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Computer-Based System To Crack Down On Casino Card Counters
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Yahoo Tech outlining a system currently being researched: "Card counting is perfectly legal — all a counter does is attempt to keep track of whether the cards remaining in a deck are favorable to his winning a hand (mainly if there are lots of tens and aces remaining in the deck) — but it's deeply frowned upon by Vegas casinos. Those caught counting cards are regularly expelled from casinos on the spot and are often permanently banned from returning. But given the slim house odds on Blackjack, it's often said that a good card counter can actually tip the odds in his favor by carefully controlling the way he bets his hands. And Vegas really doesn't care for that. The anti-card-counter system uses cameras to watch players and keep track of the actual 'count' of the cards, the same way a player would. It also measures how much each player is betting on each hand, and it syncs up the two data points to look for patterns in the action. If a player is betting big when the count is indeed favorable, and keeping his chips to himself when it's not, he's fingered by the computer... and, in the real world, he'd probably receive a visit from a burly dude in a bad suit, too. The system reportedly works even if the gambler intentionally attempts to mislead it with high bets at unfavorable times." It's not developed in Vegas, though, according to the brief description (the other projects are also interesting) from the University of Dundee's release, but rather in conjunction with the Dundee Casino.
I will never play Blackjack in a casino environment, unless it's for negligible amounts of money.
"How dare you attempt to win one of our games!"
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Then they shouldn't have the game on the casino floor. Don't get all pissy when people figure out how to put the odds in their favor.
In a much fairer way, this is what I think they should do with FPS games.. there should be a ladder, at the top are the absolute best players, they get there by starting at the bottom and scoring more than a standard deviation of points over all the other players. That way the rest of us average (or, in my case, terrible noob high ping bastard) players don't have to put up with being continually schooled. In the case of blackjack, they should just cap your bets. You wanna count cards? Sure, but you don't go off the $10 table ok?
How we know is more important than what we know.
The few casinos I have visited (around East Asia) use continuous shuffle machines with multiple decks. Seems like a far cheaper method of defeating card counters without having to confront them with big burly dudes and earning bad PR.
If you're new to slashdot, don't bother reading the article. Especially in this case, where the article is already contained in the summary here.
The casino doesn't like the way you play, so they're taking their ball and going home.
Las Vegas has made card-counting a non-factor. Between high deck-count shoes, variant games with unfavorable rules ("Super Fun 21"), and early shuffle thresholds, even a player keeping a perfect count cannot create a significant edge. And the million people who show up to try their hand at it and fail far make up for the cost of the few who can eek something out anyway.
Do they say something about the reliability of the method? Percentage of false positives? Those can mean angry customers and lost business.
The very premise of a casino is that it's a business that plays games for money. These games are conducted fairly and have public rules set out in advance. The profit comes from structuring these games such that the casino has a slight edge. Everyone knows that.
The problem comes when the casino breaks its own rules. It's a fundamentally deceptive business practice in any field to tell public that one set of rules applies, then to actually enforce another. If Blackjack is not profitable, the game should be modified or dropped. "You are not permitted to win" is not a fair rule, especially when it's a hidden rule. It's no different from rigging the odds of slot machines, and there are laws against that.
They really don't give God a chance to prove its existence, do they?
They use 8 damed decks for blackjack. Poker is a joke. The perpetually spinning roulette wheel is an abomination. Video slots are stupid. It does not pay to play at all.
There are two reasons to go. For the whores...oh wait Vegas can't stand the competition so you have to drive an hour north for that. So the only reason to go there is so you can say you've been there and paid 8 bucks for a V8.
A friends wife sums it up nicely:
"Vegas is like Monte Carlo as re-imagined by white trash." --blkkitty mzmadmike's wife
http://mzmadmike.livejournal.com/
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Casino's would go broke if the odds weren't in their favour. The whole way they stay profitable is because the odds are for the house. Not a whole lot in most games, and what the odds are is tightly regulated (at least in Nevada), but they are ALWAYS in favour of the house. Even if they were slightly in favour of the players, even 1%, the casino would lose money in the long run.
If you gamble in a casino with the belief you can win in the long run, you are an idiot. Winning is an anomaly, it has to be for the business to work.
Ummm ... if they have this computer thing then why don't they count the cards too?
Besides, I thought Casinos only played half the cards in the deck these days (ever since the MIT card-counting club) to avoid the counters from getting any real edge.
No sig today...
Um, casinos don't send burly dudes anymore. This isn't the 70's. In fact, if they suspect you of counting they simply politely ask you to stop playing. If you are caught playing again, then they may ask you to cash out your chips and walk you out.
The main reason people go to Vegas is because they're stupid.
Well, ok, they do have some good shows there. If you avoid the casinos and just see the shows I might let you off the hook.
No sig today...
FTA: "By comparing the cards and gambling patterns, the computer can identify a card counter inside 20 hands - even if the gambler starts off with a run of high bets to confuse the system."
Yeah, right...
No sig today...
Why don't they just get it over with, and just take your money?
It's not like making a game, with rules and all, really makes that much difference if they just decide that because you are playing the game by the rules, that you are somehow bad because you succeed? So, you can play the game by their rules, so long as you lose?!?!?
This is retarded. I've given the casinos less than $10 of my money for gambling. I'll never give them more than $20. Fuck them and their stupid "you can play by our rules so long as you lose!" mentality. Nevermind their billion dollar profit margins...
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
I made 300 dollars playing blackjack the first time i ever played anything in a casino and i will never play again.
No what they do is put 6 decks in the shoe but then play 4+ (they will reshuffle somewhere in the middle of the 5th deck). I had heard before that for the most part they don't care about people trying to count cards because it's hard to do correctly, and if you don't do it correctly then you're going to lose in the long run anyway. I suppose this system is one way to weed out the people who are doing it correctly.
I know someone who did this seriously, and I looked into it for a while. If you really dedicate yourself to it, and can follow the system, you can succeed. One thing to remember is it is all mathematical. Theoretically (although not in reality), you can place bets only when odds are in your favor! When the first hand is put out of a new deck, the odds are against you. Let's say for the first few hands of that new deck, most of the 4s, 5s and 6s from the deck have been dealt out, and none of the 10s or Aces. The odds swing into your favor, and get better and better as that pattern continues. Theoretically, you can watch the game, and only sit down and start betting when the odds turn in your favor. In reality, this will mark you as a counter, especially if you place large bets when you sit down.
The initial problem with counting is, you dedicate many, many hours to getting good at counting, but as soon as you start making money, you go in the "face book" and are banned from casinos (or at least banned from playing blackjack).
So you have to get a team together. Most teams have a lot of low level counters who bet small and when a decks odds turn in the player's favor (or when a deck turns significantly in the player's favor) they signal a "big player" on their counting team, who sits down and starts making big bets. If your team is betting big money and is successful, eventually they'll figure this out as well, but if you keep trading players out and are clever, you can keep it going, and make some money.
