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Blackjack Player Breaks the Bank At Atlantic City
Hugh Pickens writes with a link to Atlantic writer Mark Bowden's account of how one gambler has cleaned up against casinos: "[B]lackjack player Don Johnson won nearly $6 million playing blackjack in one night, single-handedly decimating the monthly revenue of Atlantic City's Tropicana casino after previously taking the Borgata for $5 million and Caesars for $4 million. How did Johnson do it? For one thing, Johnson is an extraordinarily skilled blackjack player. 'He plays perfect cards,' says Tony Rodio. But that's not enough to beat the house edge. As good as Johnson is at playing cards, his advantage is that he's even better at playing the casinos. When revenues slump as they have for the last five years at Atlantic City, casinos must rely more heavily on their most prized customers, the high rollers who wager huge amounts and are willing to lessen its edge for them primarily by offering discounts, or 'loss rebates.' When a casino offers a discount of, say, 10 percent, that means if the player loses $100,000 at the blackjack table, he has to pay only $90,000."
Pickens continues: "Two years ago the casinos started getting desperate and offered Johnson a 20 per cent discount. They also offered playing with a hand-shuffled six-deck shoe; the right to split and double down on up to four hands at once; and a 'soft 17,' whittling the house edge down to one-fourth of 1 percent. In effect, Johnson was playing a 50-50 game against the house, and with the discount, he was risking only 80 cents of every dollar he played. Johnson had to pony up $1 million of his own money to start, but, as he would say later: 'You'd never lose the million. If you got to [$500,000 in losses], you would stop and take your 20 percent discount. You'd owe them only $400,000.'"
The house doesn't like to lose.
Sounds to me like he didn't so much "win" as was "paid for a commercial". This is going to attract tons of people who think they can do the same thing. They will make their money back 10 fold thanks to him.
Hi. DBA at a gaming company, here. We dropped poker from the majority of our locations as a result of entirely too small hold percentage (% the house holds on your average bet). Something around 1-2%. This is primarily an artifact of players playing players, instead of playing the house. It is hardly worth the labor when you can push those players to one of two things: Other table games (craps/blackjack run around 8-12% hold on average) or video poker (about 6-7% and no labor involved).
No insult intended, this is just anecdotal evidence that your statement may be misinformation. The reason some of our locations hold on to poker is because the outcry from these players is so dramatic that it effects the turnstyle numbers in a statistically significant way. Even if it is only a fraction of a percentage, it is relevantly outside our margin of error - and so can cost those locations money. This is not because of the game itself, but because word of mouth keeps people off other games.
I worked for Harrahs which has two casinos in Council Bluffs. We had a customer take us for a few million between our two properties in a month. There is a competing casino in town. He ended up losing the millions back to the third casino.
People focus on the stories when people win big, but that usually isn't sustained long term. If the casinos gave up their statistical advantage, that is foolish and they'll revise those decisions. But you're absolutely correct that people should not for a moment believe that this is something you can do under most circumstances.
The house wins over time.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Having worked for Harrahs and having been trained on roulette, I'm highly skeptical. Even if you spun at roughly the same force every time, the position of your hand, the twist of your fingers, and the variables of a BOUNCING ball will change greatly.
There are a few individuals who have exceptional fine motor control with their fingers (card magicians come to mind), but I doubt even someone with exceptional fine motor control could get a ball on a certain number 2 times out of 10, let alone 8. And I certainly don't believe all experienced roulette dealers could do this.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Only if it ends with a guy trying to sell just such a "system". The only sure-fire get-rich-quick scheme is selling get-rich-quick schemes.
Well, there's always opening a brown envelope and briefcase store in Washington DC during lobbying season.
With a proper size bankroll, and correct play, you can profit. Usually that goes more for poker against actual players
That depends on who the "you" is. If by "you" you mean the average poker player, then what you're suggesting is self-evidently wrong. Poker between a group of players is a zero sum game, therefore, the hypothetical "average" player breaks even. Add the house taking a cut, and the average player is losing money. Those who make money from poker are making money because the money is coming from suckers who hope that they'll make money from poker. Therefore, it's in the interest of good poker players to constantly try to push the image that "you" can make money playing poker because it helps ensure a fresh flow of suckers to the bottom rung of the pyramid scheme.
I can't help but feel like this article is just designed to put the idea into millions of readers' heads that you can go into a casino with a strategy or method or system and take home millions at the blackjack table.
It might help if you read the article, then you'd lose that feeling.
I think this is the only quote I needed to lose the feeling of heading to a blackjack table to be a millionaire:
"He had to pony up $1 million of his own money to start, but, as he would say later: “You’d never lose the million. If you got to [$500,000 in losses], you would stop and take your 20 percent discount. You’d owe them only $400,000.” "
So he was already a millionaire... actually, multi-millionaire, because he had one million to just hand to the casino to play a game.
The whole article they make him sound like Joe the Plumber that just played one day and won millions. Nothing could be further from the truth, this guy reaches in his pocket and hands out a million dollars to play a game.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone