Card counting is romanticized but really it is almost impossible to get away with now (while making any meaningful money). The whole premise of card counting is to vary your bets where you are betting more when the count is in your favor, and less when it isn't. Also "penetration" into the deck is important because the less cards there are remaining in the deck the probability of you getting the cards you want (positive count big cards) is higher.
So with that said:
- Casinos employ methods such as continuous shuffling machines that make counting impossible. Tables that have hand shuffling of 6-8 decks cut the deck and reshuffle with 2 decks remaining or so. So it is harder to get penetration.
- The way to be maximally profitable is to vary your bet very widely depending on how positive the deck is. This could be 30x your low bet. Behavior like this will get you detected.
- Security personnel and even dealers keep counts. It is not some savant activity. It is not hard especially since all these people do all day is look at cards. So they know when the deck is positive and if you are always betting big when that happens you will be detected.
So the people that are left counting have to avoid heat by "camouflaging" their actions. They don't vary their bet that widely and make purposeful bad decisions to make it appear they are not keeping a count. They want to appear like someone that does not know how to play basic strategy and raises and lowers their bets based on superstition (there's a lot of them). This all eats into their advantage substantially. Then in addition betting big at high limit tables is going to be more carefully scrutinized as well.
With that all added together the life for a modern card counter is grinding out for comps and very low player advantage for very long times. Casinos aren't dumb anymore. So while we watch the chronicles of the MIT team, and others, those days are long, long gone. Makes for great stories as people love Robin Hood like tales, but it just isn't happening like this anymore.
Edit: Also the tactic she mentions: Entering a game mid shoe after watching for a while, and waiting for a positive deck, is called "Wonging" After Stanford Wong a longtime gambling expert and advantage player. There is NO WAY you'd get away with "flashy big bettor Carlos" coming in after she counted detected a positive count. Tables with any meaningful limit usually do not allow mid shoe entry for this reason. It is one of the oldest tricks in the book and you wouldn't get away with that for long or at all.
Every time card counting comes up in discussion there seem to be people talking about how it works (not taking a shot at you, just attaching my comment here). But not once have I seen a link to the actual numbers.
If I want to know something about chess, the source code is available, endgame tables are available, everything that we say we know about chess can be confirmed.
Everyone seems to know how card counting works, with vague things like a count goes up with 5's or down with 10's, but there is no first post link to the "solution". The only thing I see referenced is some 1 deck study from the early computer days.
I'm halfway convinced the money making avenue of card counting is telling stories about card counting.
The conspiracy theory part of my brain says these stories are written by casinos to give players hope.
I agree with you on that. The money is to be made telling stories about it vs doing it. Which is why I think the article is complete fiction. But the math behind counting is sound and it is indeed profitable if done right.
https://github.com/seblau/BlackJack-Simulator is an example of this. The house advantage of blackjack is under 1% for good games (for example 0.33% at Mohegan Sun). So to beat it you just need overcome that which IS possible by counting. But you can see if you play with that sim, decreasing penetration, bet spread and amount really starts to eat into your numbers.
But with the mitigation strategies listed like low penetration, heat gained by betting big, or wild swings in bet amount, and finally no mid-shoe entry it is not possible now to do it and make good money.
https://wizardofodds.com/games/blackjack/card-counting/high-... Michael Shackleford is an expert on gambling analysis and is employed by gaming companies to check out their games. He has loads of detailed information and statistics on his site about every casino game.
But yes. Mathematically possible, and possible in the distant past when casinos didn't know. Pretty much impossible now due to casinos detecting it easily. Not because it isn't mathematically possible.
> The money is to be made telling stories about it vs doing it. Which is why I think the article is complete fiction.
It's funny, but it also just reads like bad fiction to me. The dialogue doesn't seem natural, and the writing doesn't sound so much like someone describing something they actually experienced as it does like someone mimicking a storytelling style they've seen elsewhere. Add on top of it that almost every aspect of it seems ripped directly from the first half of "21" (the Kevin Spacey movie about the MIT crew) and it just comes across as an amateurish attempt to borrow someone else's story. The fact that these techniques she claims they used just don't work anymore seals it for me.
You can spend about five minutes Googling around and learn that the events in this story happened in the early to mid 2000's, mostly at smaller regional casinos, and no, the participants did not make much money - about enough to be useful to a struggling grad student (as described in the article!).