The problem is it takes a lot of discipline. With a team, you need good discipline from a lot of people. You need to trust everyone with large amounts of money. One person screwing up can blow your whole team's security. It is not an easy thing to do. On top of it all, even if you succeed in getting a disciplined team, once you get rolling, Griffin will begin figuring out who you are. Remember, you have dealers, pit bosses, floor managers there not to mention the cameras which have film saved for quite a while and then Griffin investigating. If you can get a competent, disciplined team like that together, why not start a company or something, without having the pain of all that security breathing down your neck once you get good? Ultimately, you have to do it for enjoyment as much as the money. Because it takes a lot of work, discipline, and relations with regards to the team.
make casinos plenty of money. Every time I hear about bullshit like what is reported in this article, I always suspect that the casinos are behind it. I wasted years playing blackjack, counting cards, and losing money (great recreation, losing money), and I never once witnessed anyone being banned at the blackjack tables. The idea that this is common is a lie. So, get good at counting cards, go to the casino, count your way to a measly fraction of a percent advantage over the house and still watch your money burn. Too bad you didn't consider risk of ruin. Give me a 100x more bankroll and I'll give anyone a fraction of a mathematical edge.
FAQs are evil.
Since card counting not cheating, by simply intelligent play, I think there should be a national law (so the bought-and-paid for Nevada Legislature isn't a factor) that anyone asked not to play a game or escorted from a casino, no matter how politely, gets a $10,000,000 payment from the casino, and the casino is fined an additional $10,000,000 to defray enforcement costs.
Anyone who attempts to block card counting is a cheating thief and deserves serious financial pain.
I've got an even better system; It uses a complex algorithm based on bet amount won and bet amount lost. If the value returned is greater than or equal to 1, the player is identified as a "winner" and promptly taken care of. The great thing about it is that it can be applied to any game of chance! Vegas will love it.
My favorite teacher in school, a physics guy, loved to play poker in Vegas. He lost, of course. But he played blackjack and won - after every Vegas vacation, he came home happy: he had funded his poker losses from the blackjack table, and came home neither richer nor poorer. He never did tell us how he did it, but it involved some pattern in his betting and he must have counted cards. He probably never ran afoul of the burly guys simply because he never got greedy.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I saw once a report about that in TV, as it was english I was not sure if I understood it correctly.
So: if you "track" the hands played out in your mind and are "counting" the remaining cards, you are cheating? I can't believe/understand that. Every child plying with cards is taught to keep the remaining stock in mind. Most german card games like "Skat" and similar games require you to have a good idea which cards already got played and which are still on hands or in the stock.
How is a person supposed to play black jack if he is not "allowed" to track the cards in his mind?
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Card counting is illegal? That's totally stupid. If someone's going to get thrown out of a casino for doing well and winning money and knowing how to play the game well, what's the point of even playing the game in the first place?
If you're counting cards on blackjack then you can tip the odds in your favor and win in the long run. The percentages actually turn in your favor.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
Great shows.
I watched the various games rules explanation in the hotel tv and laughed at the atrocious stupidity one must suffer to even consider playing with the objective of winning money.
During the small part of my honeymoon I was there, I spent the considerable quantity of 0$ in games. However I did spend several hundreds of your cheap (at that point) bucks in fantastic shows.
I plan on going back soon (EUR-USD parity willing). I know I won't play a single chip and I know I'll still have a wonderful time with the shows.
About the whores. They are, by a large margin, better this side of the pond. Not that I'd even consider one, taking into account they give even worse odds than a casino.
Does anyone know why the casinos don't do this? It seems so fantastically obvious to me, and the casino operators are not stupid.
People think that the odds are against the player, which is true. The key is teamwork and discipline. Like in all aspects of life, games, battles, cons and sports, competent teamwork overrules single talents. A single player is easy to get detected, a group of 80 people playing the house is really hard if not impossible. And 80 is not just a number that came to my head, it is the actual number of people that it is known to have existed to work in group. This type of splinter teams still exist, and they are still making money today. The members of these teams are constantly replaced as they get blacklisted by the casinos.
The last time I was in Atlantic City (around 1980), they were using multiple decks and had a "shuffle now" card. When it was "dealt" to a customer, the current hand finished, the multi-deck shoe was shuffled, and the customer fit the "shuffle now" card randomly into the shoe.
If I recall correctly, the shoe looked like it held 6 or 8 decks (LOTS of cards!).
Personally, I gave up on casinos when I realized that they couldn't afford all that glitz and glamor unless they were winning a whole lot more than they were losing.
--- Asking inconvenient questions for over 30 years...
Richard Feynman once found out that the only way to make money in a casino is by betting against one of the stupid customers, not by playing against the casino.
Just find some poor sob that is shaking a dice while muttering "Six, six, come on, this is gonna a be a six. Go over to him and say "I bet it won't be a six".
One day I'll try that, if the casinos still allow it.
And how will you collect the debt when you win?
Don't worry if you don't know the answer. Vegas has a large population of debt collectors who'll be happy to help you for a small fee.
On a completely unrelated note, you don't count running among your most loved hobbies, right? What about walking?
Well then your chance should come soon... I don't know when you went, but the EUR is nearing all-time highs against the USD again. And has been rising for months on end now. So assuming your money is in EUR and you want to buy USD then it's getting pretty cheap by now.
Or of course you could consider Macau. Their currency (the pataca) is coupled to the Hong Kong dollar, which is coupled to the USD. And casinos there just use HKD all the time. No idea if it's as good as Vegas, it is at least very different. I like the city - especially it's historical Portuguese-looking centre.
I'm a mathematician. I find the whole concept of gambling quite hilarious - people actually expect to come out better off? It's craziness.
That said, the only time I've ever "gambled" was on a very exclusive cruise ship where they had a "free night" (they were in port, so the laws said you couldn't play for real money). You were given $50 worth of chips but obviously couldn't take your winnings home with you or cash them in.
Myself and my wife sat at a few poker tables out of interest and played for several hours on that measly sum on the low-cost tables. Obviously, we lost all of the "money" but then we realised - we'd just had several hours of fun for $50. Sure, there are cheaper ways, but it was actually quite pleasant, no worse than putting some money into a pool table while in a bar, etc. It *seemed* good value for money, that's the point. We knew we wouldn't win, but it was fun whenever we did win, it was a good social event and we only "lost" $50 (of someone else's money, admittedly, but I've spent more on that quite a few times and had much worse evenings). It'd also been an intellectual exercise for me because I *was* trying to work out the best odds for myself, and that made it a little more interesting.
So I can get the attraction, but still have never gambled with my own money, and I can also see why those who *don't* understand the basic concepts of probability enjoy it even more and feel compelled to spend money on it. Yes, most of the people in a casino are stupid - but look at the edges on the low-stake tables - you'll see the people who have fun *knowing* they are going to lose $10, $20, $50... they factor that in from the start. But they still have a good time, usually for several hours, cheaper than they could in many modern entertainment venues.
And I once had a driving instructor try to explain his "super-theory" about gambling - wait until there's a long run of losses and the next one *has* to be a winner! Great. You go do that. Don't call me when you're bankrupt.
It doesn't take any real skill to "count cards". There are easy-to-learn systems that only require incrementing or decrementing a running total in your head. They're by no means perfect, but given a favourable shuffle they can give you an edge. The strategy is to sit there making minimum bets until a favourable shuffle occurs.
In practice, here's what happens: Casinos deal from a multi-deck "shoe", which has a "cut card" inserted toward the bottom of the stack after shuffling. The cut card is there to ensure they never deal to the bottom of the stack. (If they did, there could be times that a player could bet with absolute certainty). However, they are under no obligation to keep dealing until they reach the cut card. A competent dealer can recognize a shuffle that would play out in your favour, just as well as you can. So whenever the count starts to swing in your favour, there's no need to "send over a burly dude in a bad suit". They simply shuffle the cards!
