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| Cage | Area of casino where cashier is based and chip buying and selling takes place. Usually surrounded by metal bars or other high security measures. In many ways, the cage resembles a bank.
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| Call Bet | A bet made without money or chips. Must be approved by a floor person or pit boss. Usually allowed only for customers with casino credit already approved, or with money on deposit in the casino cage. This procedure is highly irregular and may be illegal in some states.
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| Call for Insurance | To announce that the dealer has an Ace showing and pause to allow the players make an insurance bet, then the dealer will check the hole card and if it is a 10-value card the hand is over and the bets and side bets are settled, if it is not, the side bets are collected and the play of the hand continues.
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| Camouflage | An action which is intended to hide the fact that a player is counting cards.
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| Cap/Ing, Capping of Bets | To illegally add money / placing extra chips to a winning bet after you receive at least one card while the dealer is distracted (To cap a bet). Easy to detect with video surveillance.
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| Card Counter | A person who card counts by assigning numerical values to the cards ( see Card Counting )
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| Card Counting | A method of keeping track of the cards by assigning a value to certain cards in the deck to determine if the remaining cards in a deck or shoe favor the player or the dealer. For example, the hi-lo counting system assigns a value of plus one to cards 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 and minus one to tens, jacks, queens, kings and aces.
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| Card Down | An announcement to the floor person that a card has gone off the table. A dealer never reaches down to pick up a card, as that would expose their tray to stealing.
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| Card Eating | Using up cards quickly. A player may spread to more than one hand to accomplish this. For example, if the count is low, a player may spread to two or three hands at a minimum bet to hasten the shuffle.
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| Carpet Joint | A colloquialism for an upscale casino, derived from the days when many casinos did not have carpet. If a casino had carpeted floors, it was considered to be an indication that it was a fancier place than the usual.
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| Carpet Store | A higher class casino than a 'sawdust joint', because it has carpet on the floor.
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| Case Card | The last card of a denomination left in the deck. Usually used as a poker term.
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| Cashier | A person who works in the cage who handles monetary transactions with players. It is similar to what a bank teller would do in a bank.
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| Casing the Layout | Taking a brief look at the bets on the table prior to starting to deal the cards. Take particular note of the bets on first and third base because they are the most likely to be pinched or capped. If a player has been betting every hand and is still present at the table but doesn't have a bet in his circle, it is a dealer courtesy to bring his attention back to the table and confirm whether he desires to bet or not.
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| Casino | A building in which legalized gambling is the main source of income to the management. There are many euphemisms for casino such as: 'house,' 'store,' 'shop,' etc.
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| Casino Host | A casino employee who is responsible for dealing with casino patrons and answering queries about casino comps and other amenities. For example, if a rated player (professional) were to call a casino to make hotel reservations, he would ask to speak to a casino host in order to get a casino rate or a room comp.
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| Casino Manager | The person who manages all phases of the casino operations.
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| Catch (Heat / Card) | 1. To catch 'heat' is to get reprimanded by a superior for an infraction of casino policy. 2. To catch a card is to get a hit card that is either good or bad. 'I split Aces and caught toe deuces.'
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| Cbjn | An abbreviation for Stanford Wong's Current BlackJack News, a periodical which is available through several different media which describes blackjack playing conditions throughout the United States and in some Canadian casinos.
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| Cc | 1. The acronym for Card Counting. 2. The acronym for Circus Circus, a casino.
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| Cheating | Illegal gain of advantage, technically defined as 'altering selection criteria of a casino game.' Includes card marking, capping bets, loaded dice, various sleight of hand techniques and so forth. Does NOT include card counting or capitalizing on house errors.
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| Check (Money) Down | An expression used by a dealer to inform the floor person that a chip has fallen on the floor, a situation, which requires his immediate attention.
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| Checks | Round, flat objects used by casinos to represent money. Several reasons casino's insist on using chips are: 1. they are faster and easier to handle than cash, 2. they help the management keep track of the drop, and 3. customers may lose more money because they don't 'think' of the chips as cash and therefore are looser with chips than with cash.
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| Checks Play | A term often used by dealers to notify the pit boss that a player has made a significantly large bet. The amount of a bet that will trigger such a response varies wildly from casino to casino. It could be a bet as small as five red chips ($25) in some casinos or a bet with several black chips in other casinos.
