In the last issue of BJI, I described my visit to one of the few casinos on the east coast (Sands in Bethlehem, PA) that offers a double-deck game (DD) with late surrender (LSR). The rules were outstanding with S17 and DAS (i.e., outstanding for the basic strategy player that is). For the card counter, the penetration was so bad (about 45%) that even with the great rules, it just was not worth playing.

(Editor’s Note: Currently, the DD game at Sands has these rules: S17, DAS, split any pairs up to four hands, and Aces can be resplit once (to form three hands). House edge against a basic strategy player is a measly -0.083%).

More recently, I had the opportunity to play a DD with LSR – this time about 3000 miles away on the west coast, in Tacoma, Washington. The casino was the Emerald Queen, and here the DD and LSR were coupled with good penetration. Good rules and good penetration create a good blackjack game for the counter.

The best way to describe the different casino options in Seattle Tacoma is overwhelming. I saw at least 40 casinos listed in my copy of Current Blackjack News (CBJN)). One small casino near the airport was not much bigger than a Quick Trip convenience store. I narrowed the list down to about five casinos that offered DD. Of the five or so listed with DD, one stood out above the rest.

A few casinos had unacceptable table minimums for me since I prefer a table maximum of at least $500. I will occasionally bet higher, but $500 table maximum is good enough. I can also live with a $250 or $300 maximum, especially if playing two hands is easy; however, unless there are no other good options, I usually avoid games with a table maximum of $200 or less. (A few of the Seattle Tacoma games were reported to have table minimums less than my $200 cut-off.)

One casino was reported to have good DD penetration and offer LSR … the Emerald Queen in Tacoma so that is where I went to play. Because I had limited time on this trip, and found the conditions better than I expected, I didn’t visit any other Seattle-Tacoma casinos.

The Emerald Queen is about 15 miles south of the Seattle Tacoma airport. If you are using a GPS, make sure you are headed to the correct Emerald Queen because there are two of them. (I showed up at the wrong initially. Despite appearing to be a good sized casino by Seattle Tacoma standards, they offered no blackjack games.) So I headed a few more miles south to the Emerald Queen that offers blackjack. Double check the location if you are trying to find the Emerald Queen with blackjack

Throughout the casino there were at least 10 tables that offered eight-deck games with H17 and DAS (I don’t believe surrender was offered). An eight-deck game is generally not a good game for a card counter, especially when it is H17, because there are just too many hands where the house has the advantage. However, if the penetration is deep enough, it could be worth playing. I glanced at a few cuts, and the penetration was not anywhere deep enough for my time. (Penetration looked like about 6 out of 8 decks.) This is really a bad game for both the basic strategy player and card counter. The house advantage is about 0.65%, and the combination of big house advantage and poor penetration makes it unplayable for the card counter. The table minimum was $10 and maximum $500.