Card Counters - Dangerous or deluded

[ian]

Casinos have for years taken precautionary measures against Blackjack card counters.

These include continous shufflers, Multi deck games cut in half, Single or double-deck with virtually no penetration. Maximums changed, Customers asked to leave or barred etc...

Not an easy life for anyone identified as a possible counter.

But is this paranoia justified ?
Has anyone worked in a casino where a team of counters have taken them to the cleaners ?

Could it be that Counting itself is over rated as a threat. Why is it that those who promote the art seemingly always have a product to sell ?

What's your opinion. Are counters really a threat or has everyone - including Casino management simply got cought up in the hype.


Ian

[Jennifer]

They can be dangerous. I remember a period where we were hit by a good counting team. The expected profits on BJ suffered. They were working by identifying good situations and then another player would come in for a while and make large bets. They were eventually sussed and their memberships terminated.

I feel somewhat sorry for them actually because they weren't doing anything wrong other than exploiting a game which has the potential to give the player a positive edge.

The fault lies with us for offering the game in this form. Alter the conditions slightly and even for the best counters the game will become negative even though they are employing great skill.

I don't believe this altering of conditions will "kill the game of blackjack". People will still bet on it in large numbers. The killing the game idea is an argument put forward by counters to keep the game generous while they work on disguising their counting.

The reason I don't think it will damage the game is that most punters don't understand the odds. Given the choice betweem single 0 and double 00 roulette in the US, the punters will still play the 00 zero wheels because of familiarity. The solution lies in slowly altering the BJ rules to make it 2 or 3 % against the player even with best strategy.

The counters will still try and use their skills to bring it down to 0.5 to 1% against them, but we can ignore it as we will still be making money. And for every good counter there will be 10 bad ones who may lose more than 2%. Time and effort will be saved on identifying counters and we can avoid banning them and also save all the bad feeling and poor publicity that may be generated.

[dodgy77]

I say let the alleged card counters come in and have a go.

99 times out of 100 it is a lone "card counter" who has read a few books and thinks he is the bees knees and attempts at counting, usually with no discernible effect on the result.

Any real counters who pop up occasionally in teams or such like you just take your countermeasures against them and they bugger off sharpish.

So all in all the myth of card counters probably does more good for casinos than bad.

[Victoria]

What many in casino operations do not see is that the publicity that a blackjack game can be beat draws hords on players (punters) to the tables that play so badly that a house advantage of less than 1% (based upon basic strategy) may actually be 3-4% or higher on these players. The publicity can be a plus.
The lone counter, as stated before, is more often either just learning the trade or just incompetent most of the time. Of those who can play a winning game, the vast majority of them do not have the bankroll to place bets large enough to hurt the house and a few winners are never bad advertising.

The lone counter who can place large enough bets to effect the bottom line is also easily detectable. Face it, you will be watching the person betting large amounts and it does not take much to correlate those bets to the count and back him off quickly.

Teams are really the only problem with counters that I see and the strategy of team play makes detecting take more time. Here is the place effort needs to be concentrated.

I think too many people in operations think that card counters win all the time, treating their casino as something akin to an ATM machine, where the counter is steadily making withdrawls. This is far from the truth. Probably the best of them will have a winning session less than 60% of the time, (read somewhere it was 55-45). Their wins or losses might be small or large. The variation (luck) involved in blackjack, no matter how skilled one is, is huge.

There are many places that I know of in the U.S., that unoffically let counters whose max bet never gets very high play and play. They know these people count, I had clients who were known counters but their levels were non threatening and often they played other games.

Rules have been tweaked. The average game for low stakes today on the Vegas Strip is 6/5 single deck and a 6 deck shoe with the dealer hitting soft 17. Effectively, the single deck game can not be beaten. The shoe game can only be beaten by an excellently skilled counter, those with lower skill levels are at best playing even. There are still higher stake, good double deck and shoe games, but higher stake games are closely watched.

I firmly believe that teams and teams alone are the only real threats.

Victoria

[Jennifer]

I'd second the opinion on counter team play. They are the only real threat. Especially the ones where they hook in with a local big player who won't arouse so much suspicion.

The points Victoria mentioned on the altered conditions espec for single deck games are interesting. I wonder if anyone has figures for how much these kind of alterations affect the attendences at the tables, if at all? 6/5 is fairly radical and something the punters would pick up on in the short term, but insidious little changes about soft totals and the procedures for splitting and doubling seem a good way to massage the odds further in the house's favour.

