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Optical Recognition System To Foil Card Counting?
Adair writes "Wired is running this article about a new Optical Recognition System by MindPlay being evaluated by some casinos to keep constant track of table game play in order to identify card counters by their patterns of play. The software, using 14 digital cameras around the table, can keep track of every card played, amounts bet, and even tell the difference between your drink, napkin, cards, chips, and ashtrays."
They're going to use a card counting system to defeat card counters. Oh the irony.
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
Why not track the cards? Simply shuffle when the odds favour the player too much.
They already do this to an extent with the video cameras. Video cameras are placed to watch every card that is dealt. They can see it on the monitors if they suspect someone of card counting. An experienced pit boss knows the difference between someone who is card counting and someone who isn't.
The problem with automating this system is what about false positives? There's a difference between patterns being identified by humans and patterns being identified by computers.
My journal has hot
are, if I recall, and I may not, people who pay a whole lot ofattention to the game rihgt? I mean,. it's not like they are using loaded dice or subistuting in the ace thats hidden int he their sock. They are jsut palying intelegent. Damn them!!!! We mustn't allow that!!
In Soviet Russia you dant have to put up with these crappy jokes
Charlie: Now casinos have house rules: they don't like to lose. So you never show that you're counting cards. That is *the* cardinal sin, Ray.
Raymond: Counting cards is bad.
Charlie: Yes.
Raymond: I like to drive slow on the driveway.
Charlie: If you get this right, Ray, you can drive anywhere you want as slow as you want.
So a good player is automatically a cheater? Doesn't sound fair too me.
Omnis amans amens
Why should I make stupid bets at the table when I know better?!?!
The software ... can keep track of every card played, amounts bet, and even tell the difference between your drink, napkin, cards, chips, and ashtrays
Well if its supposed to be counting cards, I would hope it could tell the difference between a jack of spades and a jack of daniels.
Reminds me of the Alan Parsons-based musical "The Gambler" that reveals that the "Eye in the Sky" is merely one of those monitors over casino tables.
The lyrics in the original become more ominous:
"i am the maker of rules
dealing with fools
i can cheat you blind "
This development is sure to turn Ocean's 11 into Ocean's 0.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
So the house is allowed to use a marked deck!! Surely that can't be allowed, and even if it is how long before someone else works out how to read the cards.
As one who has played blackjack as both a nickel-dimer ($5-$10 bets) and as a high roller, I have noticed that pit bosses have an uncanny ability to tell how much you are up or down. I often ask pit bosses to guess how much I am up or down. They can usually tell within about $100.
So, I have a hard time swallowing that this is a device to figure out how to comp players.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Don't casinos have continious shuffling machines that keeps the decks shuffled between plays today? They make card counting impossible.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I can't possibly see why casinos would want to attempt to put the few "scorers" out of commission. After all, a "lucky" guy at blackjack (who counts cards) probably brings more people in to play the game. More people= more money.
On top of all that, most professional card counters use the greatest weapon of all to count cards. Their heads. So, all this will do is to put out the small time amateurs.
A friend of mine is a tech at a Casino in Detroit, and beleive me, any appropriately sized/layed out Casino is certainly not losing money, regardless of the people who play the game to earn a wage.
krystal_blade
It will be easy to motivate our fellow man; there is hardly anything people treasure more than not being annihilated.
Great!
Hopefully it'll warn me the next time I try drinking from an ashtray
If you've got so much money to burn and know no other way to draw satisfaction, you've got a serious problem, IMHO.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
"Our supervisors were spending 42 percent of their time giving us inaccurate information,"
As reported by the supervisors?
.sig Karma out the wazoo, better to spend points elsewhere if this is above 2 or below 0
This is interesting, but it sounds as though it is only useful against individual card counters. What could it do against a team of counters like in this older story by wired?
Even the *simplest* system (assigning -1, 0 and +1 to certain cards) is hard enough to keep track of when you practice. Doing so at the casino is incredibly difficult. I can't imagine that the casino would frown upon one guy that can do it walking out with $1,000, when watching his winning streak will inspire 50 people to lose $100 each at the table.
It just doesn't make sense to kick an individual out. Any pit boss will see a table running up using card counting, and can (by casino rules) ask them to leave.
The emperor is naked.
What on earth is card counting?!
(I'm not a card player at all.)
so they are going to stop card counting by developing technology to.... ...count cards.
all based on technology that will only get smaller and smaller over time.
Face it, just because there's a computer there now, doesn't mean they're not screwing you every time anyway. The house always wins.
What is interesting about this is that they are adding a cold precision to the perks they offer to big gamblers, in order to further increase their margins. What they appear to really be doing is tracking who's betting what and when. Forget the card counting part, anyone who gets a system that works will be tracked sooner or later and booted out. This may seem kind of unfair - you can't profit from genius in Casinos - but then the house can't afford to make a big loss consistently. Still, they can't take your winnings away before detection, so this system is tipping the scales back to the house's favour.
Think more about the fact that Joe Gambler who drops a bit less each time he comes and demands more perks will get away with it for a while, but now he'll be tracked. I can't believe the opposite is true, where quiet but big losers will suddenly be allocated perks... but maybe they will, because it could be good for the casino business.
