Slashdot Mirror
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...
Insert Sig Here
To quote an old freind of mine : "Whats the point in counting cards, you know there are always going to be 52."
"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!
Live web cams
"It takes a small amount of skill to know the right plays and count the cards..."
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."
NO. Card counting is legal both in New Jersey and Nevada. See, for example, this article.
However, the Nevada courts have ruled that as private clubs, the casinos can refuse business or openly discriminate (employ counter-measures like bet capping, early re-shuffling, etc.) against any player for any reason. Counting will get you kicked out, good counting can even get you banned, but it won't send you to jail.
In New Jersey, on the other hand, courts have ruled that gambling can only take place on games of PURE CHANCE and not SKILL. If the casinos tried to press the fact that a cheater counted cards to gain an advantage in court, they would be admitting blackjack is a game of skill, which is illegal. Thus, casinos are on a slippier slope if they try to kick someone out for counting, because a gambler could take his "skilled play" claim to the courts. That's part of the reason Atlantic city casinos almost exclusively play giant 6-deck shoes with maybe 2/3 penetration (reducing counting advantage to near NILL) and never the two-deck and even one-deck gems you see in the West.
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.
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
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.
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.
Agreed.
This should be considered a tax. Those bad at math pay and those too smart to breed will now have the chance to reproduce.
Shouldn't the EPA be involved? Something about the endanger math student.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
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.
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.