You can find the author and one of her teammates discussing their careers on a podcast from a couple of years ago here:
"Carlo was betting stacks of orange chips we called “pumpkins,” up to $10,000 per hand."
"Our Big Players naturally drew attention with their wagers in the thousands."
No I didn't read every single story about this ever just the one linked. And yes it is a snap judgement from what I know that it is complete fiction. That doesn't sound like small casino action to me. Also, please let me know about the casino that allows 10k bets mid shoe entry.... I've never seen one.
If this was a story written about some struggling grad students that made small amounts of money on small action at small casinos as you claim on your throw-away account I would not have posted what I posted. But alas this thread is about the article posted and I stand by my claim that it is almost certainly untrue from what is contained in it. I don't need to know the entire history to decide that. The article contains information that is at best highly embellished.
I was in Nassau earlier this year, and the quality of dealers was noticeably lackluster. I wonder if your chances of getting away with it there would be increased.
Ok so the idea of a statistical edge in blackjack, as well as the strategies of card counting and what is called basic strategy, were developed by mathematician E.O. Thorp in the 70s. Thorp has a large body of research on the mathematics of many casino games that are worth taking the time to read, some of them with the father of information theory himself Claude Shannon (with whom he used to go gambling, along with both their wives).
The empirical testing of his work was conducted over a number of years by MIT, Harvard Business School and others to show that indeed card counting and other strategies were effective at giving the bettor a statistical edge [1]. Casinos being casinos, they learned of this soon enough and effectively banned card counters in many outlets (as well as putting various measures in place to prevent or minimize those who are more subtle about it, as discussed in OP's comment). In modern times, even a small town casino will have measures in place to stop card counters, the simplest of which is just to have an automatic deck shuffler.
As for his papers on the academic research that have led to strategies like card counting, you can find most or all of them on his site[2]. Of particular note is his paper "Blackjack Systems"[3] describing a proto card counting strategy, "The Mathematics of Gambling"[4], and of course the book that started it all: "Beat the Dealer"[5].
I mean, hi/low is fairly well understood, as are hi-opt methods and such. Casino Verite is a long-standing simulation software used for over a decade (at least in my case) to test theories and strategies. Illustrious 18 is a sample modification table for basic strategy and so forth.
Card counting can be profitable. It's not invented by the casinos, I assure you of that. I've earned enough backoffs from them.
Wizard of Odds is a good site to peruse if you want derived tables/odds/simulations. The author of the blog (Shackleford) is a fairly good statistician and computer modeler.
The information is out there.
In modern times, most of the value of card counting comes from game selection and beating bonuses/weak side bets/match plays. It's not likely a good full-time job. But good advantage players have a wide set of skills, of which beating blackjack is simply one.
Agree 100%. It's a grind at best even with a team. Casinos love card counters because by far a large number of them make errors and can't overcome the tactics to thwart card counting. They make a lot of money off of the card counting fantasies. These articles get popular every time there's a recession.
> with vague things like a count goes up with 5's or down with 10's
That is not vague at all and shows you how simple card counting is. Pair that with a blackjack strategy card which is based on the odds of winning certain hands and its easy to tell how a deck that has a higher proportion of 10's is better for the player.
Card counting is possible but extremely sensitive to the precise rules of the game being played.
The principle is that you bet (more) when the cards remaining in the deck are favourable to you. Even if you can identify when that happens, precisely or heuristically, it's then also important to consider what percentage of your bank you can bet to best avoid bankruptcy.
If you've considered all of this carefully enough, your method will likely no longer work when the casino modifies the rules in any way - most crudely by increasing their take to cover any variance in bet value.
Edward O Thorp explains the mathematics of card counting extremely clearly and readably.
You can usually card count and run all of the old tricks when new jurisdictions just get into the casino business.
Like a new tribe finally gains consensus to open a casino and have no idea what they're getting into or have the enforcement procedures. The same for states and municipalities, but they typically have more resources to course correct quickly.
This is a confusing misinterpretation of the parent comment. He isn't saying it isn't easy to count cards, rather that there isn't a widely seen public method to do it in 2020, and that there isn't math to prove it is profitable with casinos targeting advantaged players.
Sports betting is less deterministic than cards, since odds are set relative to popularity and past statistics. Sports bettors would make money by recognizing when the odds are unrealistic (e.g. popular team is favored too highly) but these markets are efficient. Think of the parimutuel pool as the original crowdsourcing of wisdom.
