The best of the best don't get angry when a player takes advantage of them. Why should they? Potential lawsuits aside, there is absolutely no upside to losing your cool when someone with the time, money, and talent takes advantage of a game you're offering to the public -- including them. NOTE: A fairly easy solution to keeping the rough handling of advantage players at bay is to stop letting ill-trained and uninformed security guards handle back-offs and expulsions.

Meanwhile, let's face it. Jimmy Canns' character on the current ABC series "Las Vegas" notwithstanding most surveillance crews are overworked, underpaid, and rarely if ever have the time or ability to initially identify a possible advantage player. That's why, in order to ascertain whether the suspected player is a true threat, savvy table-game managers always have a go-to expert with whom to consult. Whether it's a surveillance advantage-play specialist, a wizened shift supervisor, or a specially designated floorperson who also acts as a card-counter catcher, the best operators always have someone on duty whom management can rely on to address both the player's and the casino's side of the card-counting equation.

They Offer Deeper Penetration Than Their Competitors

Dealing deeper certainly increases the chances that advantage players will violate your game, but there's a direct correlation between reduced penetration and reduced profits. The best operators understand that lost rounds mean lost money, but this simple concept is lost on many supposedly clever casinos managers.

By way of a (bad) example, a casino down south -- operated by one of the premier publicly traded gaming companies -- has a fairly high-rollin' 21 game that pays 6-5 on naturals. With a 1.5 % edge off the top and almost no savvy players, they're winning at least 3% of every wager.

So what do they do to make sure they minimize profits? On a full game, they deal one round and shuffle! Assuming that their four games are only full four hours a day with average aggregate wagers of $100 a round, this casino is throwing away almost $200,000 a year with one simple paranoid decision. Why do they do this? When I asked the pit boss, he said, "So we don't run out of cards." I've been around this business for more than 30 years and I've yet to see a dealer run out of cards when dealing two rounds to a full table.

They Understand the Value of Retention Marketing

All casinos have deep and aggressive marketing departments that spend millions to attract new customers. While marketing is busting its butt to get new players in the door, many of the front-line casino executives are working full-time to get rid of anyone they perceive as a potential threat.