Who can count? <not excatly illegal activities>

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2004-07-11 05:39am

alothough likely to get you banned from casino's who understands the basics of legal cheating/playing aware. Or basic card counting, and proper blackjack playing?

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2004-07-11 11:37am

Basically, in card counting, each card has a positive or negative point value. In the easiest system, low cards are worth +1, high cards -1, and medium cards 0 (aces are treated differently by different systems and usually have to be tracked separately). After every hand, the players looks at all the cards on the table and adds their point value together. As the deck gets lower, a positive total will tell the player there are a lot of tens and face cards left, and so his odds of winning are going up (they're going up for everybody, but only the card counter is aware of it).

The casinos, being allowed to rig virtually all the games to favor the house, ply their patrons with alcohol, provide a loud and distracting environment for the players, and reshuffle the decks any time they want for any reason, are naturally enraged at the thought of a player committing the terrible crime of remembering which cards have been dealt and using that knowledge to slice away an infitesimal amount of the casino's earnings, and in Nevada, they reserve the right to ban a player for life for being too good at blackjack. New Jersey doesn't let them get away with that bullshit, but they can reshuffle the deck anytime they like to throw off a counter.

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2004-07-11 02:13pm

Exactly

and the computer blackjack sims are all rigged....

Jalinth · Post by **Jalinth** » 2004-07-11 06:31pm

RedImperator wrote:Basically, in card counting, each card has a positive or negative point value. In the easiest system, low cards are worth +1, high cards -1, and medium cards 0 (aces are treated differently by different systems and usually have to be tracked separately). After every hand, the players looks at all the cards on the table and adds their point value together. As the deck gets lower, a positive total will tell the player there are a lot of tens and face cards left, and so his odds of winning are going up (they're going up for everybody, but only the card counter is aware of it).

The casinos, being allowed to rig virtually all the games to favor the house, ply their patrons with alcohol, provide a loud and distracting environment for the players, and reshuffle the decks any time they want for any reason, are naturally enraged at the thought of a player committing the terrible crime of remembering which cards have been dealt and using that knowledge to slice away an infitesimal amount of the casino's earnings, and in Nevada, they reserve the right to ban a player for life for being too good at blackjack. New Jersey doesn't let them get away with that bullshit, but they can reshuffle the deck anytime they like to throw off a counter.

Also, to really get the odds in your favour, you need to shift your bets (generally from min to max and then back) with the odds. Doing this is pretty much telling the Casino - "I'm a card counter". Doing this coupled with accurate card counting can give you the end and not the house.

Problems
1) Vegas generally uses 6 decks - hard to count
2) They reshuffle 1/2 to 3/4 of the way through and can do it at any time
3) If you are successful, they will ban you and give your picture to other casinos.

The successful ones I've read about were a group of Math PhD (post-doc primarily) who broke the card counting into different roles. One guy plays minimums (counts cards), second guy is the big spender - shows up and bets heavily (but only when signalled) - other people are also involved - either to distract or signal.

Until someone talked, they were very successful (casinos never caught on)

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2004-07-11 07:15pm

There's a book out about the whole MIT blackjack team. It's some really fascinating stuff. The way they did it probably borders on cheating more than straight up card-counting, but still, it was great stuff.

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2004-07-13 06:13am

Y&eah read the MIT accout, went to Reno with Star who would cling to her BF and then beg him to let her play a nand when thew count was good, in that whiney dumb blonde voice...