To conclude : gambling is one of those things where you know the odds beforehand, and if you bet more than you can afford more than once against the odds, you're a sucker. What does need to be clear, with all this technology, is just what those odds are. Rigged odds are fine if they stay rigged the same, but I don't like the thought that a croupier could suddenly tell you, as the odds swing ever so slightly in your favour and you are ready to cut your losses, that your bets are no longer welcome. You want to know the solution? Don't bet at all, and invest your money in a guaranteed return scheme. That's the only way you can be sure to win. Then go get your thrills for much less money doing something like freefall parachuting.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
Not terribly surprising, but still disappointing. It will be interesting to see how gambling evolves, as casinos take ever more stringent steps to avoid giving out more money to someone than they paid in. Here's an interesting little exhibit from the UK dealing with the rigging of fruit machines.
No. You're rich. Or do you know another way to draw satisfaction with 50k for 2 hours?
1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!
"The software, using 14 digital cameras around the table, can keep track of every card played, amounts bet, and even tell the difference between your drink, napkin, cards, chips, and ashtrays."
Fourteen cameras, eh? Seems like Big Brother is looking for more than card counting.
.... there's nothing really wrong about counting cards. Not like it's some kind of morally sickening activity. It simply gives the player a better chance to win.
It does? Either I reqad the wrong article or you are smoking some serious dope. Please share.
In Soviet Russia you dant have to put up with these crappy jokes
Are you dumb enough to play here?
Karma: Bad due to google bombing - Robert Watkins woz 'ere.
Didn't the courts rule that card counting is legal since the eighties? I'm pretty sure they did, even though I find it surprising that no one's mentioned it. Besides, this article doesn't mention that they'll be using the information to kick people off the table - they really can't do that. They perhaps won't encourage counters with free drinks/rooms/etc, but they won't kick them out.
Just like any industry like this, it's all about marketing strategy which is all about reports and data. This is one more way they can gather data and learn about their customers and try to make the best of them for better business.
-N
I've nothing to say here...
I think you meant to post in this story.
what we need is some glasses that can read the special ink and then we can win everytime.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
The software, using 14 digital cameras around the table, can keep track of every card played, amounts bet, and even tell the difference between your drink, napkin, cards, chips, and ashtrays.
Of course! It keeps track of how many drinks you consume. Obviously if you've had less than two drinks and you're winning, you must be a card counter.
But wait -- what's wrong with counting cards? I could see how it would be bad if you were just sitting on the sides and all of a sudden jumped in when you figured that you had about a fifty percent chance of getting blackjack or whatever, but when you sit there all night and are able to keep track of when to play what based on what's gone by? How is this bad?
Maybe I'm missing something here... (eg. I'm not a croupier)
On the one hand, the article points out,
which is interesting, because casinos could always use the human-operated PTZ cameras that watch everything (even the players) on the gaming floor, and of course dealers and pit bosses are always on the lookout as well, but this does raise the bar into questionable territory if only because, like a red light camera, it is operating against you on its own and you really have nobody to "fight" if it decides you are nailed. Perhaps they might review the video of your 100 allegedly-counted hands?
However, if a system like this does roll out into real use, it should be presumed that every MIT kid on their counting team read this,
and is already scheming. I would be to, and I don't even count cards. It's as though Mr. Soltys is looking right at the reader while he says, "Bring it on!"
I knew a guy who counted cards and used chip-palming techniques to keep his chip count reasonable. Switch tables and even casinos frequently, be patient, and if possible play with a team. The camera system doesn't seem to have that stuff covered. I predict the primary way of catching rule-breakers will remain the old fashioned way... half instinct, half suspicious and watchful eye.
"The chances of a gambler actually winning the jackpot on our slot machines is almost nil. They may get some minor wins, but when they strike a jackpot, there's no chance that it's just luck"
Seriously, why do casinos allow games (like blackjack) that can be cheated by counting the cards and knowing some laws of probability? It's like running software that has a known exploit and just hunting down crackers that know how use it instead of fixing the software.
Placeing to the side the matter of profit.
What is wrong with card counting. The only thing I can see is that it turns Black Jack for a game of chance to a game of skill. Does something bad happen when all the players are counters. Maybe the casinos should get out of the betting side and just charge a table and dealer fee or hire the best counters as dealers.
Maybe blackjack is only still played in casinos because it's simple enough for J. Random Gambler to understand. Although not Homer Simpson..."Hit me; hit me; hit me; (makes 21); hit me; D'oh!"
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
And what on earth is blackjack?
(I'm not a card player either).
Smoke and mirrors. I'll bet you ten bucks that this is an empty box and a manual, that it doesn't detect card counting, it just lets the casino say that it's detected card counting, which is a banned activity.
What they detect is people winning small and often. That's what they're really banning. How you achieve it is irrelevant. If you achieve it through blind luck, you'd still be thrown out. This magic system just lets them pretend that they've got a reason for doing so.
Casinos have rules that say you must lose. Only an idiot would accept those terms. Fortunately, that's exactly the people the casinos want to attract. Everybody (by which I mean the casinos) wins!
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Holland Casinos has installed continuous shufflers on all its blackjack tables to eliminate card counting. I don't think card counting is cheating, but I guess neither is continuously shuffling your decks. This certainly seems a simple, cheaper and more honest way of foiling card counters.
I think they moved to this system a few years ago after they were sued by professional blackjack players because they weren't dealing the required three decks from the six before reshuffling. I don't remember if it ever went to trial and who won.
Maybe
After a little bit of googling...
What is Blackjack?
What is card counting?
And thus, the robots have finally surpassed the cognitive abilities of drunken gambling addicts.
