As far as the actual blackjack games at the casino – I’m not impressed. I was in the casino to watch the tournament and planned on playing some blackjack while I was there. I got there at approximately 8:30 a.m. on a Monday and left at approximately 4 p.m. and played probably less than half an hour because the blackjack tables simply didn’t offer anything I found playable, especially with better games 10 miles down the road at Pala.

On this particular day, there was a large area of the floor under renovation. I am pretty sure from the layout and my prior trips to this casino that it’s a slot area and therefore the renovations didn’t remove any blackjack tables from play. It’s possible the tournament displaced some regular games – I couldn’t say for certain because it’s been quite awhile since I was at this casino last.

First of all, let me go on record as saying I absolutely hate the continuous shuffle machines (CSMs), which I’ll bitch about in a completely different entry.

These things are all over the Pechanga blackjack pits. On the regular floor, all the low-limit blackjack tables are dealt out of a CSM. Any table with a $5 or $10 minimum (and there weren’t many of them) were being dealt from a CSM. I did see one $15 minimum table not only being dealt out of a shoe, but hand shuffled, as well – you don’t see that very often any more. I would say that was a 6-deck shoe, not 8-deck.

Still, resplitting aces is not allowed. I am not so in love with playing blackjack that I will sit down at a game that doesn’t allow resplitting of aces. There is also no surrender and the dealer hits soft 17 (A/6). Bundle all this together with a CSM and it pretty much kills any desire I have to play at that casino.

All the tables I observed paid 2:1 on blackjack

If you have a larger bankroll, it might be worth checking out the high-limit rooms. One of the tournament contestants told me they had a pretty decent double deck game with a $25 minimum, but I admit I didn’t go into the high-limit room to check it out.

All in all, my feeling is the casino can afford the prizes for the blackjack tournament because the regular tables are raking in the dough off players who don’t know enough about blackjack to know they’d be better off at Pala or players who have so much money they simply don’t care how fast they lose it.