For this reason, some card-counters work as teams. The low betters stay at varoious tables and count cards. There are times when the remaining cards give an advantage to the better. When that occurs, the low better at that table gives a secret signal to the big better, who wanders over and has the odds in his favor.
These groups sometimes have problems, if the big better doesn’t share earnings honestly!
Another trick that works (though in the end, it probably still favors the house) is the doubling up theory. What you do is bet the minimum each hand. If you win, then continue betting the minimum, but if you lose, double your bet on the next hand, to recoup your losses. Should you lose again, double your bet one more time. This works until you hit the table limit. If it’s a $5-$1000 table, you can lose 7 hands, and if you win the eighth you get all your money back, plus the original $5 bet. The odds are low that you’ll lose 8 in a row, but I suppose high enough that the house doesn’t care. I’ve done this before, but betting $640 on a $5 table is kind of risky.
That said, if you combine this with other tricks, you might be able to make some money.
I generally dislike articles like that Discover Blackjack one because the tone lures people into thinking that it’s easy, and simple, if only you have the patience and energy to work at it. The theory is as simple as the article claims; the practice is painstakingly difficult.
You have to have the optimal strategies memorized exactly and you can’t deviate from them. You have to be able to count extremely quickly. You have to have a trick up your sleeve to fool the dealer and the pit boss. This is something a professional gambler might be able to pull off, but for the average Joe on a weekend Vegas trip? I doubt it. And all this for a +1.5% expectation value that may not manifest itself until after having cycled through hundreds upon hundreds of hands.
Of course casino games all have a negative expectation values for the player; the casino is there to part you from your money.
OK, strike “considerable” in my original post. But it does work given the margins we’re talking about here. (And the greater the disparity between you and the house in capital, the more of an odds advantage you’d need to have a chance to defeat Gambler’s Ruin. For most duffer gamblers the house’s resources as so much better than yours as to be functionally infinite.)
–Cliffy
This is the Martingale betting system, and you can’t beat the house with it for precisely the reasons you mentioned: tables have betting limits, and anyway, ou don’t have an unlimited bankroll.
In your example, you would indeed have to lose 8 times in a row for the betting system to fail. Assuming you play perfect Blackjack strategy only and give the house it’s 0.4% edge, you’ll have a 50.2% chance of losing any given hand, assuming a well shuffled deck each hand. The odds that you’ll lose 8 hands in a row is then 0.39%. You’ll lose eventually (the probably isn’t zero, after all), and when you do lose, you’ll lose big. This will more than compensate for the stack of $5 chips that you’ve amassed; losing 8 times in a row under this sytem would cost you $1275, wiping out 255 $5 winning hands. I suppose you could use this in conjuction with card counting, but why would you want to? If you know that the deck is favorable and you have a positive expectation value at the moment, why not simply bet big in the first place?
The bottom line is that, no matter what strategy you employ, in the long run you cannot consistently come out ahead when playing a game that has a negative expectation value.
Did ANYONE see the movie Casino?!
Frankly, I wouln’t want DeNiro or Pesci using a ball-pein hammer on MY fingers!
This is the only way to win that doesn’t take LOTS of practice and its precisely why there are table limits.
Also, the casino may very well ask you to leave if they see you doing this. As someone mentioned, they can refuse to allow you to play if you are doing something they don’t approve of.
Oh, and Caldazar, I agree with you that that article does sound like it is easy. Funny thing is, it sounded not worth the trouble to me. Escpecially the video poker. The woman figures she makes $15/hr playing ~6 hours a day, my thought on reading that was Yeeecch! 6 hrs/day in a smoke-filled windowless casino for $15/hr ???
No thanks.
Well, seeing as though there is no rule against varying your bet, I realy don’t see how one could be caught (as long as he doesn’t count out loud or anything).
Scenario:
Man is intensely looking at each hand dealt and begins changing his bet from 10 to 100 and back. Dealer tells pit boss. Pit Boss watches the man watch the cards with sweat pouring down his face.
“Excuse me, sir.” “Are you counting those cards or just looking at them?”
“Just looking at them.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
The thing is, the casinos can throw you out for any reason, or no reason. If you vary your bets a lot and consistently lose money then no one cares. But if you are playing Blackjack for hours, make widely varying bets, and win a lot, then you are going to be suspected of counting cards. There is nothing immoral or illegal about counting cards, but casinos won’t play with card counters, and they don’t have to.
They don’t need to prove that you count cards. If you win a lot and fit the profile they’ll kick you out. Of course, counting cards just gives you a little edge over the casino, not a guarantee. So you have to play lots of iterations of the game. If you win small, nobody cares. It’s only when you win big by card counting that the casinos care. So you have to bet small, and you have to have a large stake in relation to the amount of your bets or Gamler’s Ruin will get you.