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
Step 1) Give me 50K
Step 2) I use it to start up some wild scheme
Step 3) Profit???
Hey, it's a gamble, but my plan only has THREE steps, and none of them are missing. Don't trust those half-finished 4-step plans, mine's the way to go!
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Okay, first there's the human factor, which is everpresent in any situation involving humans. Perviously casinos would have to suspect someone before they tried voice activated tracking software on them. Now they will be tracked by default. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, although it could be annoying to counters.
The thing is, especially if the system works (which they often don't), once it gets a reputation people will begin to rely on it more and more instead of gut instinct. What could easily evolve from this is an over-reliance on the computer. A pit boss might suspect that something's fishy but the higher-ups will think he's full of it because "the computer says no".
This system won't really work against one of the most popular methods of counting (as has been mentioned in a couple previous posts and I think the article) called "back counting". This is where the counter doesn't even enter the game until the deck is favorable. Of course, some casinos are banning mid-shoe entry as a result.
Either way the thing to remember is that there will always be a way to fake out the casino personnel. The other thing to think of is that it could prove advantageous to "advantage" players who primarily rely on counting as a means to a free or paid vacation. The idea is that the little that they would normally lose while earning comps is offset by the counting advantage. These players routinely get shafted on comps because most casinos limit the "hands per hour" figure to 100. Many counters and just regular players routinely average 150. This means that they are supposed to be losing 50% more money; not insignificant.
There are other well known methods that would beat tracking this way. Beating machines is almost always easier than beating people.
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
Yep there is no doubt that Card Counting is about skill and strategy, but Casinos like to suggest that it is somehow cheating and illegal or fraudulant.
They have been know to illegally detain (kidnap) ard counters, even take back (i.e. steal) their winnings. It is the Casinos that are usually crooks, many owned and operated in conjunction with organise crime and are involved with money laundering, fraud and deception.
http://financiallisting.com/Investing/Stock/Stock_ Fraud/more5.html
When it comes down to it, the same people, with the same morals, run both the Casinos and the stock market.
That is one of the mafia's big money makers, too. And if you get on their wrong side, you die. Let's face it -- nowadays, the best thing you can probably do with your money, is buy cheap, low tax (W. Va) land, and put it into production. Start farming it. Or invest in your own business, if yo u have one.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
buying a brand new Z06 for 50K would give me plenty of
satisfaction. infact 406 horsepower of satisfaction.
Someday I'll learn to preview *grumble*
That's true at some tables, however it's becomming less common these days.
The dealer's hole card has often counted as a weakness because someone behind the dealer could glimpse the hole card when the dealer checks for a blackjack. Many tables now favour dealing two face up cards to the players and one face up card to the dealer. Basically it eliminates the threat of weak dealers, and has the potential for more profit for the casino.
Example:
The dealer has a blackjack, everyone looses before the hand starts
or
The dealer has a face card
two players double down, one player splits
the dealer takes his second card. Blackjack everyone looses, the casino takes more profit.
The only way this fails is when a player gets a blackjack, but players are much more likely to split and double down, than have a blackjack.
I know, I know... I need to learn a little English.
Isn't outlawing card counting kind of like outlawing a certain thought process? I mean even with kiddie molesters we still wait till they make take some kind of action the actual thinking about it isn't illegal (yet). It's like if someone can count cards they have to play stoopid to do it lawfully, "yeah I know there's lots of tens left, but I'll stand anyway don't want to cheat you guys". Maybe it should be casino policy that u has a sub 90 IQ or submit to a lobotomy before you can enter the casino.
> and even tell the difference between your drink, napkin, cards, chips, and ashtrays.
And I used to make quite a bundle by slipping in a ashtray or a drink into my cards and getting a full house and then blaming my napkin-looking wife for it...
"I used to have that really cool,funny sig
Many of you have probably seen this, but it's an interesting story about one guy who did a lot of card counting, and what he thinks about the gambling mentality and casinos in general.
Perhaps the words 'OMG! Wallhack!' will suddenly flash upon the screen of the security officer, a klaxon will go off and everyone in the casino will start shouting 'U CoUnTiNg FaG' at the perp.
I wonder if all the tables will be connected together w/ stats for tracking?!?!
If not, then that is the weakness.
Currently most card counters aren't going in solo; they play in large groups that are bank rolled by business men. The groups just get a little bigger, play at more tables and leave just a little faster.
It's hard for a casino to find a trend w/ only 60-85 hands to compare.
Wired had a write up on the MIT system about a year ago. Just square that idea and you have it beat.
Wired had a story a while back about one of these groups of card counters from MIT. The way the story described their method was to do it as a team so that no one player was playing a pattern that could be recognized as counting cards. One player (the "spotter") would be sitting at the table making small bets counting cards, or the girl at someones shoulder was doing the counting (a "back spotter") and when the cards turned to to the players favor a high roller who always makes large bets (the "gorilla") would move to the table to clean up the winnings. A team would have spotters at several tables steering the gorilla (or more than one) to the tables that are winning.
I'd expect you could get in some good time with a high class hooker if you were gonna blow 50k in two hours, and really which is more fun, playing cards, or having sex? o.O
are people who count cards just not allowed to play anymore. or should they play with thier eyes closed? counting cards is a skill of the game if you have more skill than me then u should win .. my good friend is a on his way to being a proffesional card player. knowing the odds and counting the cards is how to win the game... winning is point isnt it ?
if your not living on the edge your taking up to much space.
