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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.
Man... i swear we have nothing better to do... University people have been counting cards in casinos for years... I don't think this is anything totally profound... I know for a fact its been done for at least 40 years by geeks... Read Geeks 2.0: A History of the Internet for a good story about some people almost getting busted while trying to see if the doppler effect could be used to predict the landing of a roulette ball in play...
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The article states the current key issues in a passing sentence- that the chances of being able to do this are basically nil now. Not that they are watching, but that casinos use a 6 deck shoe that is shuffled 2/3 of the way through (before the real advantage begins). Having frequented Atlantic City, the process of counting cards in the privacy of home is one thing, doing it with bells, flashing lights, scantily clad cocktail waitresses, and the most important distraction, the other players, is quite another. The article was a fun read. Made me envious.
Sorry, but counting cards is not illegal, its not cheating. Its just a highly developed way to play blackjack. Now the casino's have the right not to let you play for what ever reason they decide, but they can't arrest you for counting cards, they can only kick you out and ask you not to come back. Considering its one of the only ways the house can be beaten legitimately, I say more power to anyone that does this.
"My head hurts, My feet stink, and I dont love Jesus." -Jimmy Buffett
To quote an old freind of mine : "Whats the point in counting cards, you know there are always going to be 52."
Dealers have to follow the house rules no matter what they think the next card may be.
If they have a hand below 17, they have to hit, no matter what If the table's rule is hit on soft 17, they have to hit no matter what. Doesn't matter if they know you've got a blackjack, or they're positive the next card is going to bust them.
You're right, though, card counting is perfectly legal. Most casinos don't have a problem with it until you start to win a lot. At that point, they can't have to arrested, but they have no obligation to allow you to keep playing.
(Also, the house advantage isn't anywhere near 90%, its a couple percent at best, depending on the rules you end up playing with)
"The guard doesn't seem to be bothered by the bulges under my clothes. He waves me through the metal detector, and I stumble toward my gate."
Thank god he didn't try to hide the money in his shoes!
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"It takes a small amount of skill to know the right plays and count the cards..."
I live in Vegas, and I actually know a guy that can do this, and can really clean up at a Blackjack table. It's not about actually remembering every card's place in the deck and trying to predict when the card will come up, it's about trying to predict when face cards will come up. Their's actually a rhythm/pattern to it while you're watching the cards come out, so a REAL easy way to spot someone doing this is to look for someone that's trying to use a make-shift metrinome, like someone rolling a chip in their hands or tapping the table in a specific, contantly-repeating pattern. Pit Bosses can spot this shit through a hurricane, so unless you can count in your head, you're fucked(it seems simple, but it's hot, noisy, and if you're cheating, you're probably pretty nervous).
It's important to note that it's not like Rainman where you're going to be able to say a 10 of hearts is coming up next, or anything specific like that. You just want to be able to predict with good odds that a face card is going to be up soon. A lot of tables, however, use multiple decks, so it gets pretty hard. Extremely high-roller tables have even been known to use a new deck for every hand. Most tables, though, just have a big plastic holder with 6 shuffled decks inside.
It's really not that hard, and my friend can make about $5,000 a weekend on average, but remember, you may have to sit at a table for 8 hours a day for 2 days to make this kind of money, but hell, that's a work schedule, and a $1,000 a day isn't bad. Just remember, the trick to not getting caught is don't be a stupid fuck. Don't come in a 10am, play the $5 dollar tables, and 2 hours later be raking in at the $1,000 tables, or they'll nail your ass. If they even SUSPECT your cheating, they'll take the money, kick you out, and you can't do shit about it(what are you gonna do, sue them for the money you came there with?). And this is a at nice casino. God help you if you cheat at a shady casino.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
I've met several people who have a very strong technology background and are card counters too (one of them happened to hail from MIT) - this was a few years ago, and some of them went on to create their own .com's, which ended up booming, then folding but ultimately paying out a princely sum to these individuals.