So, you end up sitting playing Blackjack all night, making $15 per hour. You’d have to really like Blackjack to make it worth it. Otherwise you’d be better off getting a straight job.
And the Martingale system is awful. Even if you make back your money plus five dollars, you still have to risk larger and larger sums just to break even. And when you win, you only win your 5 dollar bet. The Martingale system favors the player with the deeper pockets. A casino always has deeper pockets than you do. You can win lots and lots of little five dollar bets, but eventually you are going to lose 10 times in a row and you’ve lost thousands of dollars at once. It doesn’t change your risk, it just redistributes it. It is like the opposite of insurance. People buy insurance because they prefer a small predictable loss over a huge catastrophic one. The Martingale system gives you a small predictable win, but eventually you are assured of a catastrophic loss, even in a game with no house odds.
The scenario continues this way; pit boss puts six fresh decks into shuffler and loads a new shoe. Counting starts over again from scratch. Whether you’re counting or not. They don’t take any chances they can avoid - in ANY way.
If you continue to win, and they can’t figure out your methods, you may very well be asked to leave. Or they might close the table you’re betting at, or offer you dinner on the house. Anything that stops you from taking their money.
I was a professional blackjack player for some time. I don’t recommend it.
A good counter can keep a hi-lo count going while chatting with the pit boss and glancing at the table only long enough to grab his pop, or appear to be looking at only his own cards. I did this, many times.
The real key to not getting caught in a Casino is to have a minimum amount of ‘cover’ (an act, complex bet system, anything to prevent being noticed as a counter) to keep himself from being spotted immediately, and then TO GET UP AND LEAVE FREQUENTLY.
If you play for high enough stakes (and to make real money at blackjack, you have to play high stakes), you WILL get noticed. Eventually. The ‘Eventually’ part is the key. You will never stay in a casino for more than 45 minutes at a time, or until you hit a shoe in which you had to place large bets. So the idea is that if you start at $50, and suddenly have a $500 bet out, the pit might notice it… But you never play another hand. So they can’t track you.
The life of a professional card counter is a life of travel. Arrive in Vegas, hit the casinos one at a time, 45 minutes max each. Some of them you won’t even play, because either the pit recognized you when you walked in, or there was too much heat on everyone, or the ‘penetration’ (how many decks are cut off a shoe) is terrible. Then you leave and go to another casino.
The next day, you do it again, only on the second shift so none of the same pit personnel are there. Then you refer to your notes to see which sessions were pretty uneventful, and you might hit those casinos again for 2 more shifts, 45 minutes at a time. Then it’s off to Reno. Then across the country stopping at Indian Casinos and riverboats and stuff. Then Atlantic city, do the same thing, and start all over again. Maybe tour Europe and Canada once in a while. If you ever get ‘heat’ in a casino (i.e. the pit bars you from the game, or starts taking extreme notice of you), that casino goes on your ‘danger’ list and you don’t step back into it for maybe a year.
This is the kind of stuff required if you want to make real money at blackjack (say, $100/hr). Lower bets draw smaller amounts of heat, and you can push things. And in my experience, if you are content with only making maybe $10/hr, you can bet $5-$50 or so, and the pit will let you play all day even if you’re counting, so long as you are polite, friendly, and generally act like a good customer who other customers like being around. The odd tip sure doesn’t hurt, either.
But if you’re thinking about doing this, one word of warning. The variance in blackjack is HUGE, and the edge you’ll have is small. So you could have a run of bad luck that could wipe out a years’ counting income. I know a professional blackjack team that had their entire bankroll wiped out due to a run of bad luck. It happens. If you play long enough it will happen to you.
Oh, and Cliffy is wrong about most everything he said. A Martingale progression will wipe you out, and it won’t take all that long at typical table limits. I lost so many hands in a row once that if I had been betting a Martingale, my next bet would have had to have been bigger than the GDP of the United States.
And the house does not have an extra edge because of their bankroll size. If a game has a house advantage of 1% of the bets placed, then the house will make 1% of the bets placed. It doesn’t matter if the bets are placed by one mega-billionaire or a million average people. You also cannot change your odds by managing your money. ‘Quitting While Ahead’, ‘Playing with the House’s Money’, or setting stop-losses will only change the distribution of your wins and losses. The absolute value of your wins or losses will always average out to be the amount of money you bet X the advantage. NOTHING can change that.
BTW, almost every game in the casino has been beaten at one time or another. The big Six wheel has terrible odds, but it was ‘beaten’ when the casino allowed patrons to spin the wheel themselves. Some smart pros quickly trained themselves to control the spin while betting small, then came back with real money and killed the house. Baccarat has been beaten by counting teams. Roulette has been beaten by pros ‘clocking’ wheels, and by hackers using computers to predict ball movement.
But the real money-makers for professional gamblers (that don’t involve cheating) are (in order of most lucrative to least) Poker, Blackjack, Video Poker, Progressive Slots, and Baccarat).