Yes, you can sometimes find arbitrage opportunities between different bookies. I knew a person who did this for a while, but most online betting has checks against this. Doing it in person is pretty obvious and a great way to get banned.
You can find two bookies with different odds, such that the expected value would be in your favor. I however did work for a company combating this,by alerting the bookies about such opportunities so that they adjusted their odds.
I know some magic: the gathering players who did very well counting cards as part of a team. The “big bettor” sometimes worked in the way you mentioned but sometimes it was something completely different, like a crazy religious person who would bet small for a while while clutching a rosary, then When the deck was hot they would go douse themselves in a nearby fountain while praying loudly, then come back to the table, wet, and loudly claiming the Lord told them they were going to win big today and start placing max bets.
Can you do this every night at the same casino? Absolutely not. Can you do it once, then switch to a completely different persona at a different place? Apparently you can, at least ten years ago.
Edit: also, while the big vegas casinos do all this stuff properly, a lot of the small casinos on Indian reservations are more lax with their safeguards. The issue is that table maximums tend to be in the $500 range which makes the dollars per hour somewhat minimal.
Yup. As I was reading along, I thought a) this story is complete fiction, or b) of course they were caught.
I’m no casino regular but every single one I’ve been into in my life use large 6-8 deck shoes and reshuffle as it hits about 2 decks. Counting just isn’t profitable anymore unless you are blatantly obvious about it.
Large shoes are not unbeatable. In some conditions an 8 deck shoe is better than a 6 deck shoe. Penetration does matter though, a 25% cutoff would be pretty brutal.
>> Counting just isn’t profitable anymore unless you are blatantly obvious about it.
Game selection is a big part of it. You might be looking at large corporations. Plenty of small shops to beat.
How exactly do card counters get caught, beyond abnormal winning streaks? For instance, there is nothing outwardly happening when you count cards, how can it be proven that you are, in fact, counting?
Yep, not really sure what the illusion is, so long as you know how many copies of each card there are, you could even go so far as to consider 52 card deck to be 4 sets already
I'm suspicious of these stories, too. With continuous shuffling, I can't see how you can beat it. The "team" counting techniques perfected by the MIT groups only work if you never make a mistake and are prepared to play for a while.
I think Casinos like to propagate these stories about counting to encourage people who know a little about it to come down and bet big. Odds are, they'll lose.
> Counting cards isn’t illegal, but a casino, like any business, has the right to refuse service to anyone. I know players who have been handcuffed, searched and dragged into windowless back rooms
But surely handcuffing someone for doing something that isn't illegal is itself illegal search and detention?
That treatment, along with the tactics used in this story like Wonging at the table, last occurred/were effective long before the author was born. Typically casinos if they are nice put you on a "flat bet" which makes counting completely useless since profiting on it is predicated on varying your bet. Another thing would be not allowing the player to play blackjack anymore. Usually the harshest punishment is banning the player from the casino, having them cash their chips, and leave. Subsequently coming back would be trespassing then you'd be put in cuffs and brought in the back.
This is correct. I’ve been removed from three casinos for counting. First time: two men in suits came over, made me leave the table, walked me over to cash out and said I couldn’t come back again. The other two times I was only banned from table games. These three were in San Diego. I do know people who have been roughed up at Indian casinos in rural states, though.
I got thrown out for counting once, I was in Biloxi MS. The manager struck up a conversation with another player while he was watching me. The count was really high, I made a huge bet and he went ballistic. He was cursing and telling me to never come back and that he was sending my picture to all the other casinos. The other players were shocked, especially the guy he was talking to. I said this is how they treat people that know how to play. 2 securities guards followed me to cash out and to my car. one of them looked like jeff Foxworthy. I was planning to go back in a disguise but the next week Katrina came and completely destroyed the place.
That interesting. I guess it’s something you wouldn’t know if you didn’t spend much time playing blackjack, but for others reading: casinos are usually open about identifying people counting. For example, Barona casino, which had some of the most favorable tables for counting in the country for years, will call checkplay if you spread more than 8 times the minimum bet. A pit boss will walk over and literally obtain the count from the cards in the discard tray. This is more of an intimidation tactic, as you likely won’t get banned right there if the count is high, but you will have your account marked (when that occurs, your watched every time you sit down at a table). Sometimes the dealer will even call check play based on your play, though this is rare and against the interest of the dealer (as they want tips).