The NJ supreme court ruled that counting cards is perfectly legal because you are still playing by the rules of the game. However, this only means the casinos can not prevent a card counter from playing. They can shuffle up on the player, when you count cards, you really only gain an advantage after going through about half of the shoe, if the casinos see you counting they will reshuffle before then.
What has always amused me is how it is legal for the casinos to, in essence, use statistics and probability to skew the game in their favor, but for a patron to use the same mathematical techniques to even the odds or to skew them in the player's favor is a crime.
I'm not saying this should change, I just find it amusing.
I enjoy playing blackjack, but I don't count. I am expert-level (99% accuracy) on the basic strategy tables, which can make a big enough difference over the short run. I play for fun and just want my money to last as long as it can; I don't expect to win.
Anyway, I was playing one night in the Tropicana, listening to a pretty decent cover band. It was a Thursday night and the limit was still $5, which is good for low-rollers like me.
I'd been playing for an hour or two, alternating between bottled water and the occasional beer. A tall, thin, Asian guy sits down to my left with a pile of assorted-colored chips, all of them mixed and disorganized.
He doesn't speak to anyone, just pushes his red ($5) chip into the circle. Wins a few, loses a few, but always playing five. On one hand, he rolls out two green chips ($50) and wins the hand. The very next hand, he dropped right back to $10 and loses. Next hand, $5 and loses. $25, wins. Another $25, wins. $5, loses.
I realize he's got to be counting cards. However, if I could recognize it, you could be damn sure the dealer, the pit boss, and the eye in the sky recognized it too.
Anyway, I decide to piggyback this guy a little. He bets $50, I bet $15. He's playing to my left, which makes it awkward, since I've got to wait for him to wager before I can. We did this for a few hands and I may have won a few more chips than I would have normally, but I wasn't betting with the swing that this guy had.
It was about this time that I noticed the heat. A pit boss in a shiny suit standing over the dealer's shoulder. Another guy in an equally shiny suit immediately behind me. I switched back to $5 bets and ordered a gin and tonic, pronto. I've seen "Casino" and I don't want them thinking me and this guy are a team.
They frightened him off simply by offering him a comp (buffet). The poor guy was so rattled by the attention that he scooped up his chips and bailed, without taking the comp. The bosses smirked and went about their rounds.
So, if you're gonna count, don't be so damn obvious about it. You've got to be good enough to count while laughing with the other players, chatting with the dealer, drinking club soda or water, whatever. But if you wildly fluctuate your bets while concentrating so hard the veins bulge out of your forehead, you're toast.
Casinos want you to lose. Most of the time, this means they want you to keep playing and keep betting large.
Since a good blackjack card counter can in fact make money (albeit more slowly than they probably could elsewhere - card counting can only nudge the odds of the player winning to something like 53%), casinos do want to catch them, and will get nasty about it. This makes casinos much less friendly places to people who look like they might be working with a system than places like pari-mutuel based betting parlors, where the house's cut is almost always a fixed percentage of the amount of money bet - there, the house doesn't care if you have a system that works; it's no skin off their nose. (Though they do begin to care if you demoralize other players enough so that the total amount bet goes down) Casinos, though, can get downright nasty if they suspect that your winning streak is anything other than dumb luck. (And, depending on the locality, they have the local law enforcement at their beck and call)
They do use more decks and keep half aside. You will see more 6 deck games then double or single deck games. When they shuffle they use a flat shuffle that looks something like you would use for dominos. Once they get the deck in order the single and double deck games will be cut by a player inserting a plastic card. Then the dealer will insert a plastic card in the midst of the shuffled deck and deal away until they deal out the plastic card. This signals a new deal the next hand. A 6 deck show will usually have about 10-12 hands for a table of 4 players and the dealer. A single deck game will usually shuffle every hand with 4 players.
Also the fewer number of decks used will increase the odds of blackjacks being dealt.
If you go to downtown and avoid the "glitz" casinos you have a much better shot of winning. They have single deck blackjack, craps where 2, 3 & 12 are point bets (only crap out on a 7), and the Stratosphere has single 0 roulette.
They should add a regulation that if a casino is going to offer a game, they cannot add any "rules" or ban players that are successful. If they do so then they can no longer offer the game for 5 years.
Yet another example of Businesses (casinos in this case) having more say than the people. This is one of the many reasons I just avoid Vegas and Atlantic City altogether.
Ok fucknob(FuckBob?), you need to learn a little English. You lose a game. You loose your bowels. Or maybe you have a loose ass. But you never loose a game, unless you set it free? Get it? Didn't think so.
Actually, not always. This is the "no hole card" rule, and it costs the player (I forget the amount; it's significant).
In Australia, we don't have the hole card (dealer gets only one card initially), but we don't have the disadvantage to the player, either.
When there is a player blackjack, or a split or double that loses, the casino doesn't take the money until after the dealer's second card is dealt. So things are in a different order sometimes, but you can split or double against a dealer 10 or ace, and not suffer a disadvantage if the dealer acually has the blackjack.
They call this variation "original bets only". Effectively, if the dealer has a blackjack, then every player loses their original bet (except those with a blackjack as well, which pushes). It costs some time to do it this way, but the player has no disadvantage, and the casino has no risk of people sighting the hole card.
In Australia, if you touch the cards, you get your hand slapped quick smart. I can't believe that they let players handle cards in the USA. It's just asking for trouble (cards up sleeves, there are machines to assist with this, shaving the sides of cards, special inks, etc etc.)
