Take Me to the River
When the condo sold back on Leap Day, I figured a good way to celebrate would be to make my first trip to Pittsburgh’s riverside casino, creatively named “Rivers”.
What I hadn’t figured was how painfully difficult it would be to obtain a fistful of Bens for my initial cash buy-in. BayBank BankBoston FleetBoston Bank of America has no branch anywhere within a day’s drive of Pittsburgh, and I didn’t have an account at any local banks. I finally opened a local account with a token amount, but they won’t cash checks for more than your account balance, and they won’t let an accountholder cash a check drawn on another bank for 16 days! Another local bank advertises that they’ll happily cash anyone’s third party checks (for a fee), but when I went there, they summarily declined my check with absolutely no reason given. In the end, I had to do an EFT transfer from one of my other accounts to my new local account, wait four days for it to clear, and only then could I finally pull cash out of the new account. Pain in the ass!
But you don’t want to hear about my banking woes, you want to hear about my subsequent visit to the casino, so how was that?
The trip itself was noteworthy because unlike Foxwoods, Rivers is in town, saving myself from renting a car and several hours of drive time as compared to Foxwoods. But more importantly, if you factor transportation costs into my Foxwoods expeditions, things like car rental and gas and tolls have eaten away no less than 65 percent of my gambling winnings! In Pittsburgh, the lack of transportation expenses will allow me to actually pocket my proceeds for once, rather than handing them directly over to Hertz et al.
After a pleasant walk from downtown across the Allegheny, I stepped into Rivers for the first time and scoped the place out. It’s a pretty decently-sized facility, although as usual most of the space is allocated to offensively loud and gaudy slot machines. Slots always attract the most victims, despite being by far the worst bet in the house. In terms of table games, there is a separate non-smoking sections near the cage, although I didn’t see any $25 blackjack tables in that area. On a Thursday morning it wasn’t very crowded or smoky.
In terms of blackjack rules, they’re very similar to Foxwoods, which are amongst the most favorable rules you’ll find anywhere on the planet. In Pennsylvania, the state mandates the specific set of rules, which includes double after split, dealer stand on soft 17, and late surrender, all of which are meaningfully favorable to the player. The table I chose was surprisingly using a 6-deck shoe with no mid-shoe entry. That was a little inconvenient, but the short shoes made the wait shorter.
Their dealers were generally pretty good. The players seemed pretty competent, as well, although there were rarely more than two other players at my table at once. And considerably fewer Asian gamblers than one would see at Foxwoods.
As for my run of play… It was a long, intense, difficult battle. Unlike my farewell trip to Foxwoods where it took only 20 minutes to reach my win limit, I had to work this table for a solid two hours. After being up initially, the deck turned against us for an extended losing streak across multiple dealers. Several times when I got close to busting I managed to collect on anxious CLB bets, including one well-timed blackjack on an atypical $300 bet (the state also requires BJ to pay 3:2).
After an incredibly nerve-wracking battle, eventually the cards turned back in our favor, and I found myself ahead of the game, surprisingly $75 above my predetermined win limit. I colored up and pocketed that amount, but played on to parlay my spare $75 into a couple hundred before it was finally taken away from me. However, in that time I won a side bet for a $50 toke for the dealers, which made everybody happy.
So although it was in doubt for quite a while, I was satisfied that my first trip ended with the casino’s money in my pocket. The hard-fought two-hour battle provided quite a different feeling than my 20-minute farewell victory at Foxwoods, but one could say that I received more entertainment value for my money.
Or rather, their money! ;^)