This is what a couple of friends and me learned when we tried to play a card-counting system in Reno back in the 80's.
A poker game with four twos of hearts in one hand would be weird. How would you classify it? Four in a kind flush?
Thank you very much. I will indeed consider Macau.
That seems to be true with most casinos in Las Vegas. My friend would tell them he was going to count cards and most of the time the pit bosses actually come over smiling. They want to see if you can actually pull it off.
99/100 dumbasses that say they can do it are full of shit, screw it up, and ultimately look foolish in front of the casino. That was straight from the pit boss. They really don't seem too worried about it.
My friend was the 1/100. He kept it small though and we just ending up getting comped into a couple of shows and buffets since he was bringing a lot of other action to the table.
the casino operators are not stupid.
You haven't spent much time in casinos, have you? They're among the most inertia-driven bureaucracies you'll ever see.
Card counting is used when playing blackjack and similar games, it has nothing to do with poker.
I think, therefore I am. I think?
The maffia won't kick you off the mountain when you seem to be able to reach the top?
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Yes, but .... they claim to be able to spot a counter by that time, *even if* the counter is playing to fool the system.
Not gonna happen.
No sig today...
It's still conceivably possible to count cards in poker.
Yes, for Texas Hold'em you should count two cards in your hand and up to five community cards, whereas in Omaha, you should count four cards in your hand, but still up to five community cards. But I'm not quite sure that's enough to make you a winning player.
On a more serious note, what are you talking about? Are you suggesting that poker is played without reshuffling the deck between each hand?
I was in Vegas recently for a wedding... And before anyone asks: No, not mine. And yes, it was planned.
We were hanging around up at the top of the Stratosphere, looking at Las Vegas Blvd. My cousin said to me, "Looks awesome doesn't it? Just remember, that wasn't built on winners."
Isn't it funny how playing the Numbers was made illegal. Unlike, of course, the 'state' run lotteries where you have to wait forever and a day for a large winner. When Iowa started their lottery they were having winners 'too soon'. People were winning around 2-4 Million and the jackpot wasn't getting as high as other states' jackpots. So, they added more numbers. Bigger wins but a smaller number of winners. :P One news report stated that people 'prefer' casino type odds when gambling. Riiight It didn't have to do with the fact they were getting the interest off of all that money. And that the higher the jackpot the more tickets an individual would buy.
So, I'll stick with Bingo. There's always a winner, there can be multiple winners, and at least the money is going to someone local.
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
This is slashdot. We would assume the wedding wasn't yours. You're being verbose. /oblig
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
What do casino owners call a man with a system??
Friend
Most casinos will pick you up from the airport and give you 720 comps just to have you prove how badly your system sucks.
And of course if you are in that Whale Class whatever you win will be paid back by the 10,000 minnows you helped shake down.
and of course don't forget back in the day casino security did not exactly concern themselves with "legal problems".
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Well, you're absolutely right.
Playing low-stakes games is fun at an affordable price. People are insane about placing 1000s on the table, but put $5 for a blackjack round seems ok.
And the odds are slightly in favour of the casino. Meaning that "the money will last for a little bit"
I once went into a casino, put $40 in a Blackjack table ($5), played basic strategy, left when I had $55
Lots of adrenaline
how long until
> Personally, I gave up on casinos when I realized that they couldn't afford
> all that glitz and glamor unless they were winning a whole lot more than
> they were losing.
Amazing. Gambling is a zero sum game. I never would have guessed it.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Good point, but then have two shoes and an automatic reshuffling of the shoe not currently in use. Then there will be no time lost to shuffling at all, which is even better than today.
I once worked for a gaming company. The video poker/keno/whatever machine would throw a "hot player" flag to alert the staff when a player was winning too much or too often - not that there was anything actually wrong with what the player was doing, but just alert the house that things weren't going the house's way and maybe someone should look into it, distract the player, or throw 'em out.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Atlantic City laws say you can't be kicked out for being a card counter.
People who play at casinos don't really deserve some sympathy. Everyone knows that the house always wins, anyone with half a brain can figure out the odds and should not play.
Why people play with their money against clearly unfavorable odds is beyond me. For some, it may be because they have so much wealth that they don't really have any other challenges in life. For others, it may be craziness or the simple thrill of gambling. But to me it seems worse than investing in real estate property in suburban Detroit.
Possible but not useful, at least in the case of hold 'em games.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
Casino's explicitly make it possible to do card counting ... they make more money convincing the people who are bad at it to try while banning the people who are good at it than they would be simply introducing continuous shufflers. Like everything else in a casino, the non prevention of card counting is a carefully calculated strategy to optimize profits for the casino.
If they do that, you'll know you don't have a chance.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Everyone knows that the house always wins, anyone with half a brain can figure out the odds and should not play.
No, the house usually wins. If the house always won, they'd go out of business.
During a CNBC interview, Steve Wynn stated his casino keeps 20 cents of every dollar bet.
The performance of his casino is strictly determined by the number of bets placed - not by the games played.
That tells me that EVERY game favors the house - as does blackjack including the card counters. If the games did not favor the house, they would eliminate them from the casino floor.
-ted
The house always wins LONG TERM. That's the key.
Someone can go to Vegas once or twice on a special trip and come out WAY ahead. It has happened.
However, if someone lives in the area and goes there every weekend, the longer they keep going, the more likely they will eventually fall behind no matter how "lucky" they are at first. If you gamble long term, you always lose.
Gambling can be fun, but you have to remember that long term you will lose. If you go once in a while and win big, and most importantly LEAVE after you win big, it can be an enjoyable activity.
... We were hanging around up at the top of the Stratosphere,
In a balloon?
Because they can't. House doesn't play like a player does; that's why the house has an edge. House always plays by a set of fixed set of rules, generally hit on 16 or less, stand on 17 or more, no hand splitting, doubling down, or insurance. However, the house doesn't start playing until you decide to stand, or go bust. If you go bust, the house wins without playing.
A casino may do this as a defensive measure if they suspect card counting, but they don't like it. It slows down play and cuts into their profits.
They brought back a lot of single deck last time I was there years ago, but in single deck a blackjack now pays 5:4 instead of 3:2. Sounds subtle to the amateur, but it's a huge hit to the player. A lot of the player's side of the math is that occasional 3:2 payoff. I can still do well with double deck with a modified single deck system, but Blackjack is pretty dead now. Cripes, they used to have prime time promotional hours where they'd pay 2:1 for blackjacks.
The whole place has lost its identity anyway. First they tried catering to families for a while, and then they went after the "high end" market- whatever. I make nearly $200K a year and the place feels ridiculous now. Vegas used to be a place where Joe Average could feel like a champ. In my dad's day they'd comp you stuff if you just stood still long enough. He once got a coupon for a free buffet at a casino he walked into just to use the rest room. True story.
Now I would not be surprised if you told me they started charging for the air in the rooms. I knew it was really over when I was walking through the Hard Rock Casino (*gag*) and saw a big crowd of people looking at something, and there was Paris Hilton in a shop (excuse me, a Shoppe- no, wait, a Boutique) trying on hats. Also true story.
The reason they don't has far more to do with psychology than anything.
First, the more decks, the longer it takes to shuffle. That represents a break in the action, and gives people time to think about whether they want to stay at the table or walk away.