In a 4-deck play there are 16 aces and 64 face cards & 10s. These are the best cards. These should play out 9.6% of the time. Whenever there is a surplus of these card remaining, the deck is in your favor.
Do all of you geeks really think that this system has solved all of the AI problems that must be solved to make it work? Does any one smell at least a faint whiff of barnyard stuff here?
BTW, why would you want to go to someplace that thinks its ideal customer is not only inummerate, but also drunk? I really don't get it.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Card counting is keeping track of what cards have been played, and by extension what cards remain in the deck, in order to calculate your odds of being dealt certain cards and plan your strategy accordingly. Good players of all card games count cards: bridge, poker, spades, hearts, rummy. It's basic strategy and if you don't do it then you will play poorly (by the standards of good players). Yet the casinos try very hard to depict it as "cheating", as something underhanded or bordering on criminal. But they can't change the fact; it's just how good players play the game.
It's a lot easier than these card counting shenanigans and the casinos are at liberty to throw out whoever they want from their property.
-- SIGFPE
also, all the non-counters (roughly 99% of the players) would get quite discouraged/angry if it was known that the casinos were "stacking the deck" against players by shuffling whenever the house was at a disadvantage. RIAA/MPAA aside, most business realize that you don't make money by antagonizing most of your customers.
ObGamblingAnecdote: Winter of 1997. In town for CES. Horseshoe Casino, $25 single deck table. Me and three others playing at around 2am. Second deal after a new shuffle.
All four of us get Blackjacks.
I wasn't positive how many cards got dealt in the first hand after the shuffle (in a basic count system, you add or subtract their count values into a running total as fast as you can, so you don't really keep track of the raw number of cards played), but I figured a rough estimate of the four Blackjacks being a 40 million to one shot.
But... there's probably millions of hands per day in Vegas, so I guess it had to happen somewhere.
--- Ban humanity.
I could see where this is an ethical problem. The casino could just as easily use the MindPlay system to put the odds even more in their favor. They could then use wireless earpiece radios to inform Pit Bosses of a dealer with a loosing streak and rotate him out of play. This gives them even more of an edge. I have seen Pit Bosses in Vegas monitor the tables closely where the players reactions to winning hands mean that a dealer and 4 - deck stack need to be refreshed. By marking the cards where only the house software can read it means they even have a higher chance of winning on the average.
To the poster that recommended glasses to read the special ink. Why not just invent some type of X-Ray Specs and read right through the cards. James Bond did this in "The World is Not Enough". Come on Q, I promise not to look through girls clothes just give me the glasses. Yeah Right 007, I believe you!
A much better strategy involves the amount of your bet. Assuming you have mastered the standard blackjack decision tables, you can expect to win someting like 38-42% of hands. It is possible to make money at that rate.
This is a progressive betting stratgy. It uses a base wager and a progressions rate. You set your base wager as 1/20th of your total stake on hand. So if you ahve 200 dolalrs your base bet is 10.
Each time you win a hand, you move to the next level in the progression. When you lose, you go back to the base bet. Anytime you can amplify a bet (double down, split etc) you skip a level, unless the new level is a bet higher than the total you have won on the current "run". Here is the $10 progression:
10-10-15-20-25-25-35-50-75-100-100-150-250-350-500 -750...
I've never made it that far...
so, if you win one, lose one, win one, lose one... you stay even as long as that continues. however if you lose 5 in a row then win 4 in a row, that works out to (-50 + 10 + 10 + 15 + 20) = +5. So, do the math... as long as wins come in bunches you will slowly increase you balance.
The most hands I ever won in a row was about 10. I was down $180 off my $200 bank. With some double downs in there I was at the 350 bet level but I chickend out, bet 100, doubled down and won the 13th for $200 when it should have been 700. I bet $100 again and lost, but at that point I was up something like $800, so I just took my money and went home :)
This won't make you a winner every time you sit down but over a long enough time it can be successfull. It is easier than card counting, and will work no matter what equipment the casino is using. In fact, IMO, it works better with a constant shuffle machine because then the standard decision tables are always at peak correctness (whereas card counting relies on an imbalanced deck to slightly shift the probability of winning outside the normal decision tables.)
Why don't they just shuffle the deck after each hand if this is a problem?
Input error. Replace user and press any key to continue.
It's all a tax on people who are bad at math.
/.ers, perhaps there are some who can, but I fall back on "If you're so smart, how come you ain't rich?") The casino industry wouldn't be able to build those palaces of tacky splendor, keep the free drinks and cheap food coming and manage to pay out jackpots if the odds weren't firmly stacked in favor of the house.
I expect this thread will be diluged with posters claiming they can consistently win at Las Vegas (given the mathematical superiority of
The state I live in (no, it's not Utter Confusion) is getting ready to institute a lottery, and it's expected that the people who can least afford it will be pumping the most money into it each week in hopes of winning that pie in the sky. We've always had a pretty well-organized numbers racket in my town, centered on convenience markets - the same places that will be selling the lottery tickets. Every time they haul one of the numbers kingpins into court, they claim that the numbers game is just the poor man's stock market, and I'm starting to see the logic in that argument as well.
What if you used cards that looked like ashtrays or had pictures of chips on them?
As a Blackjack dealer in a small casino, we (dealers) know who all the regular counters are. The casino laws here (not the US) are fairly archaic, and casino's have been sued for banning counters.