Having a marked account definitely makes for some interesting plays, as you’ll have to work to deceive the pit boss that you’re not counting (Eg randomly betting large spreads when you know the count is low).
You can profit from counting cards with a flat bet. The MIT team did exactly this. The trick is to have counters at multiple tables, all betting a small but flat amount, and floaters that move from table to table while betting large, but also flat, amounts.
The counters lose a small but steady amount of money over time while the floaters make large amounts of money by only playing at the tables with favourable counts.
Casinos defeat this tactic now, after the MIT team became known. A player wanting to enter a table must wait until the next reshuffle, which of course foils any count in progress. (In practice, this isn't usually enforced unless the casino has some reason to suspect it's a counting attempt.)
Yep. The only time you can join a table mid-game at most casinos is at tables you wouldn’t want to join anyways: $5-15 minimum bets (important because the lower the minimum bet, the lower the spread you can bet before check play gets called), unfavorable rules (no surrender, no double after split, etc) and a large number of decks.
Reading the comments that was my first theory on how to beat the variable bets being noticed thing, just have some low level players playing normally surveying the deck and the big better only just shows up at the right time, his bets are all high so they don't seem strange.
Are there any decisions at all for the player in a "flat bet" game? Or is it simply a game of 100% chance then, with all skill/reading your opponent removed?
Blackjack is played against the casino, not other players, and the casino plays robotically, under a simple fixed strategy that is known to the players. There isn't any reading of the opponent to begin with. The only reason the casino has an advantage, despite having a fixed, non-optimal strategy known to the players, is because it acts last, and the players may lose the hand before the casino takes its turn.
There is a basic strategy to learn that is "optimal" about when to take each action, but it is easily memorized, and I wouldn't call it much of a skill element. Now, if you track cards, you can claw back a little bit of the advantage by varying the strategy dependent on what cards remain, but going very deep on this is a lot of work for not a lot of payoff.
You get a much bigger payoff by simply betting big when the deck is in a favorable shape, and continuing to follow roughly basic strategy.
Fixed betting as described is exactly the same as varying your bets, in both cases you're playing roughly basic strategy with varied bets, it's just that in fixed betting your vary your bets by having the big better change tables rather than by having an individual change bet sizes, because this is harder to detect.
This is blackjack we’re talking about, not poker. There’s no “reading the opponent”. The opponent is the dealer who hits on a sixteen or less and stays otherwise.
For the people with a flat bet (on a card counting team) there’s no decision making at all. They simply follow basic strategy which prescribes exactly what move to make in each situation.
In fact there is opponent reading (literally) in Blackjack. The opponent (dealer) must check his hand for blackjack, if the dealer's upcard is a 10 or an Ace, after having dealt the initial two cards to every player. "Hole peeking" is a technique where a teammate stands behind the dealer so they can see the hole card when the dealer checks for blackjack. They then signal this information to the player so he knows the value of the dealer's hand. Hole peeking used to be so common that casinos now have card readers built into the blackjack tables so that the dealers don't have to expose their hole card to check for blackjack.
It is/was also possible for a player at the first seat of the table to see a sloppy dealer's hole card when checking for blackjack. This is called "first basing" while using a teammate is generally called spooking.
There is no reading of opponents in black jack. The player making the flat bets is keeping a count in their head based on all the cards revealed during play. They signal the "big money" teammate when the count is high, to come place some big bets.
So they are working hard keeping that count, but they are not directly playing as if they know anything. The roaming fake rich guy is.
If you have the need (and I would say cynically if you also have the money and political connections) you can commission a private police force that has (in a limited way) the legal authority to arrest.
I am not from the US, so bear with me if I am misunderstanding the nuance of the situation. But reading US news, it seems that it is common for police to arrest people for (and only for) resisting arrest. Resisting arrest by definition must occur when attempting for arrest someone. But since the person was arrested for nothing but resisting arrest, the original arrest attempt which was resisted must have been for nothing. It appears that whatever the intent of the law might have been, in practice the police can arrest anyone without need for cause.
Not really. If you’re being arrested (the requirement in order to be resisting), you’re already in deep trouble. OTOH, the flip side (resisting an unlawful arrest) is serious stuff for the arresting officer. In Texas, resisting arrest is no more than 1 year of jail & a fine. Unlawful arrest is going to start at 10 years of prison, and climb rapidly from there. There’s currently a case of the latter working it’s way through the courts in Dallas. The officer is looking at decades right now.