Even though the huge majority of people in the casino don't try to count and likely couldn't do it effectively if they try, higher numbers of decks in the shoe are considered a negative by most people. It is not at all uncommon to see a 6 deck shoes at the $5 table, with single deck 21 games at $25 or $100 tables. It becomes a status thing with many players.
At one people I remember seeing continuous shuffle machines - as every hand was played it was dropped back in the machine, which was constantly shuffling the cards. It didn't last. Don't know whether that was because of cost, reliability of the machine, or player backlash.
--My friend was the 1/100. He kept it small though and we just ending up getting comped into a couple of shows and buffets since he was bringing a lot of other action to the table.--
Yeah, I think they are famous for feeding you especially if they take your bankroll. They used to be famous for that and maybe letting you sell a spare tire to get enough gas to make it home on.
I'm a dealer at one of the tribal casinos in Connecticut. The idea that the dealer has anything to do with the outcome of the game is laughable at best. In Blackjack, the dealer is severely restricted in what he/she may do on any given hand, no splitting, standing on all 17s. In fact, the dealer can not make any decision on his own will, violating any of these rules (which are laid out by the Gaming Commission, not the casino) is a good way to lose your gaming license fast. Quite simply, the casino doesn't need a crooked dealer to maintain the house edge; even one loose player on a table full of skilled counters can disrupt the game to the point where everyone loses.
Looks like Cole's(Laurence Fishbourne) worse nightmare has come true.
----- You know you have ego issues when you register a domain in your name.
Vegas is an illusion of wealth.. except for top casino execs (and possible shareholders). As a player, if you actually manage to win, you're banned from playing. Cheaters have used tech to steal from casinos. Now the casinos are using tech to stop "cheating". Card counting is viewed as cheating b/c it has the potential, if done properly, to give the player the advantage. Thus, taking money from the casino.
Because they want people to think they could do it. Suppose they shuffled after every hand, that'd do away with counting, too. But then people wouldn't get caught up in the mystique, so they just add decks to dangle "it's hard, but possible" out in front of people who think "I'm elite, so I'll be the one to do it."
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Yes, and that is why no one plays roulette or slots. No, wait a minute...
Vegas-style casinos don't mind you counting cards since you are bringing others to the table that want to try their luck as well. It's the smaller "Native American" casino's in rural America that have a lot more to lose since they have a somewhat fixed set of gamblers that keep coming back to do the same games and get some food, a winning table doesn't necessarily mean many more people will join.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
"Why people play with their money against clearly unfavorable odds is beyond me" It's called entertainment. I can go to Atlantic City, be treated like a King for 3 days, staying in a top class hotel room I didn't pay for, with people tending to my every whim, simply by being willing to risk some cash at the tables. And the games themselves are fun as well. There is a group energy behind a winning craps table, or the tension of the moment the roulette wheel is about to drop, or even the (generally) goodnatured cutthroated competition of a poker table. And yes, I generally drop 2-300 bucks over the course of the three day trip. But I got three nights in the hotel, food, drink, and fun for that $300. Or I could go to a MLB game, drop that same amount of money, with no possibility of getting it back, and emerge a mere 3-4 hours later.
is to not gamble at all.
Just remember, that wasn't built on winners.
Did you toss him off the Stratosphere for that? Honestly, I have little patience for people who think pointing out most people lose at gambling is some sort of deep and wise utterance.
The answer is "so what?" People are entertained. What other form of entertainment has at least a chance of winning money back?
The thing that's bizarre to people like me, people who win at gambling because we choose out battles carefully, is that the casinos are going to such lengths to go after what is really nothing more than a chimera. There's no massive threat from good players. In fact, a guy having a good run at a table was once considered free PR for the casino. The noobs would figure the table was "hot" and start gambling there. These places must spend more on cocktail napkins in a day than a busload of counters could hope to take out of them. And as some other posters said, the idea of there being a beatable game draws in a lot of amateur counters who just wind up contributing to the napkin budget.
People make the "it's a business" argument to excuse all sorts of douchebaggery these days, but let's go with that. Are these systems ever going to pay for themselves, or just start alienating people even more as word of false positives get around? It's like the ridiculous extremist stuff Homeland Security comes up with that sounds all high tech and cool but won't actually accomplish anything positive.
That only matters with conventional shufflers. There's no reason one couldn't design a device to reshuffle quickly between each hand. Maybe just have 8 decks, and as the cards are finished with, it just puts them back in a random space in the pile. No shuffling is ever needed because cards aren't placed back in a neat little pile, but instead randomly inserted into the pile as they are fed back into the sorter.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I always like to think of gambling in terms of a very high risk investment. There's low risk, like your savings account where you may get 3% interest, and it's garaunteed, and you can access your money whenever you want. Then there's GICs, which you get a higher interest rate, garaunteed, but your money is tied up for a certain period of time. Then there's stocks and mutual funds, where the payout is usually higher, but there's a chance you could lose some or all of your money, if things don't perform favorably. Then there's gambling, where you are most likely going to lose money but the potential for earning inordinately large amounts of cash is there, so investing a small amount ($5 a week for lottery tickets) isn't necessarily a completely stupid idea. I mean, sure you will probably lose that $5 every week. But people spend $5 a week on many things that have absolutely no payout, like fancy coffee. So gambling can be ok provided you spend only a little amount of money, simply because if you do win the big prize, you could be set for life, whereas no other investment you could possibly do would result in such a large payout for such a small investment.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I will remember to point that out to them when they're smashing my hands with hammers.
By that definition Golf is a negative sum game. I hear people still like to play Golf though (hell, I bet most people think you would be insane if you said you gambled away the average amount spent on green fees -- and your loss would be tax deductible!).
ustr: Managed string API with ave. 44% overhead over strdup(), for 0-20B
I don't gamble and have never been to Vegas. Information here is what I gleaned from reading "Bringing Down the House", the book about the MIT team in the '90s (two teams, actually, though it only focuses on one).
Most people are not card counters and have trouble with basic probability; they will lose more than they win. Even so, the casinos have slim odds in this game, so they have to do it a lot in order to make a profit. The game is popular enough that they can do it a lot as long as the cards keep coming out. But time spent reshuffling is time where you're not taking money from shmucks.
So instead, you take a whole bunch of decks and shuffle them all at once. Cards keep coming out, and your guests keep giving you money. It does break down in the face of good card counters, though.
Once autoshufflers were generating random enough decks with good speed, all the Vegas casinos adapted them. That pretty much puts an end to card counting in Vegas.
The book does tell some stories about a new Indian tribe casino that didn't know anything about card counting and got taken hard by the two MIT teams in just a few nights. If you're going to count cards, you'll have to pick places like that.
Not a typewriter
Legal gambling entities make money off the mentally ill in my opinion. And as for this "card counting fraud" technology, anyone on a winning streak will look like he is card counting. With this computer technology in place they will have an excuse to end any hot streak. "The computer says you are card counting!" Who questions a computer result today? Who can? And when did using your own mind and abilities come to constitute theft and fraud?? It is just bizarre and points out that the whole casino thing is government sanctioned, logically bankrupt, legalized theft from people with problems. Sqreater
E Proelio Veritas.
GP is probably thinking of 7-card stud, instead of Hold'em or Omaha, a game in which most competent players do practice a crude form of counting.
I can see the fnords!