As far as most of us are concerned, and this goes right from dealers up to pit bosses, to shift managers, we don't really care about counters. They are generally aren't going to win a lot more than a lucky player anyway. (And yes, it's very clear the difference between a 'lucky' player and a counter).
Unless you have a high proportion of counters to regular punters, the counters are nothing much to worry about. And quite often a strong dealer will scare them away. There are quite a number of counters (and regular punters too) who can be scared off by a strong dealer.
Quite often I will have these guys leave the table as soon as I come on. And it happens with a number of dealers at the casino I work at, and I've seen it happen at other casino's too.
The average casino punter is a complete moron, which also kills much of the counters' edge, as a table full of idiots can easily counter-act a good count. It is very rare for a counter to come across a dead table for them to play alone at.
I think that if casino's just trained their dealers to be good at what they do, to not make mistakes, to be a 'strong' dealer, then card counting loses quite a bit of its edge.
Counters also take a _long_ time to build up their skill enough to be able to make a living off it.
Quite often they will lose tens, maybe hundreds of thousands before this happens.
Counters also never play on 'continuous' shuffler machines, they will only play on manual shoes, where the cards only get used once before reshuffling. The machines just feed every card back into the useable deck, making it impossible to count.
The casino will always have the edge, or it no longer becomes profitable.
A lucky bacarrat player can easily take home a ton more money than a blackjack counter.
A bacarrat counter, even more.
On a side note, Blackjack is boring. Roulette can net you a truckload more cash if you know what you are doing. As can craps. And both these games are a lot more fun to play, albeit more expensive.
The casino will always have the edge, the most you can hope for is to get a lucky run, and walk away at the top of the cycle.
The only real winners are the casino, and those who never go in at all.
And despite what most people think, the gaming industry is one of the most highly regulated industries. You can barely breathe wrong without being done for it by the appropriate authorities.
Plus, here at least, casino's are required by law to return a fairly substantial amount of earnings back to the local community, usually in the form of a community trust, or community grants.
Well, there's nothing wrong with it. More power to you for having a skill that others lack.
But the casinos, despite advertisement to the contrary, are in this to make money. They are not, despite advertisement to the contrary, in this to provide a fair and equitable gambling environment. They don't care about being fair. They don't care about your good time, except to the extent that they'd rather steal the eggs than kill the goose.
So if card counters can actually win money, over time, at blackjack, the casinos don't like it. And they can eject anyone they want from their premises for any reason at all. It has nothing to do with being fair. It has to do with keeping their money.
(Although, to be honest, this whole setup seems kind of stupid as a means of detecting card counters. Using a six-deck shoe and shuffling halfway through it is destined to be a much cheaper, and no doubt more efficient, method.)
The casinos are offering a game, a distraction, a form of entertainment. Do I get mad when my Playstation "cheats" and scores on some insane 99-yard bomb after getting to 3rd and 24 in NCAA 2004? Heck yeah. But if I don't like the odds, I don't have to play.
Same thing here. The rules say don't count cards. You can until you get caught. Now it's easier to get caught. Though we'd love to think the customer is always right, it's certainly the owner of the establishment's right to toss whoever they'd like. And the bottom line is, as always, it seems, vote with dollars. Don't like cameras counting cards? Go to the casino that doesn't do it!
The real issue isn't how this changes the game, but how this changes privacy. If they can tell you had 7 drinks before hopping back into your Hummer that you quickly plow into the side of the Bellagio -- or that you were playing and arrived and left three tables with the same woman, who wasn't your sig other, well, now, that's a little scary, isn't it?
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
but I fall back on "If you're so smart, how come you ain't rich?"
Because of the standard deviations involved, in order to play optimal blackjack, with a very low chance of losing your bankroll, your bankroll must be very high in relation to the amount you are betting.
With the highest bankroll I could afford, I went to Vegas and counted cards, and made my theoretical advantage: 1%. (A previous poster said 2% was possible. I've never seen a system that had an expectation of 2%. The very difficult systems I've seen were at about 1.25% - my system was MUCH easier and gave me my 1%)
This translated to about $3.50 per hour. After a day of counting, and let-me-tell-you it was very very draining, I went to the McDonalds and they were hiring at $4 per hour. After my meal, I went to the craps table and did not count cards again that trip.
If you have the bankroll to make a lot of money at card counting, the odds are you can invest it to make more money doing something else. And if you have the mental discipline and patience to do an advanced card counting strategy, you probably are qualified to be a top-notch actuary or accountant, and make more money that way.
1% with a high standard deviation is good for some profitable fun, but it will not make you rich. (The professionals, btw, have other techniques, involving working in teams, but that's getting off topic.)
God is real unless declared integer
Man, if I had this sytem, I could finally stop accidentally smoking my drink, wiping my face on my ashtray and playing three aces plus my napkin!
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
Bad for business to throw people out frequently.
It's a lot easier than these card counting shenanigans and the casinos are at liberty to throw out whoever they want from their property.
People who start out winning make the best losers in the long term. People who start out losing usually don't come back much on their own. Kick out people who win at first and the casinos will lose the best customers.
Blackjack is not a 1 on 1 game of skill like chess is. What you and others dont realize is that blackjack and all the other casino games are defined as games of chance. You are not supposed to have an advantage. Its not even supposed to be even. The house always has the advantage overall, and you will always lose overall. If you don't like this, don't gamble. If you understand gambling, its nothing more than a form of entertainment. You pay to be engaged for while, then you go home. Once in awhile you win, and thats an added bonus. If you expect to be a successful gambler, your a fool.
