BLACKJACK, WHO'S GOT IT WRONG?

This weeks blog was written by my co-author and husband Ray. He is the least superstitious person on the planet. And don't tell him the dealer is hot unless you want to listen to a thirty minute lecture on odds! So if you are visiting a casino in the near future read this and you may remain a little calmer.

Here are a few thoughts on Blackjack.
When dealing Blackjack how often do you hear the following 'You took the dealers bust card!' This situation sometimes gets very heated. Here is an example. Dealer is showing a 5 and one of the players hits on a hard 15. He receives a 10 and busts. Then the dealer goes on to make a hand when in fact he would have bust had the player played correctly and not taken that ten. Seems logical enough at first. But of course that is only that one particular hand out of thousands. People forget all the other times when another player makes a wrong move and it turns out to actually cause the dealer to bust. In fact you cannot take 'the dealers bust card' unless you know the value of the next card out the shoe. And of course even then it would still by no means be a certainty that the dealer would bust..
                                                Imagine the following situation. -
A full table, second last spot has a 10 and a 5. Last spot also has a 10 and a 5. So they both have 15. The dealer is showing a 5. Now, if either of those players draws to their 15s the rest of the players will get annoyed. But imagine, had the same cards been dealt but just in a slightly different order, giving the player on the second last spot  the two 10s and the player on the last spot receiving both of the 5s, now of course everyone wants him to hit his two 5s! In fact they will get annoyed if he doesn't! But in reality nothing has really changed, just the order of two cards. The next card out of the shoe is still the same card as before regardless of whether the player takes it or the dealer takes it. Of course I realize it is bad play to hit on a hard 15 against the dealers 5, but that bad play rule only applies to the player actually making that particular hit. Nobody else is affected one way or the other by anything any other player does. Since the cards are random, the second card out of the shoe is just as likely to be the dealers 'bust' card as the first card out of the shoe. All of this assumes no card counting techniques, just straight play.

About the author:

Ray and Cara Bertoia are the authors of Cruise Quarters - A Novel About Casinos and Cruise Ships. Her novel is really a travelogue, a narrative, a romance, a self-help manual for gambling and cruising, and a real-life story all rolled into one funny, obsessive, and entertaining story of two people whose separate life journeys meet at a crossroads. Kindle Fire Dept. says, "This novel is a gem that is nothing short of a vacation in a book!"

Below is the links to Cruise Quarters - A Novel About Casinos and Cruise Ships

Click the link to find at Amazon.com
Click here to find at Amazon Canada
Click the link to find at Amazon United Kingdom
Click the link to find at Amazon Germany

Click the link to find at Amazon France

Click the link to find at Amazon Italy

Click the link to find at Amazon Spain 

Click the link to find at Amazon Brazil

Ray and Cara have also produced the number one guide on walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain.
The Desert Woman calls it inspiring. 
Click the link to find the DVD Camino de Santiago a Walkers Guide at Amazon

WRITING CRUISE QUARTERS WAS A 'NOVEL' WAY TO RELIVE OUR CRUISE SHIPS DAYS

Here is an excerpt of the interview I gave for THE BOOK BLOG. It is British blog about publishing and writing and has a section on featured authors. 

Tim I am so happy to be appearing on a British blog because my book is such a blend of the British and Americans. It is set on a British ship with many nationalities in the crew.

The road to my novel, Cruise Quarters – A Novel About Casinos and Cruise Ships, is a long journey with lots of twist and turns much like a good story. After I graduated college I got a job teaching high school in North Carolina. On a summer break I drove across country with two friends and we all got jobs in a casino in Lake Tahoe. Tahoe was a beautiful place and casino jobs were the best ones to have, especially dealing. Well they all soon went home but I stayed. I worked at Caesars Palace for a few years but then I moved to the North Shore of the Lake. The place I worked at was an “old school” casino, it had been a rat pack hangout in the old days and even now autographed photos of movie stars still adorn the walls. The casino overlooked the lake and as I dealt I would look out at a beautiful view of the crystal blue water.  The border between Nevada and California runs down through the middle of the casino.

The owner was a plumbing contractor from Fresno. The head of security was an ex-Mossad officer and every few weeks we would be strapped down and given lie detector tests. They let porn movies be filmed in the casino and there were rumors that he rigged the slot machines. I’m not sure if that was all true but he did manage to get his casino closed down by the Nevada gaming commission, no small feat. One day a sports agent with Hollywood connections played on my game and encouraged me to write down all my great casino stories. That was the day I became a writer, well my script got as far as HBO where it was eventually rejected but that didn’t matter to me. I was a writer.

A year later I went back to the real world and became a systems analyst by day, writer by night. I lived in Boston, the home of perpetual students and so I was able to take writing classes, join critique groups and improve. After a few years I began working on an MA in writing at Emerson because it had connections in Hollywood. Well, just before I was scheduled to intern in Los Angeles as a script reader I got the opportunity to join Princess Cruises as a croupier. My choice was spend my dwindling savings on an internship or get paid to see the world. I wasn’t scared of going - only staying. The Germans have a word for it torschlusskpanik, the fear of missing the boat.

I stayed at sea for five years and I would like to say that I wrote everyday but I didn’t. I spent those years soaking up all the history I could. The ship was my home and the crew bar was my living room and the nights I spent there were research since I planned to tell the story of all my crewmates someday. And then on my last contract I met Ray and my novel became a love story and that surprised me more than anyone else.

We settled in Palm Springs and I began my book. I had written most of it when I decided to test it out by taking a novel writing class at UCLA. One of the exercises in the class was to try out five opening lines, well the whole class voted for my current opener. My professor liked it so much she became my first editor. I started it in first person, but when I decided to include Ray we switched to third person. Ray’s adventures dealing around the world were just too good to leave out, and I really wanted to include the male point of view.

The goal of our book was to tell our story in a realistic way. After so many ridiculous casino movies like The Cooler, I had had enough.  I am the cynic and Ray is the happy chappy but we both wanted a book that rang true. We wrote down all our ship and casino stories in a book and then built a novel around them.

I casually handed our manuscript to one of my ship friends and asked her to read it. The next day she called me raving about our book. In fact she had already run off three copies for her co-workers. Then I knew that we had nailed it. My biggest beef with the books I had been reading for the last few years were that they all sounded alike. Especially the love stories, I didn’t need to dress ours up it was exciting enough. Our book is based on true stories but it is still a novel. I was so disappointed to learn that Three Cups of Tea was a lie. Surely Greg Mortenson knew that when you elaborate or move events around for dramatic effect it makes your book a novel.

I was always afraid of showing my friends my book but they turned out to be my best readers offering great criticism. I don’t know why I hesitated, dealers are avid readers, with a break every hour they always have book on the go.

Below is the links to Cruise Quarters - A Novel About Casinos and Cruise Ships
Click the link to find at Amazon.com
Click the link to find at Amazon United Kingdom
Click the link to find at Amazon Germany

Click the link to find at Amazon France

Click the link to find at Amazon Italy

Click the link to find at Amazon Spain 

 
Click to find Cruise Quarters at Barnes and Noble

.