I'd love to see the math on this, but it's never forthcoming. Anyone have the proof that doesn't involve a single deck or playing to the end of a stack of decks?
t
No, but they can do something far worse to you if they think you're card counting: require you to flat-bet. That eliminates everything you would potentially gain from card counting.
It hinders if you reshuffle realtively early in the decks of cards. Card counting is mostly just a method for noticing when there is a disporportionate number of 10 point cards to low point cards in the deck. (Because of the rules of how the dealer is forced to play that's favorable to the player). If there are still many cards left when the house shuffles, the denominator never gets small enough to make anything but a huge difference in 10 cards/low cards favorable enough to bet heavily. If there are 200 cards left in the shoe, a 5 card favorable difference isn't enough create an edge. If there are 50 that's more than enough. The odds of having a 20 card difference (what you'd need to have similar favorability with 200 cards left in the shoe) are pretty slim.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
There exist continuously reshuffling card machines. They just pull cards out of it. When they are done with a hand, they put the used cards back in to the machine, and it will continuously shuffle the deck.
Card counters are thwarted completely and there is no time lost for reshuffling. Although, I don't think these machines are legal in vegas. I have seen them on cruise ships and other casinos.
The decks, shoes or whatever always come "pre-shuffled" from some back room.
This is totally untrue.
The dealer does NOT have the ability to decide to shuffle early. The dealers are not allowed to make any decisions at all.
If they're doing this, they're cheating, and can lose their gaming license over it.
"Home version of the lottery!" Take a five dollar bill out of your pocket. Wad it up and throw it away. Ta-dah!
If they're following the outlined rules and they're still losing money, then it sounds like yes, they DO have an obligation to lose money! (At least, up until they modify the rules to avoid it.)
Even if they made it a rule in writing on the wall that "card counting is not allowed", it's pretty tough to enforce it fairly. Effectively, such a rule amounts to enforcing "thought crime" -- because they have no way to directly see into a player's brain and figure out what they're thinking. All they can do is look for patterns of behavior that suggest card counting is going on.
Some people enjoy the thrill, and playing the games can, in fact, be enjoyable until you realize that there's often a "best move" that you should always take at any given time. Once it becomes rote memorization of which move to make, it's less fun.
People do different things for fun. I like to go to movies. I pay $6 for 90 minutes of pretty mindless entertainment. When I come out, I'm rarely a better person for having seen the movie. In a week, I'll have probably forgotten a lot of the movie. In 2 years, I may not remember much more than the basic plot. In 10 years, I may have trouble remembering that.
I used to like amusement parks. God, what a rip off! You pay something like $50, and while you may spend all day there, during the busy season, you may get to ride 10 rides if you're lucky. And the rides are short--3 minutes or so each. You probably also eat while you're there, and the food is expensive (and bad for you.)
I rarely gamble, and when I do, I never spend more than $100. I could probably do better things with that money, but you could say that about most of the things that most of people spend their money on. I never expect to win, though I recognize that there's a chance that I could. And if I ever end up with more than twice what I started with, I walk away.
What it says is that everyone has a different idea of fun. The parent said nothing about addicts. Contrary to your belief, not everyone who goes to casinos is an addict. Some, yes, but not all. Most are there just to have a good time.
As for throwing money away, the parent made it pretty clear that he is spending money on an experience that he enjoys. It's pretty likely that there are people who consider the things you call fun to be a waste of money and time. It's all relative.
"Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders what the part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of"-TMBG
Systems like this have been around for many years, and have been used commercially in various casinos. There really is nothing new or unique about it. I also see no evidence at all that it's reliable enough to use in a real casino environment, or to be of any help at all.
Remember, this is just some kid's college project. I'm sure he's enjoying the attention, but this is not an innovation.
The commercial units combine video tracking with RFID for measuring chips and betting. These systems are very expensive, and don't work all that well. They're also easily defeated by skilled card counters using various techniques. This system is too.
As for card counting itself, there is really a lot of misinformation on here, but here's the gist:
- It's totally legal, and it's totally legal for the casino to ask you to leave if they don't want your business.
- They don't do this often, because most people are losers, even if they're trying to count cards.
- They don't care if you win a ton, if you're just lucky.
- It only gives you about a 1-2% advantage overall. That's really not a lot.
- The MIT team didn't invent any of it, including team play. Nor were they all that successful or profitable overall. Disregard the movie, guys.
- It's not that hard to learn, but it does take practice, a strong stomach, and a huge bankroll to ride out the inevitable swings.
- Expected earning is around 1-2 units per hour. So if you're playing $25 units, you'll make $25-$50/hr in the long run.
Not bad, but not great either. And you should have at least $25,000 (1000 units) as a disposable bankroll to do this, or you risk going broke fairly easily.
- Lots of people think they can do it, but few really can. The ones who think they know what they're doing are subject to lose a lot of money in short order, so the card counting hype is of benefit to the casinos. They've known this since Thorpe's day.
- Casino rules vary wildly from location to location, even with a casino. Same thing for card counting conditions.
Yes, I've studied this quite a lot. Anyone have any questions?
is a pattern in raising and lowering bets.
Card counting is not that hard, it just tells you when to raise your bet. If you car counted but never changed your bet they would give a rats ass.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You're still not beating the odds. If you don't gamble, the odds are you won't lose any money to gambling.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I think of gambling as donating to the casino. I pick an amount. And only play that amount. If I lose that amount, I stop. If I am ahead, I take back my starting amount and play with their money. I have never played more then $100. It was fun, that is how looked at it.
Yes. It says we are so fantastically rich just by being born here that we can piss money away without thought. We don't have to be smart. We are Americans. We are fucking rich. We hire people like you to carry our bags and clean our toilets.
Seriously, the anti-American crap on slashdot is getting boringly predictable. Can't we start a Slashdot:Third world for all these pricks so they leave the rest of us alone?
If they called it losing, nobody would play.
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
Interesting, could it be that it's different by state? I'm not sure how the laws play out for the Indian casinos but for the normal ones I'm thinking that they are going to be regulated by the states and not a common federal law.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
"You were given $50 worth of chips but obviously couldn't take your winnings home with you or cash them in."
So you didn't gamble at all.
I ubnderstand the math just fine, but I enjoy occasional gambling.
Think about the cruise ship. The money you spent on that you could aghve spent in vegas, AND had a chance to win it back. Not a good chance, but a better chance then the cruise ship giving you your money back.
Poker players are always working the odds in their head.
"wait until there's a long run of losses and the next one *has* to be a winner! "
yeah, that one drives my up the wall as well.
"So I can get the attraction, but still have never gambled with my own money, "
BWAHAHAHahaha, no you don't get the attraction until you spend your own money. Sorry, it's not possible.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Atlantic City laws say you can't be kicked out for being a card counter.
Atlantic City law says that casinos can only offer games of chance. Asking card counters to leave due to their counting activity would be admitting that Blackjack is a game of skill.
It's often said that the difference between addicts and other gamblers is that most gamblers treat it as an amusement, and simply throw the money away, while the addicts try to treat it as an investment or employment that will somehow make them money. The former are rational, the latter are not.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
And the funny thing is, that you have assumed I'm talking about a particular card game in that sentence (in actual fact his "theory" was universal to roulette, slot machines and other forms), that you assume that the dependency on the single factor "I won" versus "I lost" is somehow indicative of future performance rather than a deeper dependency on previous events (e.g. the particular cards dealt etc.), that you have extrapolated such dependence to win/lose scenarios and that, dependent or not, the man's greatly simplified thinking is in any way correct or useful.
if you know when they anomaly is likely to happen is the key.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Have you been to a casino before? Even in rural America, they somehow manage to attract a ton of non-americans and first generation immigrants. This really ain't an American thing.