People have been charged with resisting arrest after being shot and involuntary twitching their limbs. Unless you have money or power, the police can say you were resisting arrest for any reason and they will be believed, not you.
IANAL and just asking.
Assuming the Casino sits on private land, I guess they can handcuff you if they “think” you are a danger to their property and that measure is “adequate”.
They can kick you out and tell you if you return you'll be trespassing, but cuffing someone and detaining them in a back room without any legal authority to do so is kidnapping. And depending on how they physically treat you during that, it might be battery or even assault.
I suspect, though, that many/most people in these situations either don't want a run-in with the law, or want to keep a low profile and not make a scene for other reasons, so they'll just go along with it and quietly get out of there.
They can ask you to leave and then hit you with trespassing if you refuse to go, but they can't just slap you in cuffs and throw you in a concrete room in the back of the casino because you're counting cards. Any money they saved on your gambling would be lost in the kidnapping lawsuit afterward. And if they refuse to cash the chips you can add fraud and theft to the charges.
Card counting was literally my gateway into professional programming.
The first "real" program I ever wrote was a blackjack simulator, in MS-BASIC, around 30 years ago. My brother and I were getting ready to go with my Dad to Vegas for the first time, and we were keen on not being typical dumb ass gamblers...we wanted an edge.
We quickly learned that the only beatable game in town was card-counting at Blackjack, so I got busy first verifying that card counting wasn't some casino ploy (it wasn't), and then modifying the same simulator code to actually "teach" the systems it was simulating.
I wish I still had this code... I absolutely loved developing it, and eventually it was a very powerful blackjack system. It had configurable everything..system counts, decks, rules, players at the table, etc. I literally spent 7 years plus working on it. Eventually it was ported to Turbo Pascal for speed.
I became a whiz at counting... I eventually settled on "Wong Halves", the most complex but supposedly the most accurate count system there was. Remember, this was in the late 80s early 90s, and back then casinos were wide open to be taken.
I was only a $5 to $25 player though, so I never got any real heat. I used a 1 to 5 bet ratios (1 unit at low counts and 5 as "big bets"), which was very conservative, and looking back, I had a good deal of small-time success. Unlike my brother, I was never banned... I was far better than he at "blending in" and being personable.
Nowadays, I live in Vegas, and they have completely destroyed the chances of winning any real money at the casinos. Hell, I remember my simulations showing me that the primary money advantage was made when you had a large bet out at a high count (favorable to the player), that the fact that blackjacks came at a higher rate WAS THE ONLY REAL MONEY MAKING ADVANTAGE THERE WAS.
This is why, I feel, that the high end strip casinos NO LONGER PAY 3-2 for natural blackjacks...an outrage if ever there is one! Strip casinos now pay 6-5 for a blackjack. I have had heated arguments with pit personnel that the game should no longer be called Blackjack, so "Blackjack" pay 3-2 for naturals.
Unsurprisingly, they never saw it my way. No matter how well you count, you will NEVER win long term with natural blackjacks paying only 6-5, so save your money and your time and just goto Vegas for a good time.
I haven’t been to Vegas in a few years but I could still find a few 3-2 tables, generally in the back at some places. Also higher minimum tables tended to have better rules.
The tables that were sure to fill up with low stakes, uninformed players, tended to have really bad rules. I’ve seen 6-5 blackjacks, no splitting aces, and even no doubling after splitting.
Like why not just give the casino the money?
I like playing blackjack because you can sit there for quite awhile and generally not lose too much (that’s a relative term of course) while socializing and getting free drinks. I’ll run a count after a few shoes here and there but not every shoe as I’m not trying to do this for profit so much as entertainment.
Yep...and I never meant to imply that no 3-2 games could e found, just not on the Strip per se. El Cortez downtown still has a banging 3-2 $5 blackjack game that's a lot of fun to play.
Your absolutely correct about your approach to the game now. Just sit, try to find a friendly dealer and some fun people to play with, and you will have an outstanding time.
But still in the end, if you distill it all down, doesn't it always come out to the conclusion:
If your potential winnings are capped (fair or not, by the casino), and your losses are unlimited, what is gambling but a slower way to lose a bunch of money while getting a little entertainment out of it? At least for those of us who are not going to become professional card counters...
