Casino Guides: the Floor Counted Table by Table

One floor, six counting stations

The floor is counted one station at a time and every station prints its figures differently. The baseline room publishes return rates for its tables and quietly varies its rules between them; the live studios publish their pace and leave the edge in the rulesheet; the fresh openings publish neither and offer a track record of zero as their opening figure. The audits in this series read each station in the order a shift would: the standing room first, the new openings and the pocket window next, and the high drawer last, where the stakes multiply every other figure on the sheet.

Six counting stations make this shelf, and two of them sit outside the casino proper. The gambling-sites audit reads the shops beyond the floor, where sportsbooks and lotteries keep their own tills under the same roof. The mobile audit counts the same room through a narrower window and confirms the receipt does not change shape on the way down. The live audit prices the table hour by hour, because pace is the figure the floor controls and the player rarely notices. Wherever the audit stops, the seal and the exit get the last two lines of the receipt.

Picking the vault by the door you use

Walk the floor from the front door. the baseline counter for the whole floor audits the standing room and fixes the figures every other station on the shelf is compared against: the rule sheet and its half-percent steps, the published return rates, the seal on the door and the exit window at the back. It is the shelf's reference receipt, and the audits beside it borrow its counting order station by station.

The high drawer is the floor's loudest station and the last to be counted: the big drawer with its own figures prices the room where larger intakes meet larger holds, and where the comps, the limits and the exit windows are negotiated rather than printed. After the baseline and the high drawer, the remaining stations, fresh openings, pocket window, live tables and the shops beyond the floor, can be taken in the order the reader's own evening uses.