I always like to think of gambling in terms of a very high risk investment.
This analogy is not really valid, because gambling generally has a negative expected value (you lose in the long term) while investment has a positive expected value, whether it's bank account or stocks. In fact, investors demand a higher expected profit when the risk is high. If high-risk stocks had identical expected profits to bank accounts, no one would invest in stocks but rather in the lower risk bank accounts.
...sounds remarkably enlightened.
I never really understood how it could be considered legitimate
to kick out counters. They are just good players. A casino
shouldn't be able to kick out people "just because they win".
If the mark has no chance of winning then the whole enterprise
is a total con and should be treated like such.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Actually, no. You may in most jurisdictions deduct from your winnings, your losses. In the great state of Illinois, your winnings are taxed in their entirety, with no use of losses to offset.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
[citation please]
Also, tell me where any law, except for civil rights reasons, says you can't "reserve the right to refuse service to anyone".
Private property means you can be booted for any or indeed no reason, just on the whim of the owner.
And finally, tell me one case where a big fat company ever had to follow a silly rule like that.
The answer is "so what?" People are entertained. What other form of entertainment has at least a chance of winning money back?
Exactly. It's just like ANY other form of entertainment: you pay for it. Granted, some people become addicted and lose everything because of it, but too much of anything can be bad.
When I go to Vegas, I don't expect to become rich. I'm not a very good gambler. I take a few hundred dollars and play it slow over the course of 2-3 days. Basically, I get 24/7 entertainment and as many drinks as I can handle for the price. Seems good to me.
Oh, it gets worse. There is a craps player in the Midwest, "Dave" who is dedicated to making a profit and is rumored to have stayed at a table for about twenty hours and been down around $14000 until he managed to come back and make a $500 profit. He NEVER TOUCHES THE DICE! Just bets "Dont Come" and lays the odds on the inside numbers. House advantage on these bets is approximately 1.41%, since he doesn't lay the outside numbers (On the 4 and 10 you lay 2 to get 1, can put a strain on a bank roll in the short run) it is actually a touch higher, I'm to lazy to calculate it. Because of his dedication and discipline to walk away a winner, the gentleman is barred from Harrah's midwest properties. Don't expect to ever get a fair deal from a casino.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
[citation needed] I know courts in the US and Canada have held that card counting is a ligit strategy, but casinos can still kick out anyone they feel like.
Not a typewriter
Bullshit. Casinos will not treat you like a king for a measly $300 spend...well, maybe in their darkest days, but I doubt it.
Maybe if you drop $300 every weekend?
Come on dude, you know your math ain't right.
Not really. The count has to go at least over 10 before it becomes statistically meaningful. In a game where the deck is reshuffled every hand, it'll never get that high.
Poker has pot odds, but that's a little different from card counting.
Not a typewriter
Okay - but the house still has the advantage there. He was probably booted out for some other reason - like making the table boring, or they felt he was driving other customers, away, or whatever.
You've just described something like many other gambling methods.. people figure that, eventually, they'll win if they stick it out long enough.
Table limits and the house edge prevent this.
Blackjack is still the only game in the modern casino where there is enough information available for the customer to occasionally get an edge on the house.. and as to why they don't just shuffle after every hand, or something else? Blackjack is appealing - more than any other game people think they can beat it... and that draws in players, most of whom will lose.
Card counting is relatively easy - and so is getting caught.
Having software to catch counters makes sense - just as in any other industry, having software that can replace the work of a human tends to be cheaper ;)
Possibly - it's more likely just that using said machines would reduce the amount of play they get - the draw of players to blackjack, the reason it's the #1 game in the casino is because people think they can win.
Casinos offer players the chance to win money under particular conditions dictated by the mechanics of the game. Card counters aren't altering those conditions but instead are playing intelligently according to the rules of the game. To kick players out for seeking an advantage within the rules of the game is actually form of fraud: the casino offers players potential winnings and then reneges on its offer once it decides it's against its best interests to allow the player to continue. The casino is cheating.
Whether or not a player has a legal right to be there is irrelevant. Once the casino allows a player into its premises it shouldn't be able to renege on its promise (express or implied) of potential winnings. Property rights are not supposed to enable fraud, but that's exactly the way casinos are using the law.
Unfortunately, the fact is that casinos are allowed to practice what is ultimately a form of legalized theft.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Valid point - but it would still reduce the number of blackjack players. Blackjack is insanely popular. Its' cheaper for them to keep kicking out the counters than it is to change the game and lose business.
It is because they want their customers to think it is possible to beat the house. That way they will make more money from them. The vast majority of people aren't good enough at maths to do card counting, and those that are do their gambling for hedge funds in Mayfair where they can make a lot more money.
Already exists, and called a "continuous shuffler". I can't post a link because Websense is blocking them all.
IMHO, that's the right approach. Look at the losses as the payment for the entertainment. If you don't lose much or even win some, it's a bonus.
Yes, Las Vegas is Disneyland for adults who don't know math.
If you can see that betting in the long run = losing, you can't go on with it unless your aim is to hurt yourself.
But the environment is still pretty amazing, the shrines built to - what, the promise of luck? Just fantastic glimmer.
It's "my precious" everywhere.
... I know courts in the US and Canada have held that card counting is a ligit strategy, but casinos can still kick out anyone they feel like.
A city is similarly free to put in place laws regulating this further on its territory. Just as it can regulate any other business.
Of course, I would assume that there aren't many casinos in Atlanta because of that.
More decks were used to make it much harder to count the cards. As you near the end of the multi-deck, though, a card counter's knowledge becomes more and more precise, and they can make bets with the same certainty as with one deck.
If a casino really wanted to get rid of card counting as an advantage, they'd use, say, an 8 deck shoe, then completely redo the whole deck when it was half done. I don't know the details, but I doubt even perfect knowledge of the played cards can give you enough of an advantage to eke out a statistical profit as you approach only the halfway point.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The dealer does NOT have the ability to decide to shuffle early. The dealers are not allowed to make any decisions at all.
If they're doing this, they're cheating, and can lose their gaming license over it.
This is true. But the dealer can inform their floorperson about suspected cheaters, and that floorperson can then tell the dealer to cut the next shoe differently, shuffle differently, or a million other (sometimes superstitious!) techniques to throw a suspected card-counter off the trail.
Key concepts: variance, discipline, win goals, loss limits, betting strategies, money management. If you do not understand and practice them you will lose more money and more frequently then you should. Short term variance can make you a winner. Betting strategies (Fibonacci progressions etc) and money management (you buy in for an "afford to lose" amount, you don't pull more money out of your pocket or go to the ATM) can leverage those variances. Win goals (20% is a reasonable sum, so for a $300 buy-in if you are up $60, you are done) and loss limits (50% is reasonable, "all of it" is not) and the discipline to adhere to them. Statistically, if you are at a craps table more than an hour you are probably going to be a loser, most variances are SHORT term.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
They reshuffle the whole deck after poker. Card counting in blackjack relies on continuing to re-use the remaining cards until they're all gone. Hence knowledge of cards used in the previous hand applies.