A 2-3% house edge game with an opportunity to reduce that to 0-1% by skill seems a very fair offer to me. One could draw a parallel with those video poker games where perfect play yields very close to 100% payback. It's good entertainment with comps and free meals for a few, while the vast majority will fall short of the ideal and pay 3-5% of their drop for the privelege

[Victoria]

With a few (let's call them morons) exceptions, what I have seen on the strip is that the experienced, non counting bigger player has learned to quickly avoid the 6/5 game as if it was something that carried a disease. Forget about counters, they will not bother. The players are most often small betting tourists or just big betting, did I say morons, already, who once heard someone say that single deck blackjack was a better game than the shoe game. The bigger players who used to play single deck can be found playing DD games.
I do not have figures but would guess that the percentage of the drop held is much higher but the actual drop has decreased significantly.
There is also the factor of hands per hour for generating income. Because of the constant shuffling in the single deck game, much more time is spent shuffling, especially compared to a shoe where there is a shuffle machine.
In a few casinos in downtown Vegas they still have the old single deck 3/2 game and any large action is watched very closely. The Golden Nugget is the only casino that does not go crazy if someone is betting black chips in that area but they also do a very good job of figuring out the strengths of the players. At places like the Western, a red chip qualifies one as a high roller. The Horseshoe upon Harrah's re-opening it, killed their 3/2 single deck and introduced 6/5 to downtown and those tables are not busy. They also, as is the law within any Harrah's property, made every game's rules somewhat worse for the players. But we must remember that they are Harrah's Entertainment, and not Harrah's Gambling.

To Jennifer; I think the strip casinos believe that so much of their business is just math challenged tourists that play once or twice a year, that the 6/5 rule would not hurt them at all. At the same time the downtown and local's casinos have kept the old game or just do not have single deck because they think their customers are those punters who would figure it out. But if they are going to play a slow game at $5 a hand, then the house does need a big edge.
Victoria

[ian]

Counting cards is not something that the average punter on a night out to a casino is ever going to contemplate.

They are out to relax, play the games, have a few drinks etc...

What kind of person is prepared to spend day after day at the tables, and thousands of hours putting out their own money for an uncertain return. Constantly doing mental calculations, being as miserable as sin and getting hassle from Pit staff. They have to be a very unusual creature indeed.

What goes through their minds when they are not at the BJ tables ?

Perhaps the thought that playing Poker with muli-million $ jackpots or on the Internet may be a better option. Or that if they dedicated the same time studying financial statistics, currency and commodity movements they could spend their time at home trading and not living out of Motel rooms.

This latter option is what Edward O'Thorp decided to do. He developed sophisticated methods of buying and selling on the markets, but even then never gave up lecturing in California.


I wonder how often counters after a particularily bad session will return to their room, look in the mirror and think to themselves - It's just not worth it, I need to get a proper job!.



Ian

[Victoria]

Ian

The person you are talking about, a real professional blackjack player, is a very very rare creature and more than likely a social misfit of some sort. He is also the type who perhaps would form or join a team. The thing is, what percentage of people who actually count cards fall into this category? My thoughts are they are a very small minority of counters and in turn a minisule minority of players. Then there is also the double paranoia of their fear of discovery and your fear of their playing in your house.
Depending upon the casino there are places where way too much money is waisted on finding counters. Forget the lone low rolling counter and concentration upon teams is all that is needed. A trained monkey can spot a lone high betting counter but casinos would rather pay for Mindplay to do this simple task for them???

The recreational counter can be good or bad at that trade. My thinking goes along these lines, if there is a game offered that possibily can be beat, why should you not play to win. As an athelete I can understand that mindset, and I also think that kind of person would not be likely to join a team because they do have a life, job and family. They are also likely to go into poker today considering the popularity and large rewards that go with success. They probably play something along the lines of 200 hours per year.

As far as the looking in the mirror comment. A professional counter should have been down that path many a time and has somehow adjusted his thinking that it is just a fact of life in the world of blackjack that you will get your butt kicked sometimes. What probably does happen though, many many a fledgling counter has had a day like that and took up another hobby.

Victoria

[Al Rogers]

I played blackjack and other advantage plays full-time for several years. Having been self-employed for most of my life, the uncertainty of paydays was nothing new. It was an interesting experience, but, for me, became a tiresome grind. After two years, I was pretty much sick of it. The generally negative casino environment and hostility from staff does take its toll, and the constant traveling ceases to be fun, too. It just becomes like an ordinary job after awhile, no more and no less. Once it became a job I no longer enjoyed, I returned to part-time advantage play, which I still engage in today.

I know a few dozen full-time players. Most are very bright, driven, highly motivated and disciplined individuals who could succeed at many other things if they chose to do so. Most built their bankrolls from other, more traditional, businesses or jobs. They enjoy the nomadic lifestyle and the challenge of beating what they perceive as large, faceless, greedy corporations at their own games. Most of them enjoy the comparative freedom full-time play brings; no time clocks, bosses, etc., yet a substantial income. The ones, like me, who get fed up with being in casinos many hours every day, go on to other things, and are usually quite successful.

Victoria's comment about them being a miniscule percentage of casino patrons is certainly correct.