:)
What are they doing now? Hopping around the continent to the few casinos that haven't banned them yet and making the big bucks, though as they tell me the pickings are getting slimmer as it's just a matter of time until they get the boot and they're running out of casinos to pillage. Either way, they've got plenty of money, so it's not a major concern, but it seems as if the appeal of a casino-hopping lifestyle ended up catering to their likes more than technology. Sure, they have all the latest do-dads and high tech gadgets to play with as a result of their financial adventures, but their pursuit of technology seemed to ultimately take a back seat to lounge singers and blinking lights
At least in my experience none of these people made a direct correlation between their technology and card counting pursuits. Most were interested in card counting before ever hitting an "enter" key, but they are brilliant coders nonetheless.. Perhaps card counting begets good programmers, not the other way around?
What are you talking about? I make seven figures right now.
Of course, two of those figures are to the right of the decimal point...sigh.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
Craps, my game...:)
,and two, always tip the dealer; they will remember it! At craps play this helps alot...:)
Actually, with a free-odds bet, both pass and don't pass are in your favor by a small margin (about 4 percent). Stay away from anything in the center and you'll be fine...:)
The three games I play in a casino are, in order, craps, pai-gow poker and baccarat, all three are low house odds. Baccarat is rare, just when I feel lucky. The other two I can play for hours on a couple of hundred dollars, just soaking up comps having fun.
If you just out to have fun, the big secrets are, one, be polite
BWP
There was an article on Kuro5hin about a year ago dealing specifically with blackjack card counting, and it really is a fantastic read. It discusses the types of people that you find at the average casino, and it doesn't paint a pretty picture.
The travel channel special is just the beginning though: There have been documentaries discussing the fact that the mega media companies, many of whom own one or more huge casinos in Las Vegas, imbue movies with pleasant impressions of casinos regularly: Seldom do you see a casino image that is row upon row of sad, lonely elderly people mechanically pulling the lever for hours on end, wearing diapers not because of incontinence but rather just to avoid having to leave their lucky slot machine (because a win is always just one pull away, right?). Instead it's playboys and girls: Brad Pitt/Jennifer Aniston types winning big.
Greedy fucks at Casino's. They rig the game against you so that you basically can't win (i.e., house has 90% advantage).
If you were to go to The Wizard of Odds You'll notice that the house edge in most games is not 90%. It's more like 2-3%. They know that people are not stupid, and while some games are horribly rigged (Slot machines for example) most of them will give out 97% of what they take in...that 3% they keep is what lets you get a luxury room for $20 / night.
Then, when a few smart people (maybe one out of 1000) come along who can count cards and actually break even or better, they bitch and whine.
Execpt that one person can literally bring down the whole casino if they have an edge. Pretend that you can win 52% of the time. It takes one minute to play one round of blackjack. If you're making $100 dollar bets, you'd be making $240 / hour off of the casino. And to think that they don't let you get away with it.
Its just a technique -- a legal one, as opposed to casino's illegal techniques of winning. Look in Hoyle's rule-books on cards. They won't mention anything about it being illegal to count cards. However, their rules for blackjack don't set it up so that the dealer has a 90% advantage.
I won't debate that card counting is legal, as long as you don't use a computer or calculator. And you're right, they don't set it up so that the dealer has a 90% advantage. The advantage is that the dealer wins should both the dealer and the player bust. There are other little differences as well, but it's not overwhelming.
By the way, does anyone here really think that the dealers don't count the cards? Bullshit. You know damn well they do.
Dealers play by a set of rules. Hit on 16 or lower. Stand on 17 or higher. That's it. Not much card counting.
Furthermore, casinos have a number of tactics to foil card-counting, such as cutting the deck, starting a new deck, or mixing in several decks.
You mean they try to randomize a game of chance? They MUST be cheating
Everyone knows there is a house advantage in the casinos. When you enter a casino, you're on private property, and thus have to play by their rules. If you don't like those rules, you can go to another casino whose rules you like. But good luck finding a casino that will let you cheat.
One of the guys I used to work for was a statistics professor at Farleigh Dickenson University a while back. He has been banned from most (if not all) the casinos in Atlantic City. He goes out to Reno and Las Vegas every once in a while for a business trip and plays. When I told him where I was going for my honeymoon (St. Lucia), he asked me to find out if they had casinos.
The trick with most predictive statistics based winning is that there is also significant losing involved. He told me not to bother unless I have several thousand dollars to lose.
