ECG would like to welcome a new contributor to you. RDP recently visited Harrington Raceway in Harrington, DE to check out Delawares first step into table games. There’s a lot of awesome detail here. Enjoy.
Table games in Delaware have begun! Harrington Raceway and Casino in Harrington, DE is the first of the three Delaware casinos to have table games with real cards and dealers. No longer will one be required to play games on an electronic machine with a half-naked dealer with severe head twitches on a video screen.
video blackjack
Harrington opened their tables to the public on May 24, 2010. For the first week, patrons were able to participate in a low-limit test opening, where all games had a $5 minimum and a lower then normal maximum bet, ranging from $25-$100. The test run allows casino personnel to test games and procedures in a live setting and work out any problems before the grand opening and allows Delaware Lottery gaming inspectors to oversee casino operations before it issues final certification to the casino to operate table games. I visited Harrington on Thursday afternoon and there were several inspectors from the Delaware Lottery visible, walking around overseeing the games and casino employees.
I attempted to sneak take some pictures with my iPhone, but casino security was on to me every time and told me to put it away. Even when I was seated at the table, I would take it out to check email and Twitter updates in between shuffles and was told by multiple pit bosses and dealers to put it away. It appears that Harrington will be an anti-cell phone establishment.
The table games are located in the middle of the casino floor, where the Shuffle Master electronic table games used to be, next to the buffet. There are 32 tables on the main casino floor.
14 – Blackjack (all pay 3/2 for Blackjack)
6 – Blackjack (Stand all 17, Perfect Pairs Side Bet)
4 – Blackjack (Hit Soft 17, In Between Side Bet)
3 – i-Table Blackjack (Bet the Set and Royal Match 21 Side Bets)
1 –Blackjack Switch
4 – Craps
3 – Craps
1 – Crapsless Craps
3 – Roulette (Double 0)
4 – Three Card Poker
1 – Four Card Poker
2 – Ultimate Texas Hold’em
1 – Baccarat
1 – Pai Gow Poke
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1 – Casino War
1 – Big Six Wheel
There are also several table games, mixed with slot machines, in a high-limit section located at the far end of the casino. I was not able to get a detailed inventory of the games in that section.
One game I never saw before was the i-Table Blackjack. I did not play this game, but I was able to pick up a brochure about the game. While it is just like a normal blackjack table with a live dealer dealing cards from a shoe, all your interaction, like placing bets, making side bets, and stating your hand action (hit/stand/double/split) is done through a touch screen on the table. You can even press a button to give the dealer a tip. Each seat at the table has its own screen. From what another fellow gambler told me later that afternoon, there is an RFID chip in every card, and the i-Table is able to tell what cards the dealer and player has and determines which hands and side bets win, lose, or push. This eliminates the possibly of error in paying out a hand or bonus, which benefits both the casino and the player. I later got to experience some of this technology in action at the Pai Gow table. After the dealer flipped over their cards, they were able to press a button on a screen next to the chip rack which displayed what two cards were the second highest. All very interesting gaming technology I had not seen before.
One game that I am surprised they did not have was Spanish 21. I have never played it, but have seen how popular it is at other casinos, and I find it interesting Harrington has some of the games it has but not Spanish 21.
All tables have a black felt background. I actually prefer the black felt over the green felt, as it made many of the tables more colorful and exciting, especially the craps table. I also noticed the craps tables did not have foam cushioning under the felt. I thought that was rare, as every craps table I had played on before had the bouncy foam cushion that made dice bounce off the table every third roll. With no cushion on the table, the dice had lots of roll on the table, but they did not leave the table once the entire time I was playing. (ED: Interesting, I thought the less bouncy the better for dice control.)
The chips are a type of chip that I have never seen before. It is a light plastic chip with a plastic laminate covering the logo in the middle. This was the only thing I was able to take a picture of without a casino employee telling me to put my phone away. Also, there was a new chip denomination I had never seen before. It was a light pink $0.25 chip that was used to pay commission at Pai Gow Poker.
(ED: I’ve seen these in Las Vegas, mostly $2 blackjack downtown.)
There is a poker room, but unless you already knew your way around the facility, you would never find it as it located on the second floor of the horse race track grandstand, and there was no signage on the casino floor with directions to the poker room. The room has ten (9-seat) tables laid out in a rectangular format with four tables on the sides, one in the front, and one in the back. There are several flat panel televisions along the wall. The podium in the front left corner of the room and the cashier cage is in the back. The rake is 10%, maximum $5 with an additional $1 taken for the bad beat jackpot per hand. The rake in Atlantic City and the rumored rake for both Delaware Park and Dover Downs is 10%, maximum $4 per hand. It will be interesting to see how Harrington competes with their competition charging a lower rake.
On the subject of dealers, where do I start? I understand a large majority of the dealers had no prior table game experience prior to this. I understand that dealers would have opening night nerves and jitters. I understand how dealers might have problems with equipment, like getting cards out of the shoe, as it is new and not been broken in yet. However, I did not expect to see as many dealing and pay out errors as I did, especially from dealers that just completed 80 hours of training in each game.
A majority of the time, the craps game was moving at turtle pace because many dealers did not know how to correctly pay out the odds on winning bets. Also, there were some mix-ups about what bets were which players and issues with hard ways bets being thrown out, but I believe with additional experience, the dealers will gain that team chemistry that is required at a craps table. At the blackjack table, I was paid 2:1 twice for a blackjack (and no, before you ask, it was not that special blackjack that pays 2:1 for suited) and several times the dealer forgot to peak for the ace when they had a 10 showing. A couple of those times the dealer ended up having the ace in the hole and the game would be delayed for five minutes waiting for a pit boss to come over and rectify the problem.
At Pai Gow, I saw someone get paid 25:1 for a Fortune Bonus full house, which actually pays 5:1. In my opinion, this mistake is the worst of them all, as there was the bonus payout chart both printed on the felt and on a card display right next to the dealer and the dealer looked at both and still paid it out wrong. I know I put a lot into this subject, but I really would not read too much in to it yet. I believe many will become excellent dealers and pit bosses in time with additional on the job experience. With any new operation, after a while, it will be easy to weed out the good from the bad, and the strong will survive and the weak will be let go.
One thing I could not get used to was that the dealers and pit bosses were encouraging players to take a seat and “give the game a try” as they walked by the tables. I call it carnival barking. In Atlantic City, there is a casino commission rule that prohibits dealers and pit bosses from soliciting games. In my opinion, Delaware should have the same rule as well.
I plan to follow up in a couple weeks (before Delaware Park and Dover Downs open) to see what the minimum table limits have been set at, check on the hopefully improving quality of the dealers, and see what type of comps are received for certain play. If anyone has questions or would like information on a subject I might not have wrote about, please feel free to leave a comment or send a message on Twitter to @RDP3081 and I will be more than happy to try and help you out.
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