But Option D wins you huge public sympathy.
A few casinos in Vegas still offer single deck or double deck blackjack.
Also, using a device to count cards is illegal in Vegas. In fact, using a device to change the outcome of any casino game in Vegas is illegal, not just blackjack.
Fun anectdote: There’s an urban legend about a guy who used a timer program to beat the roulette table. He tapped a button every time the 00 slot spun past a fixed point, and he tapped a different button every time the ball spun past the same fixed point. After a few cycles, the program could predict a range of numbers which were more likely to hit, and betting on those numbers would give a positive expected return.
I don’t really believe the story, but it’s fun to think about.
The shoe games are beatable by a skilled card counter if he has a large enough bankroll to survive any bad luck, but they do require the counter to ramp up his bets more. The huge bet variance is a telltale sign of a card counter. Casinos will allow most suspected card counters to play at their casino as long as they believe the card counter is either insufficiently skilled or lacking a large enough bankroll. The shoe games can actually be easier to beat because they’re less closely monitored for counting than the single or double-deck games. Affleck was probably playing a double-deck game and varying his bets too widely for the casino’s comfort.
Usually people who study and train to improve their performance in a sport or game get rewarded. Consider the massive amount of study a chess grandmaster invested to achieve that rating. The same is true in any other sport or game except gambling. Get too good at blackjack and you get kicked out and banned.
Card counters in blackjack are doing nothing that special. My mom’s sister and her husband played tournament bridge. They traveled across the country for big tournaments. My aunt knew every card that had been played. She knew what would probably be dealt or played. She studied books on bridge for years. She took it very seriously and got really good.
From memory when my team used to play:
6 deck shoes meant you needed a spread of 24:1 fro. Your small bet to your big bet. Small bet was at a true count of -1 and a big bet was at a true count of +3. single deck meant your spread was 8:1 and double deck was 12:1.
The difference was to cover the increase in statistical variance. This means that if you are betting $10 at your low you need to raise it to 250 or so. Most players who bet 10 don’t also bet 250.
Our team tracked hours and results. We averaged about 40-45 / hour with a standard deviation of 250. It’s fun but you also need about 100 or so big bets in your bankroll to minimize your risk of ruin.
There’s a bit more than just plus 1 and minus 1. With multiple decks you need to be able to do a true count very quickly. You take the running count and divide by remaining number of decks (need a good estimate by looking at the burned cards). Then every action (hit/stay/double/split etc) has a corresponindg table that has every combination of hands that you have and then dealer has with a corresponding true count value. So memorize the tables, memorize the betting strategy, and do it really quickly and it’s easy. Then do it while nursing a drink, having a conversation, and disguising your wild betting fluctuations.
Most people who try will fail at the proper play strategey and end up losing. Those guys don’t get kicked out.
I’ve been kicked out of several places. It’s not that uncommon. Usually it’s some form of “we don’t appreciate your play style” or “you’re too good for us”. Never have I been able to get them to actually say out loud “counting cards”. I tried - they wouldn’t do it.
If the casinos were really worried about the phenomenon of card counting, surely they would just shuffle every couple of hands? Obviously they make more out of bad counters than they lose to good ones.
The articles I’ve read about Affleck are muddled. Some claiming to have seen some sort of document listing what he was doing. (Note: NV casinos do share lists of banned persons. Not sure if they go into details.) Something about “moving his money with the count.”
There are card counters who use their chip stack to assist in counting. Shifting things around to denote details of the count. But the statement could also be read as implying he was changing his bets based on the count, which is the whole point of counting.
The media is just so helpful.
It’s obvious from the style of play. His mistake was in doing it at a high stakes table. If he had been sitting at a $10 table, they wouldn’t have cared.
Shuffling takes time.
Every second that the dealer is shuffling is a second that the players are not putting money into the casino’s coffers.
For the same reason, there is a tension between two goals in the question of how far back in the deck the dealer should place the marker that ends the shoe. A shoe that deals most of its cards is more vulnerable to counting but loses play time.
Why don’t they have pre-shuffled decks ready to go? One deck per round, or a double deck if they’re worried about counters? I assume there’s a little extra cost involved in collecting, shuffling, and distributing the decks to the table, but it’s not cutting into play time.
My point was that even at the odds that the machines return, that Jacks or Better can be beat, not that it would make a lot of sense to spend all month there trying to do so.
You don’t hold a 10 in Jacks or Better. That’s the point.
If you throw away the 10, you can’t get the royal.
Casinos are beginning to introduce continuous shuffling machines. Every few hands the dealer puts the burned cards back in the machine which is constantly shuffling the cards.
Can’t count those and no time is ever wasted on a shuffle.
As for why not having preshuffled decks, when it was done by humans it would be because nobody would accept the cards being shuffled out of sight where it could possibly be rigged.
One card shufflers were introduced they often did end up with pre-shuffled cards as one 6-8 deck shoe is shuffled in the machine while they are dealing out another shoe (different color cards to keep it clear).
I read a book about someone who used a card counting pair of glasses, he also said he avoided Vegas but I believe he said Atlantic city did not have those laws. this was in the 80s. And nowadays, a lot of places have gambling so it isn’t just Vegas as the only option.
Oh, yeah - I didn’t notice they were suited. But without the 10 there are still lots of winning hands, and that’s figured into the chances of coming out ahead. But, as you say, if the payoffs are low for certain hands, then it’s not going to happen.
Card players don’t like pre-shuffled decks. They like to see the cards shuffled in front of them.
I don’t know the specific rules on the Vegas strip, but it would not surprise me to learn that regulations forbid pre-shuffled decks.
Pre-shuffled decks are used. They come out of a shuffling machine attached to the table which shuffles a whole shoe at once while a second shoe is being played. This is equivalent to a dealer shuffling the cards in front of you but faster. (Less time shuffling = more money for the casino.)
There are also continuous shuffling machines (CSM’s) as alluded to by obfusciatrist above. These are the ones that sit on top of the table and look like gigantic mutant dustbusters. The cards are dealt directly from the machine and then the discards are dumped right back in and reshuffled into the deck. These machines are un-countable.
Casinos in Vegas have been experimenting with CSM’s but they have often found that revenue drops sharply at the tables where they are employed. Even though 99% of blackjack players can not count cards (or think they’re better than they really are) apparently most people like the idea of playing a game that can be beaten, even if they just play for fun.
On the Vegas strip, you tend to only see the CSM’s at the idiot tables with 6:5 payouts and terrible rules. You never see them in high-roller rooms.
BTW, I posted an Ask the… thread here for general information about card counting and blackjack strategy, since it seems to come up a lot.
This is almost certainly a vague memory of Doyne Farmerand crew, as documented in The Eudaemonic Pie. The book is, as I recall, a terrific story about the hacker mentality in the early days of Silicon Valley.
True. So the question becomes, do you think a Casino will keep open a blackjack table where people can easily gain a statistical edge over the house? I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t be the casino running that game.
Given that no casino will maintain a game where players can easily hold a statistical edge over the house, what do we do about Blackjack? Players using simple methods* can gain an edge, and the casino cannot allow that game to continue.
We can close all Blackjack tables in favor of some other game, totally f-up the game of Blackjack to eliminate the possible edge, or we can ban players who use card counting methods. I think option #3 is the best one overall.
*Card counting in secret is difficult, it’s a skill to be learned and practiced. Card counting in the open is easy, you can write the count on a note pad right in front of the dealer, and consult it before making your next bet.