Poker players do use a limited form of card counting, if you want to call it that, when they see that, say, there are three known aces out -- one in their hand and 2 on the table somewhere. And therefore, this other player who needs an ace, but doesn't have one on the table, is more likely than not to not be holding one in their hand. Then in comes the social engineering aspect judging with bluffs and so on.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
... keep the casino happy by spending most of your winnings on games you lose or on entertainment or tips.
The bottom line:
If they know you'll walk home without much extra cash in your pocket, they won't mind if you win big at a particular game.
Just be sure you establish a reputation: earn a little, spend almost all of it, earn a medium amount, spend almost all of it, earn a lot, spend almost all of it, and make sure when you walk out you say "thank you, that was a very entertaining vacation" but make sure your wallet is in roughly the same shape it was when you came in.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Atlantic City != Atlanta. Atlantic City is the New Jersey equivalent of Vegas. It was never as successful as Vegas, though. Where Vegas eventually shot off side industries in less shady businesses, Atlantic City just got more run down.
Anywhere, there are plenty of casinos and even blackjack tables in Atlantic City. Card counters aren't a huge threat in practice.
Not a typewriter
Because they can't. House doesn't play like a player does; that's why the house has an edge. House always plays by a set of fixed set of rules, generally hit on 16 or less, stand on 17 or more, no hand splitting, doubling down, or insurance. ...
Quite right. But what if the house found it in their financial interest to use a shill at one of the player seats, to irrationally hit (and try and suck up the 10s/As) on a favorable count? Maybe someone wandering around the floor, getting buzzed over to tables where the pit boss (or computer in the sky) suspects a counter?
I haven't thought that all the way through to decide if that would ever be possible or practical, but if it is, I'd bet on the casinos doing it.
This is like asking why the strip club doesn't have strippers you can throw dimes at, so your money can last all night. What incentive does the casino have to treat you like James Bond for potentially some percentage of $40 spread over several hours?
I wonder if it's in the casinos best interest to demonstrate that if you, in fact, "manage to beat the odds" the odd (guys in suits) will beat you.
___
No power in the 'verse can stop me
Card counting is legal, so the system is allowed to count my cards. But is it legal to link those cards to my person?
My guess is that the system is less subtle than claimed and just totals the gains. Only long run losers are allowed to the table.
With poker, at least in some of the casnios I have played at... they have a mechanical shuffler in the table.
Play with 1 deck, while the other shuffles in the machine. What would be so hard about playing with 1 deck in, and one deck playing. Or have card shufflers made that can do 4 decks at once, and then use 4 decks shuffling, and 4 decks in use....
Fuck.... shuffle every hand.
Problem solved. Now playing the game properly with all available information still gives the house an advantage.
It seems to me they MUST figure either A. its cheaper to just catch and eject people B. The ability to count cards brings in more money from incompetent counters than is lost to competent ones before they are ejected
Frankly, I think they would implement this within 2 weeks if the law were amended to simply not allow them to eject people from the game for just playing well.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
This is totally untrue.
It's a tad harsh to brand me a liar because my experience doesn't match up with yours. As I wrote quite clearly, this was based on my personal experience in Reno over 20 years ago. Maybe the laws were different then. Maybe the dealers were breaking the rules. Whatever the case, this is what happened when I was there.
Thinking back on it now, I recall they would also change the dealer if we were winning. Perhaps there is some loophole that they are allowed to reshuffle if a new dealer comes in?
suspected cheaters
"Suspected card counters". Card counting isn't cheating.
That's the narrow perspective of gambling where the only point is to win money.
The more appropriate and realistic reasoning is that you're paying for a rush. It's exciting to have the feeling of winning a big stack of money. It's the same with paintball. No one plays paintball so they can get shot and develop welts. They play for the strategy and excitement.
Next time you're in the grocery store behind someone buying a lottery ticket, consider that maybe they're getting a few dollars worth of excitement in waiting for the numbers to come in and the anticipation that "maybe" they'll win a few million bucks.
That said, I do not gamble. I'm just open to different perspective and I ask people about their motivations.
52 52'23" W 47 32'07" N
Even beyond this, they use machine shufflers and shuffle after EVERY hand at some casinos. It happens fast enough as to keep the hands per hour up so the casino can still get as much money from the suck^H^H^H^H customers as they did before
Forgot the link
http://casinogambling.about.com/od/blackjack/a/shuffler.htm
I'm sorry, but you are wrong! It is purely an American thing. Hell go to any casino in Monte Carlo and you will see nothing but Americans pissing away their money.
/sarcasm
If your making money hurts their bottom line, their finance dept. will take great offense.
At least it's not like the old days when their finance dept. was named Guido.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
It applies universally, including on reservations. If they're shuffling away a known player advantage, they are cheating. Good luck prosecuting them, though.
Very few bother with this, however, as the casinos do quite well even without cheating the customers, and it isn't worth the risk.
Right. That's very different than shuffling when the player has an advantage, and letting it play out when they don't. Cutting off lots of the shoe is pretty common, or just restricting them to flat-betting is quite effective.
This is what I'm saying is wrong:
"However, they are under no obligation to keep dealing until they reach the cut card. A competent dealer can recognize a shuffle that would play out in your favour, just as well as you can."
Yes they are, by state law and the gaming commission. A dealer is not allowed to make *any* decisions, period. If they do make decisions, such as shuffling early, they can easily lose their job, if not their gaming license, just as I said. They are cheating, no two ways about it, and it's prohibited.
If they change the dealer when people are winning, either the floor person is being a superstitious idiot, or far more likely, they suspect the dealer is making mistakes, such as flashing the hole card or screwing up payouts, which can be hugely profitable for a skilled player.
My sentiments exactly. Imagine if they were throwing out everyone paying attention to the odds in poker.
For that matter, if the outcome is deterministic and unfavorable, why have the game in the casino in the first place?
because I was on a table where the dealer was showing 6, so I split a pair of kings. My friends said I "Stole" their cards.
Boy, I never heard the end of that one. Won that hand well enough though 8')
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
Sounds logical. I'd also say that I don't think the OP was lying just rather that he happened to run into the rare instance of a casino cheating.
And as you say good luck getting anywhere with that.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
I can't for the life of me understand why they don't use eight decks and reshuffle after four or five. Then the card counting edge will almost never be big enough to give the counters an edge.
Even if there's not a law against it, I would imagine business would go swiftly downhill when you competitor decides to advertise that he doesn't rig his decks.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
You're treated like a king in vegas for only dropping 2-300 bucks? What hotel is this?
Personally, I gave up on casinos when I realized that they couldn't afford all that glitz and glamor unless they were winning a whole lot more than they were losing.
Ditto. I once blew a big sum of money on blackjack very quickly as a result of large amounts of beer. I gained two valuable insights: don't do anything important while drunk and casinos look really great because they are decorating with my money. I no longer gamble on anything. Except BoysTown Art Unions. I just love those prize homes and one day I'll win one.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
And I suppose you could count the fingernails of the other poker players... but what would be the point of either?
Experience teaches only the teachable. -AH
Multiple decks have an impact on the counters, but not remotely as much as you might think. There are still swings in the favorability of the deck, they just aren't as large as they would be with one or two decks. It narrows the margin, but doesn't eliminate it.
As for why they don't do this --
A) Many do.
B) Have you ever timed how long it takes to shuffle eight decks and get them shoved back in the shoe? A lot of players will leave the table rather than wait. Plus, it's effectively down time for the table. They aren't making money while they're shuffling.