> what is gambling but a slower way to lose a bunch of money while getting a little entertainment out of it?
That's generally how I look at it when I'm in Vegas. I'll take $100 from the ATM and sit down at a poker table. Occasionally I get unlucky and play really poorly and I'm out in an hour, but usually I get at least a few hours, and on the flip side, I've spent an entire night at a table on that $100, and it's a blast. Of course this also depends on the other people at the table, and the dealers that come through. Some tables just aren't that fun to be at (you're of course playing against the other people at the table, and some people take it very seriously), while others are great.
Craps can be a huge amount of fun, especially when people are lucky, because you develop a kind of silly temporary camaraderie with random strangers at the table. Blackjack can be the same way, too (though I never learned how to properly play, so I usually don't last long).
Consider that if you go to see a movie (often $15-25 just for the ticket these days), and you're the kind of person to get concessions and whatnot, you can easily spend $50 or more for 1.5-2 hours of entertainment. I'm cool paying $100 for sometimes 6-8 hours of fun, plus free drinks. Now, for people who don't find that kind of thing fun, then sure, that's not for them. And for people who have a gambling addiction, that's great way to spend money they don't have. But if you enjoy it, and are good about setting yourself monetary limits, and consider your buy-in to be a cost of entertainment, it's fine.
> But part of me worried that I wasn’t seen as enough of a threat to warrant intervention from casino management. Maybe it meant that I wasn’t as good at this as I thought. Maybe I didn’t belong with the team after all.
She felt like because she never got caught, she "wasn't good enough"? How does that make any sense? I get self confidence issues are often irrational but, c'mon...
That's like a criminal lamenting that they weren't a very good criminal because the police could never catch them; everyone knows real criminals get caught and arrested.
If you cheat, and cheat badly, it's often the case that the casino has noticed and is choosing to let you continue.
Almost everyone who sits at a high stakes blackjack table thinks they have a system for beating the casino (perhaps by breaking the rules), but in most cases their system doesn't work or they don't execute it well enough to make a consistent profit.
If it's profitable for the casino to allow this type of cheating, they will absolutely let it continue.
I once sat at a table with someone blatantly marking every card that passed through his hand, but not in a way that gave him a hope of profit. The dealer was clearly aware of him doing it, and play continued. (I was quick to leave that table)
Adding to this as someone who has mingled with people that worked at some casinos: if you're losing very badly and seem like a 'problem gambler', sometimes they'll send someone to try and dissuade you. It's bad PR if the casinos ruin people. On the other hand, if you're winning a lot, you will get A LOT of scrutiny and extra measures, and if you're cheating, you'll probably get caught.
This is likely why she had that level of nagging doubt. "Am I not winning enough to warrant extra scrutiny? Certainly if I was that good they'd have figured out what I'm doing and busted me?"
>if you're losing very badly and seem like a 'problem gambler', sometimes they'll send someone to try and dissuade you. It's bad PR if the casinos ruin people.
That's a really good point. Casinos aren't a windfall business. They're there to rake the 1% advantage on blackjack. It's important to have people at the tables moving money, not to have 1 person lose their $100k nest egg in 12 hours.
I disagree. Although I'm not in the business, my understanding from wide reading in the topic is quite the opposite.
Casinos make money from "whales," who may or may not end up ruined to a man, but who are certainly losing enough money to ruin an average bettor.
The guy losing $500 at BJ once in a while (and once in a blue moon winning some back) is the "economy coach class super saver" flyer. Yes, enough of those small fry help defray the fixed costs of the flight. But it's the last minute business class flyer that brings the margin.
Similarly, the real money for the casino is in some mix of 1. problem gamblers, almost by definition, and 2. money laundering.
> "Am I not winning enough to warrant extra scrutiny?"
I didn't really understand this bit from her, though. Her position in the team was not to win a lot, but to bet consistently, probably overall slowly bleed money, and signal the Big Player to come over when the count was favorable. "Not winning enough to warrant extra scrutiny" is literally her role in the team.
Heh, whaddya know. I didn't realize single-deck was so radically different. No shoe, cards dealt face-down. Is there a point to the face-down deal? Is there a change in the game rules that makes the secrecy of your hand relevant?
