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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.
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 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.
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.
I thought blackjack cart counting schemes only worked when you already had a significant number of cards pass by? How could a computer identify a card counter inside 20 hands when a card counter hasn't even started using their count by then?
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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.
You just got done watching "21" didn't you... it's alright, you don't have to lie.
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.
I read that book, but I have a very difficult time believing it is true. The numbers just do not make sense. You will burn an awful lot of money betting the minimum over and over again waiting for that rare opportunity when your odds improve to about 50.5% or so. And then for a couple of hands you can make a .5% return after waiting around and burning money all night. So for a couple of hands a night you bet thousands of dollars a hand, risk a huge amount of money, for an expected rate of a few tens of dollars per hand. And this is after all your teammates burned their money betting the minimum for hours on end. Oh, and you have to somehow win enough to pay for all the overhead of a vacation to Vegas. It is all garbage. The casino does not spend gobs of money employing elite security teams to track down card counters. (and lets not even think about how ridiculous the idea of a multi-billion dollar organization exposing itself to lawsuits by roughing up a customer who scammed them out of a few bucks is)
I can believe a story about guys who went to Vegas, played basic strategy and managed to get some nice comps. But there is no way they were bringing down millions in net profit. At least not until they started doing book/tv/movie deals. That I can believe is profitable.
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...
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.
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.
Option 1: Your analysis is incomplete and inaccurate.
Option 2: Countless media portrayals and first-hand accounts of card counters making money are all wrong. Media reports of expensive anti-counting technical measures are part of a casino conspiracy to make people believe blackjack is beatable. Books and conferences on blackjack game protection are hoaxes. People who've been barred from multiple properties based on information in the Griffin book are making it all up. Lawsuits against casinos whose security guards have roughed up card counters are actually filed by insiders as part of this elaborate theater they're putting on to increase public interest in blackjack.
You're pretty smart. Can't be #1. Must be #2!
Since you have no legal "right" to be allowed to play a gambling game that a privately owned company is legally offering, your proposal of a law makes no sense. You being allowed to gamble in a casino is a privilege the casino confers on you, not a right granted by the constitution or other laws.
If you are upset that the casino offers no games where they do not have an advantage and thus lose money, then don't go to the casino. If you want to make money gambling, play poker. You don't play against the house, you play against other players (so its purely skill vs skill.) You pay the casino a relatively small percentage of each pot (called the rake) for basicly "renting" the table you play on and the safety (try coming up a few tens of thousands of dollars in a game at Bob's house downtown and not getting robbed on your way home.) Also casinos attract people who want to play, so you are paying for the ability to always have people to play against, many of which have huge bankrolls for you to win (or to lose to. Depends on your level of skill at the game).
And a knight. Are you sure you were playing blackjack, or did you really just spend the night playing Magic:The Gathering?
-THE END-
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?!?!?
I'm sorry, I got a little confused there; were you talking about casinos or the entire financial industry?
> Why don't they just get it over with, and just take your money?
That's what they're doing. That's what casinos have always done.
But they can get *more* of your money if they can get more of you playing and/or keep you playing longer. (By "you" I of course mean people who are bad at math; people who are good at math, as a rule, don't buy lottery tickets or play casino games.)
So in order to get more of you playing and keep you there longer, they take your money gradually, a little at a time, while maintaining an illusion that "you could win". They work very hard at maintaining the pretense that you can win, because it takes your guard down and allows them to rob you blind.
Like I said, people who understand math don't play casino games much.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
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."
Atlantic City laws say you can't be kicked out for being a card counter.
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.
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.
"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.
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?