I've heard some casinos use auto-shuffling shoes. They play eight decks and all discards are immediately and automatically reshuffled back into the shoe at the end of the hand. They play an effectively infinite deck composed of eight of each suit/denomination of card. I don't believe there's any way to count these shoes, but I haven't been closely following developments in blackjack play in many years.
A couple of Vegas casinos use them. Unfortunately, I don't know of any on strip.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
I read about a similar machine about a year ago. I don't know about anywhere else, but the Atlantic City gaming regulators disallowed it because it counts cards, and using a machine to count cards is illegal in Atlantic City -- that goes for the casinos too.
There was an episode of the old Buck Rogers in the 25th Century serial (back in 1979. Erin Gray::hotness!) where Buck went to a 'casino' and started to gamble. They threw him out for winning, saying that he must have a hidden calculator or something on him. Buck said that, no, he was just using his brain to play the game, and said something alluding to people not being able to think or do something basic like figure out odds or something like that.
Point is: casinos don't want people using their brains to play either. They want sheeple to throw their money away. By trying to weed out 'counters', they're admitting the targeting of stupid punters.
OK. Fine. It's a private establishment and they it is their right to set their rules and to select their customers.
However, shame on the citizens of these states (mine included) for giving the force of government laws to these thugs' schemes. They can use all the wiz-bang technology they want, but if you so much as bring in a mechanical counting device you will be fined and do time in jail.
I've never understood why a self-respecting, rational person would give anything to these cretins.
Of course everyone has a different idea of entertainment, but I cannot think of anything that is shallower than betting x Dollars on a number to be selected on a roulette wheel.
There sure are a lot of other shallow amusements, I could think of, but all of them are a tiny bit more individual and may even produce some results
- drinking to get drunk - you could fraternize with people of whatever group you're in
- smoking to get high - you could produce new art, as most art is somehow connected to drugs
- spraypainting your name on a subway car - you could improve your artistic talent
- bungee jumping - you could improve your self-esteem or beat anxiety
- beating soccer fans of the other team - no idea why, but usually the fans of the other team do just the same so at least it's mutual and reciprocal.
Throwing away money for fun is not bad per se, but there are a ton of other opportunities where there is small but evident chance of a personal, individual, mental or bodily gain. Even Poker has some potential for personal and emotional development. But what of that is in there for gambling? Am I to greedy in demanding a return on any investment, at least in calories and alcohol percentage?
Maybe I should set aside some 50 bucks and try it myself :)
You elected another president who did not promise to balance the budget.
Just like we do over here in Europe. People who balance the budget, curtail spending or even remotely think of NOT increasing the gargantuan national debts is simply not elected.
The entire Western World has regressed to childhood and wants to eat their cake and have it. We only elect people who want to spend more money on good causes, not people who want to reduce spending on the least noble ones.
Everyone and their grandma has now recognized that we (The West) will never be able to repay any of our national debts, the French, the German, the US-American, the Belgian etc. etc. and that the whole shebang is going to crash on us. Since everybody has at least subconsciously realized that our Titanic is going down no matter what, we have all the looting going on as you'd expect. Since we will all have to defect our loans and debts, we can as well go all-in and hope we keep some of the physical property we bought for all this paper money.
By now it's rich Russians all over, from St. Tropez over Val d'isere to Monaco.
I understand the odds of lotteries, but still buy a lottery ticket every time the thing gets above 100 million dollars. Do I think I am going to win, maybe if I played for the next 50 thousand years or so, but realistically I do not expect to win. But when I examine the dollar I spend, versus what I could do with it, versus the minute possibility that I might actually win 100 million dollars, I find it to be an acceptable investment. But I understand the game, as RAH said, "Of course the game is rigged, but you can't win if you don't play."
I went to the casino one time with my dad and sister while visiting family in Ky. I took a $100 dollars into the casino and me, my sister and dad started shooting craps. I left the craps table and started playing $50.00 dollar a hand min bet blackjack for several hours, then dropped down to $25 then to $10. I went home a grand sum winner of $4.00, I had $104.00. My wife, needless to say was quite upset. I probably dropped a couple of grand at least of the casinos money back to the casino, but I had a good time. Ain't been back since then either. Only way to get rich gambling is sitting behind the box cutting pots or running the game.
The uber suckers are the ones holding the T-bills.
Never hold debt that the debtor can reduce to nothing just by printing more of the currency.
The East (China in particular) has an equally big problem. The good assets in their banks are T-bills, the rest of the assets are even worse.
I expect to keep my real property, while my mortgage payment shrinks to spare change. Most of the stuff 'we' bought however was/is made in China junk that will not last a year.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
They would ignore you.
You have no right to due process at a casino.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Never surrender! :-)
Seriously, only some really arcane counting systems I have seen ever incorporated surrender.
I would like to think that this means that you had got the gambling industry sussed before you were what - 10 years old ? OK, allow a little time to think about it - say 13?
What age are you allowed to go into casinos in your jurisdiction? 18, 21, or 948 (if accompanied by both parents) ?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
A very famous computer once said, "The only way to win is not to play."
I think that applies perfectly well in the context of gambling.
Just remember, that wasn't built on winners.
Did you toss him off the Stratosphere for that? Honestly, I have little patience for people who think pointing out most people lose at gambling is some sort of deep and wise utterance.
Since you do not know my cousin, nor me, you may not know that it was "obvious wisdom." It was delivered to be humorous and not cautionary.
While I understand that casino's do NOT want to lose money, a game like blackjack is somewhat hard to monitor. What happens when I clearly see that a bunch of aces/faces have gone out, and change my bet accordingly? Am I going to get banned for card counting?
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
I'm replying a bit late on this, but it took a few days to obtain the information I was looking for.
Prompted by your comments, I began looking online for a list of regulations pertaining to how Blackjack (or "21") may be dealt in Nevada. This proved more difficult than I expected. I located extensive documentation on Nevada's gaming statutes and regulations, but nothing specific about when dealers are permitted to shuffle.
I did, however, locate an e-mail address for general inquiries to the State Gaming Control Board, and e-mailed them the following question:
I’ve been searching online (to no avail) for a list of regulations on how casinos in Nevada are permitted conduct the game of “21” or “Blackjack”. Specifically, I’m trying to determine what (if any) regulations exist regarding when a dealer is permitted to shuffle the cards. Are dealers legally obligated to deal until they reach the “cut card” inserted in the stack of cards, or may dealers choose to re-shuffle the cards before reaching the cut card?
Thanks in advance for your help.
Today I received the following reply:
The Nevada Gaming Commission requires that all licensees who put up a licensed gambling game for play to the general public must have a set of house rules for each game. We do not spell out how they need to deal the game, but the rules must. If you have a problem at a licensee you can request to see their rules or ask a pit boss on what their rules are on dealing and shuffling. As most games are dealt according to industry standards they do not normally vary a lot. If you are playing on a single or double deck hand dealt game which usually is a higher minimum bet you might see they shuffle more if the casino thinks patrons on the table are counting cards. It is not illegal to count cards, but a licensee can detect it very easily and by shuffling more they remove any advantage a card counter might be getting.
(Name removed before posting online)
Special Agent, Enforcement Division
Nevada Gaming Control Board
So, the official word is that it is not "cheating" for dealers to reshuffle early.
Why not use one deck and shuffle after each hand? Guess people might mark cards or something like that to cheat.