, with the lowest under $600 so far. The progressive is paid separately from the hand winnings, and the progressives will draw a tax form as will a table paid Royal. If you hit a Royal, you'll get the $50K max and the progressive in addition to it.

The Blazing 7's pay table is like the Version 2 — Pay Table 2 in Wiz's article:
Wizard's breakdown of the Blazing 7's side bet from September 2016. https://wizardofodds.com/games/blackjack/side-bets/blazing-7s/

Pay Table 2

Three sevens in diamonds: Mega JP
Three suited sevens: Major JP
Three colored sevens: Minor JP
Three sevens
Two sevens
One seven

The Wizard's stats warn that I could lose about 85.2% of the side bets. So it's an utter money sucker.
Maybe when the JP's get to $500K, it might be time to start playing it. But a $15K JP is just getting started at $5 bets.
Here's a pamphlet from Caeser's from 9/2018. Seems like getting one 7 to match the dealer doesn't pay extra, you need two 7's.
I'm guessing 2 for 1 means 1:1.
https://wizardofvegas.com/forum/gambling/blackjack/25657-blazing-7s/#post887409
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May 21st, 2023
If there's like a 1 in 66.67K chance of winning the Mega Progressive, times $5, that'd be $333.3K worth of $5 chips played if the JP was due on time. Wiz says the JP should be $118.6K for break-even status. I'm gonna try to reverse math that a little bit and I came up with $118.6K (break-even) divided by $2.27K (1% in meter at $5) = 52.25%, plus the 47.77% fixed HA without a progressive equals about 100%. So I should have $333K to blow and win above $118.6K. Maybe I'll win once if I play for 1,333 hours at 50 hands an hour at a full table. I have no idea how long it takes the JP to go from a $10K minimum to $118.6K though, and I won't be playing this side bet then.
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June 27th, 2023
Just figuring if I played for 1,000 hands and bet $5 on the Blazing 7's side bet each time, I'd be down $5,000 minus the 142 wins X $10 or $1420, and the 5 wins X $125 or $625, for a total of $2,045 in wins and a net loss of $2,955. Even if I hit the same color triple 7's for $2,500 once, I'd still be down. It's got a 40.9% payback unless I get a bigger hit. I forgot to add 147 X $5 of getting my bet back, or $735. That would change the winnings to $2,780/$5,000 or a 55.6% payback.

If the single 7 only wins 2 for 1, it would drop the total wins down $710, and if the double 7 only pays 25 for 1 it drops the winnings down another $25, so total wins reduced to $1,310 (a loss of $3,690) or a 26.2% payback without a larger win. I'm looking at a pay table from an older SlotLady video at the El Cortez where this is the payout with a $5 bet. I forgot to add 147 X $5 of getting my bet back, or $735. That would change the winnings to $2,045/$5,000 or a 40.9% payback.

Now I ran across an online play for free Blazing 7's game with a $100 regular spot limit last night that paid 5 for 1, or a $20 win for a single 7. That would quadruple the $710 figure to $2,840. The double 7's paid 35 for 1 so that would increase the each of the double 7's wins by $50 from the 25 for 1 payout.
5 X $170 = $850
142 X $20 = $2,840
Total win of $3,690, or a $1,310 loss on a 73.8% payback without a larger win.
I forgot to add 147 X $5 of getting my bet back, or $735. That would change the winnings to $4,425/$5,000 or an 88.5% payback.

I was dividing my usual bets by 3 and playing 3 spots on this game so the $5 Blazing 7's bets added up a bit faster so I had to play fewer deals to get a double 7's.
Dealer hits on soft 17's and can only split once and only one card per split Ace.

I can bet more than the minimum $5 on the side bet, I can even bet more than my regular bet. I can bet $50 in the hand and $100 on the side bet and try to win $400 with a 7. It's a desperate move that will sink any session buy-in but a 500 for 1 payoff or $50K if it hits with triple colored 7's.

I'm playing more of the online game and hit two 7's for me and one for the dealer and got paid $385 or 77 for 1. Regular payout is 200 for 1 or $1,000, so this is a disappointment. Really need to hit triple 7's at the regular tables though.