Moderation Totals: Flamebait=2, Troll=1, Redundant=1, Insightful=6, Overrated=1, Underrated=1, Total=12. (not mine)
If you start winning, someone at the casino could start pointing out that your shoes aren't good enough for the place. Or ask for ID to look for another excuse to throw you out if you are a minor. As a last resort they'll probably just tell you that you are not wanted at their casino, and tell you that you are tresspassing if staying at the BJ table. Losers of course can wear what they want, and be minors.
In small stakes BJ at bars where I usually play, I'll get thrown out for cheating (like adding chips after cards were dealt and such stupid tricks), but I can stack chips when I count cards, or even chat with the dealer about the current count. I figure it's not considered a cheat here.
The card counting rule is so silly it's almost ridiculous. If the casino wants to be sure of their 50% all the time, what they could do is shuffle after each hand. I know this has been tested. In effect this means playing with an infinite deck, and counting will be all but useless.
I'd never place a bet at a table with infinite number of cards in the shoe. I might as well play roulette, or give my money straight to the casino then? It becomes a game of luck. Like playing chess without looking at the chessboard.
I wonder if they actually believe that the stock market is really gambling.
Of course, you can play it as gambling, but the core concept of the stock market is capitalistic: money flows from people with money to people with ideas/products, who use it to sell those things and make money, which they pay out as dividends. That's not a bet on a random factor, like gambling. It's an investment. The investment may fail, but in general progress is made. The odds are in your favor, at least if you choose wisely.
Of course, the core idea is too simple, and it gets yucked up in a variety of ways with various hedging strategies and risk management. They don't actually pay dividends; they keep the profits to improve the company. But you can sell the stock to somebody else who wants a share of those (largely theoretical) dividends.
It may sound like funny money, and sometimes it is (when there's no underlying value), but in theory you could stop the stock market merry-go-round, dissolve the companies, distribute the money among the shareholders, and be done. It doesn't actually work that way, since the price includes future earnings and growth, but you get the idea.
I've gone rather offtopic, sadly, so I'll get back to my point. The stock market is not necessarily gambling; the odds are in your favor. Gambing in Vegas is always against you. If it's the poor man's stock market, that's because you will eventually be poor if you play it.
These are games, and some people enjoy the games. Not me, but I have friends who do. Not one of them thinks of it as an an investment.
Wait a sec, they said they're going to put invisable ink on the backside of the card, ok, go right ahead.
I could never count cards when anything over a single deck was involved anyhow, but now with invisible ink I think we may have something to take advantage of here.
I'm thinking of some sort of ccd built into glasses with a display on the inside of one of the lenses displaying what marked cards the ccd sees. This would also make poker considerably easier.
Not like tech has ever been used to win roulette before or anything.
Go for it Vegas!
Big cards are: 10, Jack, Queen, King, Ace Little cards are: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 At the end of each hand keep a running total. For every little card think "Plus One". For every big card think "Minus one". So if a lot of little cards come out of the deck then the "running count" will go positive. If a lot of big cards come out of the deck then the "running count" will go negative.
Running count is not in itself a perfect indicator. It depends on how many decks of cards are still in the shoe. If you have a 6 deck shoe and it looks like there are about 4 decks left then divide your running count by 4. So if the running count is +8 and the number of decks in the shoe is roughly 4 then the actual count is 8/4=2. This is why you see dealers shuffling when the shoe is only half empty. A +10 with 5 decks is only a +2 actual count. A +10 with only 1 deck left in the shoe is a HUGE advantage.
How do you use the actual count? If the actual count is 0, 1 or negative then you bet the minimum amount. If the actual count is 2 or better then you multiply the minimum bet by that number. So if the minimum bet is $5 and the actual count is 2 then you bet $10. If the actual count is +4 then you bet $20.
ALL of this is also dependent upon you playing perfect basic strategy. If you have 15 and the dealer has a 4 showing what do you do? You need to know that strategy and play it perfectly every hand for card counting to give you any advantage at all.
There are many more systems that are more complex than this, but you have to trade off the increase in complexity with the increase in odds that benefit you. This basic Hi-Lo system will give you the most bang for your buck.
"The chances of you actually playing in a way, by luck only, that matches one of those (counting) strategies is almost nil,"
The chances of you actually winning the jackpot at those slot machines, by any means possible, is even worse.
http://www.walkingtaco.com
Does anyone else see the irony in stopping card counting players with card counting computers?
How long will it be until we see players with 'special glasses' who will also be able to see the cards :))
you must stay on 5. "You too can live dangerously."
Here
He had to concentrate to NOT count cards. It was a reflex for him. In a game where he wasn't trying, after a few hands, he could tell as many as five people what their hands were with better than 50% accuracy based solely on what cards had been played and when.
Build a system that recognizes winning players, since this is after all what the casino's are concerned with. If you see a table where some dude keeps hitting big and winning, send up a flag and shut the table down.
-- A computer without COBOL and Fortran is like a piece of chocolate cake without ketchup and mustard
One of the most interesting books I've read all year was "Bringing Down the House : The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions" by Ben Mezrich
Using team play, probability, counting on a never before seen level, these guys took casinos for millions.
I first heard of it here on slashdot I think. I am not a gambler, I am not a mathmetician, but this book got me hooked from the begining and kept me on the edge until the end. A must read!!