[BBMW]

For those of you who haven't seen it yet, there's a good book out cronicling the exploits of a team of card counters out of MIT. This was a very sophisticated team, and took a sizable divet out of the hold of a number of US casinos. It's called "Bringing Down the House" by Ben Mezrich.

FWIW they were eventually crushed by survellience and countermeasure.

[ian]

Bringing down the house

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...071312-8171055


It's had over 250 customer reviews so it must be selling well. I am though reminded of the quote "Don't let the truth spoil a good story"

The film should be out soon as well. They will have to choose a different name though.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...s=dvd&n=507846


Ian

[Robb]

The trouble with card counting is it's not cheating, if you work at something you deserve to be rewarded. Maybe if I'd studied harder at school maybe I wouldn't be inspecting in a Birmingham casino but the managing director of I.C.C.

[Dealem]

Having a losing session card counting is alot easier to take than when you are playing poker.
In poker after you have a losing session,most winning players will look back on key hands that maybe they could have played better.You are always making decisions based on your observations and limited infomation.
With blackjack,all the infomation is there in front of you.You just play the way the book says.
If you book a losing session card counting,the loss is always easier to take when you know you played perfect strategy and had no influence in the outcome.With poker there is always the chance that if you played a certain hand differentely you may have been able to turn that losing session into a winning one.

[Richard Kirkes]

I guess I was about 22 or 23 years old when I got my copy of Million Dollar Blackjack by Ken Uston though the mail. I learned the count-system & got pretty good at it while practicing at home.

The first time out doing it in a casino ( I think this was the High Sierra in S. Lake Tahoe , back in the 80's) , I couldn't do it. I "froze-up" at the table.

Eventually, with practice ..I became a half-way decent counter.

But, I noticed something.. the count was almost always negative i.e the count was hardly ever in my favor.. it favored the house most of the time. At the time I didn't understand why and I guess this is somewhat of a critizism of the people who write bj/21 card-counting books. Well, with the exception of Jerry Patterson's & Eddie Olson's book with discusses shuffletracking, most books on card counting don't tell the whole story.

Most 21/bj card counting systems are based on a random deck. However, if the deck is not random, then your results will be mis-leading. This is something the authors of these books don't talk about.

I lost I lot of $$ at the tables while trying to learn how to count cards. I think the gaming industry should thank these people who write these books.

Just my 2 cents.

[Victoria]

That the house cheated by purposely stacking big cards in the front part of the deck or shoe? Otherwise, over a long period of time the counts, good and bad should equalize. The other thing is that at a neutral count the house is still at an advantage, so more often than not the house has a slight advantage.

I know of people who have bought blackjack books, practiced then went to play a half dozen times or so and got their butts kicked and knew in their minds that counting was garbage. The casinos should thank them because without understanding both the math behind the idea and the wild variance of a game like blackjack, the novice stands little chance. When figures are based upon millions of hands and you compare it with a sample of a few hundred, your sample is meaningless even if you play perfectly. So do these people fit into the 90% of counters who loose?

Casinos win, and perhaps one of the most important reason that they win even at games where they have very small advantages is simple. Casinos are always in the "long run." Cardcounters not operating as a team can only hope to approach a long run result or have positive variance (a wonderfully math like word that means luck). Teams can approach a long run result so again a reason why the individual counter is no threat but teams are.

[Jennifer]

Good points Victoria.

Another main reason we got stung by teams was that they were able to play much larger bet spreads than a single player without the same suspicion. I still blaim the conditions offered.

I don't think subtle changes in conditions have a huge effect in game popularity. It's more to do with marketing and tradition. Take Keno or certain kinds of slots. Not very pretty odds but people still play in droves because they are kind of fun and it's what people are used to.

[Victoria]

Jennifer

I think an extremely important reason why people will play games like keno and slots no matter how you tweak the odds, is that you offer a jackpot, a huge win!
These people will dream of all their numbers coming up or getting the perfect figures on the center line of a slot followed by all the lights flashing or whatever. Same reason they play the worst game invented the lottery, big payoff possibility for a small investment.

Blackjack and craps are different animals but there has been some experimenting going on. In the normal blackjack game, you might double down or you might split up to 4 hands and double on each, so a jackpot in blackjack could be 8 times your original bet. This of course is not even close to the truth because you are also risking 8 times your initial bet, so the payoff is still 1x1. The whopping jackpot in a normal blackjack game is just simply getting a natural and being paid 3/2. You tweaked the rules to 6/5 and chased away anyone who has the slightest knowledge of the game. How else would the rules be tweaked??? I firmly believe it is a waste of time except when you invent brand new games.
We have a game here called superfun 21. It is a bad game but people will play it for the same reason they play other bad table games, it has (I do not know all of them) jackpots where if you get certain combinations you get a large payoff.

I have said this before:

People will play a bad game with a chance of a huge jackpot
People will play a good game without a chance of a huge jackpot
People will not play a bad game with no chance of a jackpot once
they figure out it is a bad game.

Victoria