I got a couple of triple 7's in the same shoe basically. That'd be a $760 win instead of a couple of $1,000 wins. But when I'm playing 3 spots at $80 a hand, I had a high payout of $800 after a split with a double down for a $385 profit. I was able to play a 25 bet buy-in for over 5 hours betting 3 spots with a $5 side bet on each spot. I have no idea how many $5 chips I lost, but since I didn't win a colored triple 7's I can be sure I'm behind a lot because of this bet. If I played 1,500 hands, that'd be $7,500 on the side bet and how much did I win back? Less than $2,500? It's really hard to count up the $20 wins because I spent $15 on the deal so I'm just getting a $10 bump on a win.

https://www.casino.org/us/blackjack/free/
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88 Fortunes

I found a free version of this game with the following pay tables, and no progressives. I tried playing for over an hour. I had watched a YouTuber get crushed on this machine and I thought I favored it to try out before I saw that. Well, a quick search for free play on this machine led me to the link https://www.casino.org/us/slots/free/ and it was easy to pick out the machine from there. I started with $1,000 and bet $1.76 per spin. I noticed after 20 minutes that I could put the machine on auto-spin and I could select a few parameters. I could set it to play 100 spins with a loss cut-off of $176, or a win goal of $35.20. I adjusted it down to 50 spins with a $44 loss cut-off and a $35.20 win. If I went through all 50 spins without a bonus round that paid off, I'd start another one. So there's gold coins going into an ingot or goblet or something above the reels. I counted one time and it hit 20X before I got to the backglass JP round, which nearly invariably paid me the Mini JP of $40. Another time, it took 40 hits to get to a bonus round and it gave me 10 free spins. The free spins won me just a little more than the Mini JP one time, but over 3X the Mini JP another time, but I was already down that much so it brought me back to even. There were a few regular spins that paid out $20, $40, $60 or more, but they were rare. Then I had to wait for 55X hits on the gold coins before the lid led to a bonus round. So while I'm waiting for more than 50 spins for 20 hits, more than 100 spins for 40 hits, and more than 150 spins for 55 hits, I'm losing play money! Winning the Minor JP becomes more of a necessity! Well, I just spinned the reels several hundred times and basically got nowhere and I'd be lucky to cash out at even. But the opportunities for a large JP are there the longer I'm on the machine, but I've really got to plan on a bunch of $200-$300 buy-ins and several thousand spins to get more of a feel for this game, or I could watch some other YouTuber who is betting max bet and feeding the machine $100 bills by the thousands and see if they ever get a handpay from the gold coins feature. You've got to hit that thing a large amount of times sometimes and it could take way more than 50 spins to get there.

Denom	Bet/Spin	Mini JP	Minor JP	Major JP	Grand JP
$0.01	$0.88	$20	$37.50	$750	$2,000
$0.02	$1.76	$40	$75	$1,500	$4,000
$0.03	$2.64	$60	$112.50	$2,250	$6,000
$0.06	$5.28	$120	$250	$4,500	$12,000
$0.10	$8.80	$200	$375	$7,500	$20,000
$0.20	$17.60	$400	$750	$15,000	$40,000
$0.30	$26.40	$600	$1,125	$22,500	$60,000
$0.60	$52.80	$1,200	$2,500	$45,000	$120,000
$1.00	$88.00	$2,000	$3,750	$75,000	$200,000

I played for a few more hours to try to figure out the pay tables more. I wasn't interested in winning a Major or a Grand JP, so I played 3 Gold coins or in $0.38 units. I started off with 50 spins at $0.76, then 50 spins at $1.14, then 50 spins at $2.28, then 50 spins at $3.80, then 50 spins at $7.60. Then I hit 5 gongs and went into 10 free spins that retriggered so I got 20 free spins. I won a virtual handpay JP of $1,392. I was going to reset to $0.38/spin after getting the gold coins, not the free spins, but I should use those interchangeably, however at this bet level, the usual 10 spin payouts were half of a Mini JP whereas the usual 10 spin payout with the full 5 gold coin spins would add up to around a Mini JP.
So I tried the same thing with $0.88/spin units. I played 50 spins at $1.76/spin, then 50 spins at $2.54, then 50 spins at $3.52 (if I hit 10 free spins and that paid off more than a Mini JP, I didn't lower my bets because I was counting on hitting a Mini JP later with the gold coins in the dish.) I won a couple times on the 10 free spins that got me from $1.9K to $2,050, but I didn't lower my bet thinking the goblet would pay off at some point. But it got absurd, I was losing a Mini JP in 30 spins and there were no more free spins and no goblet bonuses. So I kept raising my bet per 50 spins and lost all the way down to $0 pretty fast.
One time I got the coins goblet Mini JP and 10 free spins at the same time, so those two wins were added together for a final payout.
I assume the odds of getting any JP out of 12 coins to pick from is about equal but I'm not getting results like that.