While the dealer tables may not be so well controlled, I distinctly remember hearing that the slots are controlled herabouts (Canada). In fact, at one point there was a large dispute over this due to the "use of a malfunctioning machine voids play" issue.
Apparently a lady won a whole bunch of money on slots or whatever, had a few quarters left and put another in the machine and won big twice. However, as the win (only the second one) didn't register at the main office to which all slots are linked, the casino refused to pay her out on the second winning, and I believe there was also some conflict over the initial win as well. A lot of machines have a "fault" indicator nowadays that say if they're malfunctioning (in which case they generally reject coins anyhow), but I don't believe this was the case.
In the end, the public was starting to get sorely turned off lottery (not much fun if you win and they refuse you your winnings) so the lottery corp paid out eventually I believe. Later, I've heard that the slots are fully controlled by the central station, and cannot have a win unless the central system allows it. I assume this also means that the system somehow stacks the odds of winning to make a decent profit. You still have chances of winning big money, but the general users of the machines will never make more than the lottery itself shovels in.
corporate interests as banks and insurance comanies, hell the actuaries(sp?) probably wrote the house's odds charts as well as the insurers coverage tables. If you find a way to cut into their profit they will strike back, after all they have a 'right' to make money off of us....King George has repeatedly made that clear to an ungrateful US public.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Isn't outlawing card counting kind of like outlawing a certain thought process?
Yes.
But this doesn't mean those in charge can't try and succeed to outlaw thought processes. See an example. Another.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Last time I was playing (loseing at) blackjack, the dealer had a gizmo which could only be described as a perpetual shoe.
It contiuously shuffled the multiple decks of cards inside it. After each hand, all the cards just went in the top.
Try counting that!
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
With this in place, only the *casinos* will be able to cheat.
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball
Nickels are worth $0.05, and dimes are worth $0.10. If you've been paying $5 and $10 for them you've been being had.
paintball
Wouldn't RFID be better for this? A system of cameras and optical recognition is very complicated when all it boils down to is "card dealt to player".
You might have to tune the RFID sigal so that it's weak enough to only trigger within certain parts of the table, or perhaps trigger on only the strongest signal, or perhaps the table would be able to read the position of each card by triangulating signal. Then, it's just a matter of matching the player to where they are sitting at the table. You still need a camera for that, but all you have to do is store a simple video of the player.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I was just on this mad roll and casino employees literally started standing behind me and watching me. If you get too lucky they will then start to watch you to see if you MIGHT be counting cards.
...other thing, if you refuse drinks they get pretty suspicious, too.
Hell, I'd still take the car!
In my opinion, the real goal is to let the casino monitor the "count" in real time, and signal the dealer to either reshuffle or change his shuffling style in response to how the table is doing. At the end of a shoe, they might opt to replace the cards if there are too many face cards up front, while they might do a deliberately poor shuffle if the face cards are near the back and likely to end up behind the marker.There is no need to manage the players if you control the cards!
At first glance, you might think this destroys the appeal of the game, as nobody will win very much. But then again, people keep buying SCOX stock in spite of the odds, so perhaps the market for sucker bets has been underestimated.
Players hate to wait for the shuffle. Thats when 90% of players get up and move on to do something else. This is bad for buisness
Card counting is part of ANY card game and is SUPPOSED to be part of ANY card game. That's why there are only 52 cards or less in any strategic card game, not 4253634565 cards so everything is totally random. Most card games are supposed to be based on some sort of strategy and not JUST pure luck. Card counting is just another strategy.
---------------------------
Read this book: Bringing Down the House : The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions
It's a fun read and highly informative: learn why card counting is legal and why most card counters fail. Learn why Black Jack is virtually the only game in which the player can deterministically and consistently (over time) beat the house. Learn why Vegas casinos do not beat you up if they catch you counting cards, etc...
I know nothing about gambling, so somebody please explain. Is card counting considered cheating? If so, how is it different from any/all other strategum?
Thanks in advance
Casino: "You cheater! How dare you have a really good memory and make use of it! Only people of average or worse memory capacity are allowed to play at this table. You are using your skilled ability to memorize by rote to your advantage and that's not fair."
Player: "So, what, am I supposed to forget that there aren't any more aces left in the deck and bet as if I still believed there were? That would be really dumb."
Casino: "But we only want dumb people to gamble here. Anything else is cheating."
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Just look at all those cool casinos they helped build.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
They do that, too. It's be a little excessive to use a new deck every hand. With this new system they won't have to because counting between shuffles will be more difficult to get away with.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
This is nonsense. The casinos don't lose enough money to card counting to justify this investment. Instead, tracking of this type is simply CRM, and helps guide automated comping of normal customers. Major casinos have all created little plastic cards that help track your play, but it is much more awkward for table games. Hence, the automated tracking.
Wouldn't it be cheaper to just reshuffle all the cards after every hand?
So, I come in wearing replicas cards printed on all my clothing, what does the automated system do with _that_ information? Sorry, I'll take an experienced pit boss any day.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Card counting is perfectly legal.
Kicking a blackjack player out for any reason is perfectly legal.
Card counting is legal and you can walk into any casino and count cards. You cannot be arrested if you walk into a casino and tell them that you are a card counter and made millions from their casino. Card counting is a skill and that is it.
Casinos would not make money if they let card counters play blackjack because counters are the only gamblers that are not cheating and can make money no matter what you do to the cards (except a continuous shuffler is used). Casinos have every right to kick you out, never let you back and let all of their friends know who you are.
- Kill Yourself, spare us all! -