Ummm, Jon, aren't you supposed to be dead...? - Otter(3800)
baccarat does not have 50/50 odds...in fact the oddss in baccarat are still slightly against you...but the house edge is smaller when you bet on the bank actually...a lot of people don't like that, cause you're betting against the player...but it's the way to go in terms of edge...
see here.... http://fastodds.com/gameodds/baccarat.htm
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
that card-counting isn't cheating. But rather, a legitimate strategy to a probabilistic game.
Unfortunately, casinos don't like losing money. Their sole business is the fact that people come in and give them money for no real reason whatsoever. As soon as someone comes in and discovers that by following their rules they can win that money back, then they are removed from the premises.
It really does not matter if you are winning at one table or another. If they begin to think that you will take their money instead of give it to them, you will be removed. Simple as that. Card Counting is not cheating, just as keeping a poker face during a poker game bluff is not cheating. It's just good strategy.
~ kjrose
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.
Casinos, on the other hand, bar card counters. Ensuring they keep profiting from poor old retirees and others who don't understand basic probability. Reminds me of a
I first started counting in high school. I had a chemistry professor that turned me on to Beat the Dealer. Every weekend, I put on a fake mustache and hit the casinos. Back in 1980, the casinos really didn't care that much about who was playing, and I was only ever asked for an ID once. Since that time, I've counted off and on and have made, oh, about $75,000 over the years. Luckily I realized fairly early that the life of a gambler is, frankly, a crappy one.
I've met several pros over the years, and, without exception, their lives suck. Divorces, endless travel, few friends, tobacco fiends. Most that have been into the game for more that ten years or so wish they had pursued a more legit career.
As the article states, to make any real money, you have to play in teams. The lone counter can make a living, but not a great one. There is a high to playing and winning, particularly when you're young and you have more cash in your pocket than any of your friends.
Long term though, follow the advice of your elders. Get an education. Get a good job. Invest wisely. Take care of your family. That's a much better recipe for happiness. I know.
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Ummm... No, it's not illegal. If a casino spots a card counter, all they can do is ask you to leave. If you refuse, you can be charged with trespassing.
Casinos want people to believe it's illegal and actively encourage such beliefs, but it's not. As long as you don't tamper with the game, you're not cheating. Here are some other non-cheats:
Using any information available to you without action on your part is not cheating. Counting cards, spotting roulette fields, and dealers with bad procedure are all legit player advantages.
A casino may ask you to leave for any reason. You might be winning due to pure luck, and they can still ask you to leave. If they think you're actually cheating (i.e., marking cards; switching dice) they'll have you arrested.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
Ya Craps is a fun game... I have played a lot in Reno - but my first trip to Vegas will be beginning of september...
I know the game rather well - my ex-father in law was a pit boss who taught me how to play.
I play the pass line for the most part. On come out bets I throw a dollar or two dollar (depending on table rules) on Yo (11) or C&E (11 & 7) - this has very good odds if you hit it.
also about every 4th or 5th bet I will throw a few dollars in the field - with hopes of hitting a 12 (pays triple)
but yes tipping the dealers is very important. Also - dont just tip them, bet for them... if the bet wins, they get much more than you would have tipped them in the first place. throw a few on a number for the dealers....
this does two things:
they watch your betting style, and tell you when to play on certain bets.
when you get rather drunk - they watch out for where your money is, and keep track of your bets. (and no not for the house... some are really good about trying to help the better win)
looking forward to playing in vegas. But never bet with money you cant afford to lose.
Even if your dad built them a new building, you have the same chance to get in as the janitor's kid.
I dunno, I think the janitor's more likely to actually have a key...
Sorry,
If they don't like card counters in the game, they should drop the game from their floor, or modify the game's rules so they can maintain their advantage without kicking people out.
The whole idea of being able to kick out people who have a perceived advantage rubs me the wrong way... If they're cheating, arrest them - otherwise the game is there to play, so play it.
Infact, the first thought I had was a Invader Zim flashback to Megadoomer - two kids playing and when one has a perceived advantage, the other yells "I'm not gonna play with you any more!"
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
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
I've been a blackjack card counter since the late 1970's. I started out using the Revere APC system but switched in recent years to the excellent yet simple Knock-Out unbalanced count system.
:)
This article, as with most Wired pieces these days, has a few grains of truth along with a lot of hype and dazzle. Here's a few points that should be made.