Next night: I played 3 Gold Coins for the Mini & Minor JP's at $0.76/spin. I raised it to $1.14/spin when I got 2X Mini JP's ahead, or +$80. So I got about a dozen free spin sessions where all the Ace through 9 symbols are replaced with the other symbols so it gets twice as easy to actually win on a spin. There's half as many different symbols almost, I don't know the math. But just a couple minutes before the end of hour one, I finally hit the gold coin goblet bonus round and had to pick between Mini & Minor JP's, I won the Mini for $40 of course. That put me up over a $1,080 balance and I raised my bet from $0.76 to $1.14. I fell back below $1,080 and lowered my bet back down. But I hit three 10 free spins close to each other and I had increased my bet back up, so I won to $1,180. If I get to $1,200, that'd be +2 Mini JP's (+$60 x 2 = $120), and I'd raise my bet to the next denom which is $2.28. Yeah, a whole hour between goblet bonuses on auto-spin.
Playing $1.14/spin, I lost down to $1,086 in less than 100 spins and was about to lower my bet when I got the goblet bonus again and hit the Mini for $60. Another 50 spins I hit the goblet again for $60 and got back to $1,180.
I'm averaging about a dozen spins per minute on auto-spin, so that'd be 720 spins an hour if I wasn't interrupted resetting the auto-spin thingy or getting into bonus rounds. During the bonus spins, the last 20 spins plus scoring took 2.5 minutes, and I was getting about 9 spins a minute without the ending. I had a double retrigger and started with near 30 spins and won about a Mini JP. I was about to double my bet but it might have been lowered anyway by the time this bonus round came around, so winning $60 instead of $120 was the difference.
I've been playing for 2 to 3 hours tonight and I'm not getting much further than slightly into the 3rd denom. So I'm going to do 2-step denom sessions with win goals of +2 + +2 Mini JP's for the two denoms. I hope to hit these win goals in 1 to 3 hours. So that'd be up to a couple thousand spins most likely. Like tonight, winning $40 X 2 plus $60 X 2 equals a $200 win goal. I should make my buy-in equal to my win goal because now I'm getting really bad luck and losing my entire $200 win back to $0.
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Last time I went to look at slot machines in a casino, adding more coins increases the Mini & the Minor JP's but not the Major or the Grand JP's. So if there's a $1,000 Major & a $10,000 Grand, what Mini & Major JP's should I set up to go with that? Play the 3 cent, 6 cent or 10 cent denom? What matches the chart above, anything?

I saw a two-part YouTube video this morning that had a guy betting $88/spin, and he lost from $27K down to $0. That's slightly more than a 300 spin loss. Me losing 5 Mini JP's today on the virtual game was over a 250 spin loss. The cold streaks on this game are harsh and really the game is a consistent cold streak with an occasional interruption of 10 free spins, a try at the gold coins for a JP, or an even rarer regular spin that pays off more than a Mini JP. There's no telling when the cold streak is going to end, because it just doesn't.
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I decided to play with 10 cent denoms ($8.80/spin, 5 Gold coins) and go up from there. I've got $1,000 to start and 110+ spins to lose. The winning started off quick and kept going. I raised my bets to $0.20 denom when I got past $1,400; then $0.30 denom when I got past $2,200; then $0.60 denom when I got past $3,400, then $1.00 denom when I got past $4,800. I would quit at $8,800 if I could, but I didn't get that far, I got to $7,000 and betting max bet trying to see how far I could go. I fell back to $5,000, then fell further to $3,000 and below, then recovered to $5,000 all within 90 minutes. I got a Minor JP of $2,250 along the way and a couple 10 spin specials or regular spins that totaled over $2K. It's like the machine is throwing money at me after it took it away. I'll have to divide this all by 10 and see if I can turn $100 into $700 this way too.

BJ - The Best Shoe

This is a 10 minute challenge to see who can score the highest with a $300 buy-in.
What I do is play along with the video on my home calculator with my own bet sizes and compare how my various systems pan out.
My usual $1,000 buy-in cashed out so close to $20K, so 20X my buy-in with a semi-press on each win, or at least the first 5 wins then a regress then a semi-press on the next 2 wins then a max bet for the level until a loss.
My $300 buy-in of the same strategy only with a level max bet after 6 wins in a row came out to a cash-out of over $8,500, or over 28X the buy-in.
My latest strategy with a $300 buy-in only had a cash-out of $4K, so I wasn't pressing on each win.
That same strategy had a cash-out of $14K on a $1K buy-in.
I'm not really following what the player in this video did, but he managed to get to 19X his buy-in, which is just slightly less than I did on my $1K buy-in to get to near $20K.
For the 10 minute tournament, I'd do the semi-pressings. For regular play, I wouldn't, but I could. For extreme negative BJ, I wouldn't unless it was too late to know.

