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MIT vs. Las Vegas
spellcheckur writes "Techno-mag-turned-fashion-rag Wired Magazine has an article about
MIT kids counting cards in Las Vegas. I wish I could have made seven figures while I was still in college. Maybe I should get a how-to book." Also, any chance is a good chance to mention The Eudaemonic Pie.
The problem then becomes picking that time. Back-counting is part of the solution. So too is the fact that machine shuffling just isn't very good for the casinos, except in terms of hands/hour, which whilst it mostly favours the house, also favours the player under certain conditions.
Two more things.
1. The maths on all this is not trivial and most people think about the problem incorrectly (ie. there is no "random" in a finite set which has had discrete operations performed on it) and it effects their maths when they do try and tackle it this way.
2. I agree with you 100% about the distractions. The kind of brain which can hold a count, up to seven side counts, track shuffles through a machine on an 8-deck shoe, remember to effectively mask play, keep an active backcount going on surrounding tables, and still smile at the dealer and appear a lucky fool, act like a chronic smoker or toilet-goer to Wong in and out effectively, etc etc is extremely rare.
Also remember that most people who say they win at cards are LYING. I do not even play Blackjack, I can't do the above with my brain. I know hundreds of _gamblers_ some of whom lie about winning at cards. I only know one person who does, actually, win at cards.
1) Dealers generally don't know if you're counting cards. The guy on the other end of the surveillance camera, on the other hand, does.
:)
2) Playing a "standard" game (always split 8s, hit on foo, stand on bar, yaada) will always be against you-- casinos aren't stupid. However, anywhere where casinos have to compete against one another, you have a chance to find "better rules"-- for the most part, anything that gives the player a choice is good. There are odds calculators out there on the web to tell you what you ought to "expect" from a given game. Expect odds for any game on a cruise ship to suck rocks.
3) Once you've found a close-to-even game (only off by a percent or so), then you can swing the odds barely in your favor by counting cards. Your expected payout is going to be less than a percent, and the fact that you've deviated from the "standard" play when the count is good will be a signal to the security camera operator to inform you that the house simply can't offer you a blackjack game anymore.
4) Even without counting, you can "make money" playing blackjack. On a good table, you can basically expect to keep your losses to a sufficient minimum (over large amounts of hands) to cover free drinks. Cheap entertainment over the long haul.
5) Even counting, you can't expect to walk up to a $5 table with twenty bucks and expect to parlay it into, well, anything. You need enough of a bankroll to handle long strings of "bad luck"-- numbers I've seen are between 200 and 400 times the wager at the table.
6) Similarly, a night of counting cards isn't going to make you fabulously wealthy overnight. If you play fifty hands at a $5 table, and you've pushed the odds into your favor by a half a percent, which is really good, your expected return is to walk out the door with $1.25 more than you started with. Glamorous, huh?
7) It's not illegal to count cards. It's also not illegal for a casino to tell you they're unable to offer you a particular sort of game.
With all of this, you have to play an awful lot of blackjack before you've parlayed your bankroll to where you can graduate to a bigger table with bigger payoffs. You can't lose count, you can't "feel lucky". Most people are better off simply playing the "rules" and making it back on free drinks...
-JDF
When you win large amounts at a casino, you get chips at a table, which are then cashed in at a cashier's window. They make you fill out tax forms if you cash out more than $10,000, but less than that is up to you to report (or, ahem, not). If you however cash out several times for $9,000, there is no automatic tax reporting... and you needn't show any ID at all.
;) but I've seen it happen.
So, you're holding a wad of cash untraceable to you and you're going to voluntarily report it to the IRS so's they can take ~40% of it? And you're a card counter? Riiiiight.
Turning $200,000 into a cashier's check requires running that money through a bank and raises a big red flag to the IRS. Carrying big wads of cash == ~40% increase in profits.
Not that I've ever won anywhere near enough for this to be an issue
"Luck is the residue of design" --Branch Rickey
In late 2000/early 2001 I spent 6 months playing on the team that MIT has since been rolled into. The Wired article, while admittedly full of dazzle and drama, is mostly dead-on.
Your facts are not quite correct:
Fact #1: Maybe you don't have to be a math genius, but you have to be pretty f-ing sharp. The count you've described is only the first step in a real counting sytem. Your "knockout system" is called the "running count"; the "true count" is the running count divided by the number of decks remaining in the shoe (which is determined by subtracting the number of decks in the discard tray from the total number of decks per shoe) rounded down to the nearests whole number. The true count determines your bet - you multiply the true count times your base unit (say $100) to determine your bet for the next hand. Today's team counter has to do all this on the fly, instantaneously, while simultaneously chatting up the dealer, checking out the waitress's cleavage, and doing whatever else it takes to look like the average Joe Gambler. Then he has to signal his BP to make the appropriate bet and vary his play according to the count. It requires significant mental resources!
Fact #2: Your math is correct, but there is a way to make money at blackjack without having a huge bankroll. You play on a team - a few senior members can provide most of the bankroll (and take most of the profits, alas).
Fact #3: I've always found counting to be a bizarre mix of boredom and pure adrenal high. Yes, you're repetitively processing the same data stream for hours on end. But you're also this undercover superhero of sorts - using your superior abilities to make gobs of money under the unsuspecting (well, when things go well) noses of these greedy corporate thugs. It's the purest form of excitement I've ever found.
Fact #4: I've never counted solo, but being on the inside of a successful team is quite glamorous. There's just too much money around for it not to be.
FAct #5: Possibly true. Counting only works if the casinos don't stop you, and they only don't stop you if they don't realize you're counting. When mainstream magazines start publishing articles about your system, it ain't too clandestine anymore! Counters are in a continual arms race with the casinos, and this particular weapon is about obsolete. Counters are still inventing new ones, but things like continuous shufflers and facial recognition software are getting harder and harder to counter. It may be that we're reaching the point where a counter and his mind can't beat the technological countermeasures used by the casinos.