Fact #1: You don't have to be a math genius to count cards. Using the Knockout system, I just start with a count of zero and add 1 to my count every time I see a card with a value of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or 7. I subtract 1 from my count every time I see a 10 or face card. The size of my bet changes as the count goes up. It's that simple.
Fact #2: You can't make money at Blackjack unless you already have money. The way the statistics work out, you need a bankroll of approximately 1000 times your minimum bet to have a reasonable assurance that a bad statistical swing doesn't wipe you out. That means about a $5000 bankroll just to sit down at a $5 minimum blackjack table. Playing at that level will net you approximately $17.50 per hour.
Fact #3: It's pretty boring. While everyone else is having fun, you're sitting there playing a game that is the gambling equivalent of working a factory job. It's repetitive and tedious; you get penalized cash every time you make a mistake. Most people find that they don't have the discipline to do this over the long haul.
Fact #4: It's the antithesis of glamorous. The people you meet who are really trying to make money from the casino industry are a pretty unsavory lot. The few who have the discipline, bankroll and skill to beat the casinos also realize that it's important to look just like another player. The professional card counter at a given table is probably the paunchy, middle-aged guy in the "I love Las Vegas" tourist T-shirt.
Fact #5: It's a dying art. In the 70's, the games were so good, that it took very little to get an edge. The casinos aren't run by mobsters anymore though, they're run by Harvard graduates who understand the games just as well as you do. The rules aren't as favorable, more decks are in play, and they're introducing "Universal Shufflers" that have the capacity to destroy the concept of card counting permanently. The casinos make their money from slots now; they don't have to offer a hyper-competitive blackjack game to lure in players.
Fact #6: If you have a large bankroll, the willingness to study, the discipline to stick to your game plan no matter what, you can make some money playing blackjack. If you have all of the above, however, I guarantee you that you can find a better way to make money.
All of that being said, blackjack isn't a bad hobby. Friends of mine like to gamble, and my business sometimes finds me in Vegas. Instead of handing my wallot over to the casino, I instead make some money, have some free drinks and meet interesting people. That's not so bad.
Just don't listen to too much hype from Wired.
I remember that, but later, well, even John Carmack got booted:
.plan file link. :/
<I>A few of us took a couple days off in vegas this weekend. After about
ten hours at the tables over friday and saturday, I got a tap on the shoulder...
Three men in dark suits introduced themselves and explained that I was welcome
to play any other game in the casino, but I am not allowed to play
blackjack anymore.
Ah well, I guess my blackjack days are over. I was actually down a bit for
the day when they booted me, but I made +$32k over five trips to vegas in the
past two years or so.
I knew I would get kicked out sooner or later, because I don't play "safely".
I sit at the same table for several hours, and I range my bets around 10 to 1.<I>
Sorry can't find the
Will code a sig generator for food
ummmm. no. The "odds" bet has Zero edge. Nada. You get paid based on the odds of the event happening. For instance Odds on a point of ten (this is behind the pass line) pays $2 for every $1 wagered. This is because there are six ways to lose ( six ways to roll 7: 1-6, 6-1, 5-2, 2-5, 4-3, 3-4) and only three ways to win ( 5-5, 6-4, 4-6) 6:3 = 2:1. This is, to my knowledge, the ONLY bet in a casino which has no house edge (in other words, in the long run, the casino makes no money from it. That's why you usually don't get comp credit for odds bets)
BUT, to be able to place that bet, you have to place a pass bet, which DOES have a small house edge (1.414%). This is why casino's limit the size of the odds bets to some multiple of the size of the pass line (or don't pass line) bet. When you see an advertisement for 3x craps, that means you can place 3 times your pass line bet.
Want some good, cheap entertainment while gambling? Forget slots. Go play craps. Ask the dealer for help. Just play the pass line for the minimum (usually $5, but you can find cheaper in downtown Vegas) and the max odds behind it unless it's out of your $$$ range. Cheer like a mad heyena, drink a lot, and under no circumstances say "seven" out loud. Craps players are a superstituious lot.
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
He was able to make money off of it, but I'm not sure how much.
The FBI also used card counting many years ago when they did some undercover investigation in Las Vegas. They siphoned cash through the Casinos and then did statistical analysis on how much of it made it to the banks. They used Card counting to limit their losses.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
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.