Someone made a post about the WOV Card Counter Trainer and I had never heard of it so I'll include a link here.
https://wizardofodds.com/play/blackjack-v2/
My bankroll was five $1K buy-ins with my $5K start money and I lost 2 sessions, then won 1 session to win back $1K, then lost the next 4 sessions. So -150 hands, +10 hands. I've had to reconfigure my usual strategy to include a tight bankroll and "extreme negative BJ with cash-outs at 10 hands ahead with double the money" and exclude semi-pressings on a win because the losing streak is so severe.
I'll have to include my Roku BJ game as an extreme negative BJ game even though I survived over 850 hands last night and only losing $400 of my $500 daily feed from the game. So I had to write up some new charts for that game too.

My regular demo version of Casino Vérité (alt 0233 for the é) seemed rather harsh when I tried using semi-presses and I lost the first 16 $1K sessions in a row (-400 hands!). I've stopped with the semi-presses and I've won to over $100K in profit during the 2nd set of 10K hands. That doesn't mean I don't have losing sessions, I still have several in a row. I just have the occasional winning session similar to the video below that puts me ahead without the semi-presses. I also increase my session size the further I get ahead. So currently I'm starting with $5K sessions, and on a hot shoe like in this video, I could win over $50K without semi-presses, or $100K with semi-presses.

🔥BIGGEST WIN RECORDED🔥 10 Minute Blackjack Challenge - WIN BIG or BUST #183

BC - Press 'til U got no more!

What I Got Wrong about Craps - Color Up - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-SG6SbSiX8
Press 'til U got no more: $220 in, $1K+ cash-out! - Greg Uloho
Bubble craps 3 printouts with power pressing. I refuse to lose horseshoe Indianapolis casino winning - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcFQQtjpQJo
(Part 2) Bubble Craps 8s galore. $4000 flip for another profitable day horseshoe Indianapolis casino gambling - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WjkHPy2tII
THE BEST BUBBLE CRAPS. Came in with $1100 to try $220 5x & casino boss sat next to me to watch - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SFty6cgycA

I tried something on WinCraps the next day and it started me right off with 5 point 7-outs in a row.
I tried something on Bubble Craps and I lost 10 points before winning the first one.

PS5 & Pinball FX

I just got my new PS5 with the Blu Ray Player included so I can still go to Game Stop and shop for PS4 & PS5 games on discount, depending on how long Game Stop survives, which mightn't be long. I don't have a 4K TV nor Dolby 5.1 surround so I can't upgrade to all that just yet, if ever. I just spotted a NextGen 43" TV for $1200, yeah, not what I was thinking. I can't get over the air TV here anyway so what do I need NextGen TV for? Will cable go NextGen soon? What does that even mean?

Anyway, I was putting games on my wishlist since the size of them could fill up my 825 GB hard drive very quickly so I have to be very frugal about what games I get, plus they cost money. I came across Pinball FX. These are real and not so real games of pinball that seam like decent replicas, or better. I could only play a few games before my 1 day free pass expired. I had $20 in my PS3 wallet that I used to buy a 1 month pass at Pinball FX (for $14.99 + tax, or $100 for a year + tax) which will let me choose from dozens of machines to play (for free, ha ha). I've only played Attack From Mars and Funhouse so far. There have been grumblings online that the players don't like this subscription model and they can't bring the pinball games they've bought previously to the PS5 because there's a new engine powering the program. They also mentioned the flippers were OK but they could be better, there's a lag that could be a bit frustrating for pro players on real tables. Zen studios makes this game, and players feel they'll stick with what they've got rather than upgrade for use on a PS5.
I'm getting a little carpal tunnel pain from flipping the flippers on the joystick, but I managed to get to 2.9 million points on Funhouse in a few tries. Maybe it's early but that's a Top 500 score. I think they just introduced it in the past month.

Pinball FX FAQ – Zen Studios https://www.pinballfx.com/?page_id=7115#
Pinball FX Review (PS5) | Push Square https://www.pushsquare.com/reviews/ps5/pinball-fx
Pinball FX Review (PS5) - Is It Worth Playing? - PlayStation LifeStyle https://www.playstationlifestyle.net/review/878101-pinball-fx-review-ps5/
The Over-Monetized Pinball FX Reboot is Now on PS5 | by Alex Rowe | Mar, 2023 | Medium https://xander51.medium.com/the-over-monetized-pinball-fx-reboot-is-now-on-ps5-46825528fe7b