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| Chip Runner | A person who carries chips from the cage to the table.
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| Chips | These are tokens that the Casino uses, in place of cash, to represent a certain monetary value for making bets. You buy chips at the table. You cash chips in at the Cashier's Cage. Chips may bought in various denominations, $2, $5, etc. Players exchange cash for chips at the tables and then cash-in their chips at the cashier's cage. Also 'Checks'.
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| Chunking | When the dealer wins the bets of several or all of the players and collects the bets by just stacking them together in one hand, rather than collecting each bet separately, before returning the chips to the tray.
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| Circle | The place on the layout where the player must place his or bet for it to be valid. Also, 'betting circle' or 'square.'
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| Clean Money | Checks which the dealer hands out of the tray to pay a bet. 'Dirty' money is checks from a losing players bet used to pay the bet of a winning player.
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| Clerk | Slang term used for a dealer. (Like a clerk in a store.) Usually a competent and efficient dealer. Opposite of a 'Lumpy dealer.'
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| Clock-in (Out) | To start or end your shift by reporting to the time clock to record your hours of work. 'I forgot to clock out last night and I got a pink slip.'
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| Clump | 1. Cards of the same value, massed together in the shoe 2. cards in a sequence that favors heavily the house or the player.
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| Clumper / Clumping | Cards sticking together, which is what clumpers think cards do. Card Clumpers look at what cards have come out of the current shoe and, based on this information, predict (read guess) the denomination of the next card(s) to be dealt from the current shoe. Clumping is not a way to get an edge over the casino. Clumping is not the same as shuffle tracking.
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| Cm | The acronym for Chinese Mafia, an expression used by Atlantic City locals to describe slot fleas.
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| Cocktail Waitress | Casino employees who distribute free mind-altering beverages to blackjack players.
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| Cold | Term used to describe a losing cycle of hands.
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| Cold Twenty (Turkey) | Two 10-value cards as a starting hand. 'I would never split cold twenty against a nine showing.'
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| Color | Each denomination of chip has a distinctive color. The standard colors are: $1 -> blue or white; $5 -> red; $25 -> green; $100 -> black.
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| Color for Color | The proper pay-out procedure for a dealer to pay a stack of multi-colored chips. It is faster, has less chance of a mistake, and is easier to verify by the floor person or eye-in-the-sky.
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| Color Up | To exchange many smaller denomination chips for a few large denomination chips. This is done as a player is preparing to leave and he may have too many chips to handle easily. 'May I color up those reds for green before you leave, sir.' Then, inform the floor man. 'Color up, red for green.' (It also allows the floor man to see how well or poorly the player did financially.)
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| Comdex | A huge computer convention that uses up all the hotel rooms in Las Vegas, sending room rates sky-high. Avoid Las Vegas during Comdex.
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| Comp | 'Comps' refers to complimentary services and goods that are offered by the casino, a complimentary gift given by a casino to encourage and reward play. Comps can range from the most common, free drinks while playing, to meals, rooms, trips to resort locations and tickets to the Super Bowl.
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| Composition Dependent Strategy | Similar to basic strategy, but the proper play is based upon the exact cards dealt to the player rather than just the total of the player's hand. It is most commonly used for single deck games. One example of a composition dependent strategy would be doubling down on a player's hand of 5,3 or 4,4 versus a dealer's 5 or 6 in a single deck game but not doubling on a 6,2, even though all three of the player's hands would total 8.
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| Convert | To break down the bet and then pay using higher denomination checks. (i.e. for a $45 dollar bet pay with two $25 checks and take one $5 check for change or for a $20 blackjack pay with two $25 checks and take the $20 dollar bet for change)
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| Cooler | Colloquial expression for the pack of pre-arranged cards (usually in 6- or 8-deck games) with which a cheating team, through collusion with pit crew members and especially the dealer, replaces the original casino cards, just before their insertion in the shoe. Extremely profitable for the cheaters if they can pull it off and a most serious felony for everyone involved.
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| Cop | Palming a chip off the top of a stack of chips (to cop a chip).
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| Count | 1. To put a value on each card other than face value and to keep a running total of that value as an aid in betting and playing the cards. 2. An inventory of the chips in a dealer's tray usually at the end of the shift or when the drop boxes are changed.
