II remember sitting in a downtown Las Vegas casino one evening with a young man dealing. It was near the end of the shift right before the final dealer session. The dealer was very quick and had been giving us a fair and entertaining game so far. On one hand he had a 5 card up and casually peeked underneath it to see if he had a 10. Several of the other players started with surprise and I said, "What's going on?"

The dealer was very embarrassed by his mistake. He kept apologizing and explained that he was on cold medicine (pronounced "code bedicid" in his condition) and was tired and groggy at the end of his shift. This type of error is forgivable because it was perfectly innocent and didn't hurt the players.

I saw another incident that was much more serious. At the dealer change we were given a nice young woman dealer who obviously hadn't been working too long. What happened was that after only about five minutes at the table she had "busted" on a five-card hand of 21 and paid the table. Not all the players noticed it, but I did. I was eager to see what was going to result, since a pit boss hadn't seen the error.

About three hands later there was a phone call at the pit-boss station. The boss listened for a short time and got a disgusted look on his face and hung up. He stomped over to an idle dealer and had him follow to our table. When the pit boss arrived, he got our dealer's attention and with a wave of his thumb, said, "Get outta here." The poor dealer blanched and left immediately. Evidently the eye in the sky had seen the mistake and notified the pit boss.

There's one thing common about harmful mistakes in Blackjack. If you make a mistake, the dealer will often quietly take your money. If he makes a mistake, he will quietly take your money. Now, I don't know what your philosophy of gambling is, but I'll tell you mine. If I am giving away my bankroll through making mistakes, then that is my problem and no one else's. Conversely, I've got enough work trying to increase my bankroll without worrying about yours too. Mistakes are things we both pay for, a system that Nature has been successfully using for millions of years. Although dealer errors will happen in a casino (particularly on some of the islands), they are much more likely to occur in the sponsored games or in private home games where the dealers are untrained. This is why this section is included in a chapter on Blackjack outside the casino.