I’ve also heard of the body language / counting thing. That is, the counter might move their foot in a certain position to help remember their count. And at the end of the day, the casino is a private institution and can eject you for almost any reason even if it is not strictly “illegal.”
Something else to consider - You are a casino manager about to eject an Oscar-winning celebrity from your venue. What do you tell the press?
A. He is winning too much and I am too greedy to let him win.
B. He was making a fool of himself, cheating, acting drunk, whatever.
C. He is a masterful card sharp and has unravelled the mysteries of gaming.
D. We did not like “Daredevil.”
Option C lets everybody walk away with their egos intact.
I have a hard time believing that this wasn’t an orchestrated well managed publicity move. It seems to line up perfectly with the image change needed to sort of make Ben Afleck more suitable for the Batman role. AFAIK there was a LOT of backlash against the choice to use him to play Batman, his image just didn’t mesh. I think he seems too unintelligent and wholesome to play batman for a lot of people. My idea of what happened is that the casino manger and Ben’s people arrainged it all and called the paprazzi. It’s a win for everyone, Ben’s image gets some needed edginess, the casino gets some pubilcity (Ben Afflec gambles here!!!) and the press gets a story. If he were not a celebrity, probably he would have been caught the way everyone is describing IMHO.
Casinos do not ban anyone just for winning a lot. They could, but it would be an idiotic business decision. When someone’s winning a lot, any casino will do everything they can to encourage that player to keep on gambling, because if they can keep you gambling long enough, eventually you’re going to give all that money back.
Casinos can and do ban people for systematically winning, which (among legal techniques) pretty much just means card counters. They still don’t do this very often, because the number of people who think they can count cards is much smaller than the number who actually can, and they don’t want to discourage the many losers.
Bingo!!
Blackjack rules have been changed to effectively eliminate the benefits of card counting. Big cuts, no mid shoe entry, limited bet range all destroy the premise of “the count”. There is still adavantage in remembering every card and knowing how that changes the odds of the next card but you cannot move to a player advantage, only reduce the house advantage. Things have changed since the MIT days. And the movie was a massive oversimplification of how long it takes to grind a minor edge into profit.
According to a Mensa book on gambling, video Jacks or Better poker is one where you could conceivably beat the house, betting according to the odds they teach you. The edge is very slight, it only works with some machines (depends on the return of certain hands), and you’d have to play a LOT, but it can be done. One strategy, for instance, is always betting the maximum bet, because the royal flush pays bigger than normal for the max bet. Given the odds of hitting that hand, the overall chances of this being a profitable strategy mitigate against spending your time in a casino playing this game. However, the math holds up.
You can ask the dealer (it’s not a secret) or just eyeball it by looking at the shoe. For a “balanced count” as described above, you start at zero. There are other chanting systems which are more complex.
But it is annoying when they try to interfere with it. I was playing $5 a hand at an Indian casino recently. I had about $150 on in chips when I decided I was bored and it was time to go find my wife. So I just put all $150 out and figured I’d leave up or down what I was willing to lose.
And the dealer called over the pit boss to approve my bet. It was the second hand of the shoe. And it was a freaking $150.
On the multiple deck shoes, it doesn’t make it more difficult to count cards (well, a little since you’re not only tracking the count but how many cards remain to figure the true count) but it does make it less helpful since it reduces the incidents of the shoe getting skewed to the player’s advantage. Right?
This is mostly incorrect when it comes to Vegas strip games. Many are quite countable and continue to be beaten on a regular basis.
Mid-shoe entry is available almost everywhere for six-deck games with very liberal rules. The more important variable is deck penetration (how much of the shoe is dealt before reshuffling.) You would be amazed how many dealers are willing to give you 40 more cards than they’re supposed to if you just ask nicely.
He was in a high-roller room, which means the dealer probably was hand-dealing from a double-deck stack instead of dealing from a shoe. That makes it a lot easier to track the count.
heh. That was a good scene in the movie. It also shows the attitude of casino security in the beginning. They know what a gambler looks like, how he behaves. They’ll see anything out of the ordinary as a cheater. I’ve heard that casinos don’t care so much about card counting as a strategy as much as they consider it cheating, and they expect cheaters will do anything to cheat. (they probably consider anything that changes the odds cheating, so maybe there’s no distinction there).
Depends. I was just in vegas and the odds on video poker are lower than in the past. Also, any book that teaches you to chase the royal at 4000:1 payoff odds (what they were last week) is crazy. You need a chance at a progressive to make the math work. I played a few hands, and in jacks or better you are going to lose when you hold a 10 and it pairs, e.g. AKT of hearts. Also, the payoff odds on say a straight flush, straight, or flush are lower than they should be because more often than not, you’ll just pair and win nothing.
Actually, if you’ve tried it, there can be only 10% of low cards in the deck and you can still hit it, or 90% high cards left and you miss it. Unless you have the bankroll to do it 50-100 times, you aren’t going to beat a short term loss.