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| Count Down | To put the chips in your tray into regulation size stacks (20 chips is a stack) so the floor person can count them without interfering with the play of the game.
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| Count Down the Deck | Systematically remembering what cards have been played so that you know what is left in the deck.
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| Counter | A player who uses a counting system to keep track of the cards played in order to determine whether the deck is favorable or unfavorable to the player.
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| Counting System | First Level: A counting system in which the cards are given point counts of +1, -1, or 0 as they are dealt. Multi-Parameter: A counting system which assigns values to the cards which a greater than or less than +1 or -1.
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| Coupon | Promotional material given for free by a casino in order to attract customers. Coupons entitle the player to certain amenities like free dinner for 2 or special (and favorable) rules at games like getting 2-1 payoff in case of a natural. Coupons are given to the player in order to entice him to the casino, while comps are given after he plays there.
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| Couponomy | The wise and most advantageous use of coupons, so that the player extracts maximum value from them. A term coined by Peter Griffin but which came of age through its use by Las Vegas Advisor publisher Anthony Curtis.
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| Cover | The use of various camouflage techniques to disguise the act of counting. It could include anything from the use of the wrong playing strategy or apparently improper bet sizing to very sophisticated maneuvers designed to fool casino personnel who may be attempting to discover whether or not a player is counting cards. Used by counters to disguise the fact that they are counters from casino personnel, such as 'cover bet' and 'cover plays'.
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| Cover Bet | A bet made by a 'counter' in an attempt to mislead the floor person into believing the player is a novice.
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| Cover Play | To play a hand in such a way that you will mislead the floor person into believing you are not a counter when you are, in fact, counting.
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| Cover the Bet | To accept a bet for play. 'Book the action'.
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| Credit Line | An amount of credit established for a player at a given casino. A player with a credit line can take a marker for any amount of money up to the amount established in his credit line and use it to purchase chips at the tables. The player is normally expected to repay the marker before the end of his visit to that casino. A credit line can be established in advance of a casino visit in much the same fashion that a loan from a bank would be obtained.
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| Crimp | To put a bend in the cards in order to mark them for the purpose of cheating.
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| Cross Roader | Term for a professional card cheat. Also 'cheat', 'hustler', 'con man' or 'scam artist'.
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| Csm | The acronym for Continuous Shuffling Machine. A machine that mixes used cards back into the pack continuously instead of keeping them aside round after round to be shuffled all at once.
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| Cts | The acronym for Casino Tournament Strategy, book by Stanford Wong.
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| Cut | To divide a deck into two parts after the dealer shuffles the cards. Generally, this is done by a player. The dealer then takes the two parts and reverses them, front to back. In most casinos, the cut is made by inserting a plastic card known as the cut card into the deck or the pack.
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| Cut Card | A solid colored card typically a piece of plastic which is given to a player by the dealer for the purpose of cutting the deck(s) after a shuffle and then is used by the dealer to mark the last hand to be dealt from the deck by placing it near the end of the deck in the shoe. When it comes out of the shoe, the dealer announces, 'Last hand out of this shoe.'
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| Cut Checks | The process of using one hand to hold a stack of chips and break the stack into a series of equal smaller stacks by using the index finger, or thumb. There is also the drop cut method as used mostly in dealing Craps.
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| Cut into | To put a stack of chips next to a smaller stack and take the excess off so that both stacks are equal. Also 'bump into' or 'size into'.
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| Cut the Deck | After a dealer has shuffled a deck, it must be cut in two by a player and the first card(s) must be burned before a hand may be dealt to insure the integrity of the game. The dealer will usually rotate the player to cut from left to right.
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| Cut Tokes | To divide the tokes made by the dealers in an equitable manner.
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| Cut-Off(s) Cards | The cards behind the cut card in the shoe that are remaining when the dealer starts the shuffle sequence. When the cut card is out, the dealer will deal out of the cutoffs as many cards are necessary to finish the round and then he'll shuffle.
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| Cv | An abbreviation used for a software blackjack program designed by Norm Wattenberger known as Casino Verite.
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| Cvsim | An abbreviation for a refinement of the Casino Verite software program that allows a person to simulate the play of blackjack on a computer at high speed, thus enabling one to obtain the results of millions or even billions of hands of play.
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