If you play face-up with a single deck, and have a bunch of other people at the table, you can see more of what cards are already dealt, and can get a better idea of the chances of getting particular cards if you hit.
But this doesn't explain much, because in the case of counting cards for blackjack at a casino, there's a very simple and straightforward metric for whether you're doing it well. Are you making money or losing money?
Of course it's true that you can measure your success by your bank balance.
However, it's worth noting that gambling intentionally has a very high variance - it's part of the addiction mechanism that losing players often win a little and occasionally win large amounts.
Successful card counters will also have their bank punctuated by winning and losing streaks.
It's only in the long-term that you will be able to tell if you're making money.
The comments about card counting are interesting, but not all that relevant to the story, which is a pretty stock bildungsroman-lite of a sort that by design says very little about anything or anyone beyond its author.
I really feel for people in that kind of situation. Say what you like about the wisdom or foolhardiness of deciding out of high school not to go to college and take on student debt, it did put me in the situation of having very quickly to work out whether and how I was going to be worth a damn - less flippantly, it put me in the position, at the beginning of my adult life, of deciding what I was going to do with my adult life, and how to go about accomplishing it.
I can't imagine what it must be like to hit your mid-20s with tens of thousands, if not these days six figures, of undischargeable debt, and then have to start figuring out what sort of worth you're going to have in the world. It's a hell of a racket to run on teenagers, and, just as in the casino business against which this writer chose to try herself, it seems like the house always wins in the end.
I went through a short beat-the-casino phase for kicks. You can increase your edge significantly beyond standard card counting by targeting flaws in casino randomization methods. Randomization is hard. For example, card shuffles aren't random, not even mechanical ones, and particularly not human ones.
It is possible to carefully observe and model a variety of randomization processes at different casinos, find a weakness in a particular game at a particular casino, and construct a profitable strategy that is nearly impossible for the casino to anticipate. Even so, they will eventually notice someone who is a consistent winner, assume you are cheating, and force you to play a stressful game of cat-and-mouse that will lower your expected profit, increase your variance, and lead to a less-than-desirable lifestyle, in my opinion. A team can improve these things at the cost of adding management and human resource headaches.
If you have the talent to succeed at this, my experience is that the same talent can be applied in much more productive endeavors that pay far better and yield a much higher quality of life.
> the same talent can be applied in much more productive endeavors that pay far better and yield a much higher quality of life.
I'd guess that the edge you can get, along with max bets and not drawing attention to yourself means you're better off with a tech or hedge fund job? I've heard that pulling six figures playing poker takes a lot of skill and a lot of grinding. The story of the professional gambler is compelling, but in practice, it seems like most people just aren't smart enough or work hard enough to make it work, or they're smart and work hard enough to do better at something more productive.
I challenged myself to learn to count cards last year and I found it really fun. Being able to count a deck in under 30 seconds is one thing, but putting the skill to work is another challenge completely. It is hard work.
Ultimately, if you aren’t playing with a team or $50+ minimums, you won’t make a huge amount of money on a per-hour basis. I still count occasionally but now only for one or two shuffles before getting back to having fun with friends.
Amazon Prime has the "Inside the Edge" documentary about Blackjack Advantage Player. A lot of insights about how hard it is and how much money they can make now. Basically it looks like this only makes sense against smaller casinos who are behind on countermeasures.
I'm hopeful they will carry slightly different meanings in the future, where "card sharp" isn't pejorative but "card shark" is. Actually, today is the first time I've heard the term "card shark". Ahhh, English...
Yes smart bettors call themselves "sharps" and "AP"s (advantage players) I don't think I have ever heard an AP call themselves a card shark. This seems to be a piece of fiction as most of the terminology doesn't line up and the tactics are odd too.
I think I've only ever heard "card shark" used to refer to a person who is really into the game, plays it competitively, and generally knows the probabilities of various hands, but generally isn't counting cards or otherwise keeping track of any hidden game state. They're also generally into betting strategy, bluffing, reading people's faces, and other such things. I don't think I've ever heard it used to refer to someone playing to win by counting cards, except in case where card counter is mistaken for the above.
I've always thought of "card shark" as a common American mishearing of the correct phrase "card sharp." Like saying "mute point" instead of the correct "moot point" or "take a different tact" for the correct "take a different tack."
It is a legitimate strategy, and I think the casino is not actually allowed to arrest you, accuse you of cheating, take back your winnings, etc for it. They can ban you though; casinos can ban you whenever they want to. I think they can also refuse to give you any comp bonuses. I am not really so sure how it works; I don't gamble in a casino and do not intend to.
It is a legitimate strategy, but if you do this well enough, the casino will not allow you to play, since you can turn the game’s odds into your favor.
they already had this long before facial recognition came into play. they were called griffin books/black books. when you were "caught" they took a photo and a company called griffin investigations would pass this info around to all the other casinos.
These people eventually start winning money at the tables, which will draw attention from casino security. When that happens, yes, someone at security would have to recognize the person there. But once that happens security will also notify the rest of the casinos and its pretty much over by then.
At that point, they should just use a continuous shuffle machine.
I think there is a nice psychological effect of a deck that can truly get “hot”, where the odds actually do temporarily turn towards the players favor. The life is sucked out the game if things are truly random on every deal.
I dunno why so many people keep trying to beat the casinos. Casinos hire professionals whose job it is to track card counters and collusion , as well as advanced security systems. All these signals an gestures are obvious to those whose job it is to detect them. Certain patterns of behavior become obvious to the trained eye.
The explicit goal of every gambler is to walk out of the room with more money than they started with. The casinos make sure that actually happens sometimes, or else they would have no customers. Under those circumstances, it’s basic human nature to look for ways to maximize your return. Many people do that by not gambling, but others try to find loopholes that the casinos haven’t figured out yet.
I go on business trips to Vegas along with a friend. My friend has been playing blackjack for decades. I'm not a gambler, but counting allows me to join in while mitigating risk (in the long run). We have a really good time.
Initially, I spent about 40 hours training on blackjack counting software. Nowadays, I'll practice for one day before the trip, and I'm sharp again. My "lifetime earnings" are very good, but I'm not trying to make money so much as not lose money.
Counting is only a small part of the game. You need to memorize basic strategy for the different types of tables, as there are subtle differences in rules. You have to know how many decks are left on the shoe. You have to divide the count by the decks remaining and calculate how much to bet based off of this information. Lastly, you have to execute all of this nearly perfectly all while in a loud environment while people are talking to you. Even a small percentage of mistakes can mean negative expected value.
The article describes the card sharks using disguises, apparently to get around being banned from a casino. Wouldn't that be trespassing, if they've been told not to enter the casino again?
Depends. There is an interim step between formally, legally trespassing you, it seems where you are told you are no longer welcome, they may use your camera footage and “ban” you.
it all depends how you are counting them, if you use a secondary device or person assisting, that is cheating, which is illegal, even though you are using it to count.
well, i like it, so i won't mind buying the book. and if all ads on internet would be written like this then we'll welcome them instead frown upon...my 2 cents
So with that said:
- Casinos employ methods such as continuous shuffling machines that make counting impossible. Tables that have hand shuffling of 6-8 decks cut the deck and reshuffle with 2 decks remaining or so. So it is harder to get penetration.
- The way to be maximally profitable is to vary your bet very widely depending on how positive the deck is. This could be 30x your low bet. Behavior like this will get you detected.
- Security personnel and even dealers keep counts. It is not some savant activity. It is not hard especially since all these people do all day is look at cards. So they know when the deck is positive and if you are always betting big when that happens you will be detected.
So the people that are left counting have to avoid heat by "camouflaging" their actions. They don't vary their bet that widely and make purposeful bad decisions to make it appear they are not keeping a count. They want to appear like someone that does not know how to play basic strategy and raises and lowers their bets based on superstition (there's a lot of them). This all eats into their advantage substantially. Then in addition betting big at high limit tables is going to be more carefully scrutinized as well.
With that all added together the life for a modern card counter is grinding out for comps and very low player advantage for very long times. Casinos aren't dumb anymore. So while we watch the chronicles of the MIT team, and others, those days are long, long gone. Makes for great stories as people love Robin Hood like tales, but it just isn't happening like this anymore.
Edit: Also the tactic she mentions: Entering a game mid shoe after watching for a while, and waiting for a positive deck, is called "Wonging" After Stanford Wong a longtime gambling expert and advantage player. There is NO WAY you'd get away with "flashy big bettor Carlos" coming in after she counted detected a positive count. Tables with any meaningful limit usually do not allow mid shoe entry for this reason. It is one of the oldest tricks in the book and you wouldn't get away with that for long or at all.