I remember reading an article in Esquire, I think, about a guy who teaches other people to count cards and puts them into the casinos on a salary, and they do have a large bankroll. This guy keeps the differences over their salaries, naturally.
He also makes it clear that winning big consistantly will put them out of a job, as they will be banned quickly.
I realized that the Martingale system was bad for the reasons you mentioned, and I never seriously used it, except at the $1 dollar tables for a little bit, though in retrospect even that might have gone too far. The dealers never said anything about it even when I went up to $100 at a $5 table. I won then, so I got out while I was ahead.
Anyway, I would never seriously entertain the thought of trying to beat the house in the long run. Too much risk and effort for me. I never go to Vegas thinging to win. Any losses are chalked up to entertainment costs. Besides, I’m only there to get the comp drinks and get drunk cheaply (unless they water down the drinks). 
It is fun reading about the different strategies used to beat the house though. Interesting life, that of the professional gambler.
For what it’s worth, here’s the optimum strategy for playing blackjack. Memorize these rules. If you’re dealt a pair, do what the first set of rules says. All other hands, follow the second set. Always do what the rules say; if you’re feeling “lucky” go play roulette. If you follow these rules you’ll win 49.5% of the time overall.
Pair of 2’s - Split against 3 through 7, Hit against everything else.
Pair of 3’s - Split against 4 through 7, Hit against everything else.
Pair of 4’s - Double down against 5 or 6, Hit against everything else.
Pair of 5’s - Hit against 10 or A, Double down against everything else.
Pair of 6’s - Split against 6 or lower, Hit against 7 or higher.
Pair of 7’s - Split against 7 or lower, Stand against 10, Hit against 8, 9, or A.
Pair of 8’s - Split.
Pair of 9’s - Stand against 7, 10, or A. Split against everything else.
Pair of 10’s - Stand.
Pair of A’s - Split.
Soft 16 or less - Double down against 4, 5, or 6, Hit against everything else.
Soft 17 - Double down against 6 or lower, Hit against 7 or higher.
Soft 18 - Double down against 3 through 6, Hit against 9 or 10, Stand against everything else.
Soft 19 - Double down against 6, Stand against everything else.
Soft 20 or 21 - Stand.
Hard 7 or less - Hit.
Hard 8 (2 & 6) - Hit.
Hard 8 (any other) - Double down against 5 or 6. Hit against everything else.
Hard 9 - Double down against 6 or lower. Hit against 7 or higher.
Hard 10 - Hit against 10 or A. Double down against everything else.
Hard 11 - Double down against everything.
Hard 12 - Stand against 4, 5, or 6. Hit against everything else.
Hard 13 through 16 - Stand against 6 or lower. Hit against 7 or higher.
Hard 17 or higher - Stand.
It’s unlikely that I’m wrong about everything I said. Possible, but unlikely. But since I never even mentioned the Martingdale system, it’s really unlikely that I was wrong about that.
–Cliffy
bah card counting is illegal in the US dunno why it requires
major memory chunking which is quite a skill , however in the EU its perfectly legal and i used to play black jack all the time in midland casino then they added another deck
to make it a 5 deck game then people could count that
so they added another then another then another
but Blackjack is the least profitable table in the entire
casino i guess it gives the best odds
I think I attributed the wrong person, Cliffy. You’re off the hook!
Card Counting is not illegal anywhere in the world. In some places in the U.S., the Casino has the right to ask you to stop playing a game for whatever reason they want, and can have you charged with trespassing if you refuse to leave. But it’s not illegal.
Some places have laws that prevent casinos from ‘discriminating’ against card counters, but invariably places that have that rule (The EU, Atlantic City) have terrible games that are much harder to beat. I much prefer letting the casinos kick you out if they want. It makes the games better, and if you’re good they won’t spot you anyway.
Counting does not require ‘major memory chunking’. The only memory skills required are those needed to memorize the correct strategy. Keeping an actual count going in your head means remembering a single number, and perhaps another number for a side count (which is not recommended for shoe games anyway).
A quick intro for people who don’t know what the process is: Let’s take a simple hi-lo count, in which face cards, 10’s, and Aces count as -1, and 2-6 counts as +1. 7,8,9 are neutral and ignored.
As the cards are dealt, you start at 0, then add and subtract as you see the cards. And it’s much easier if you count in pairs, because many times the cards cancel each other out. So the first player gets A3 - Ace is -1, 3 is +1. The count is therefore still zero. The next player gets QJ. The count is now -2. Next player gets 57. The count is now -1 (The 5 is +1, the 7 is neutral).
You just keep doing that. All you have to remember is “+7”, or “-3”, or a number like that. It doesn’t matter how many decks there are, so those people that say it’s impossible to count a shoe don’t know what they are talking about.
Now, when it comes time to place your bet or make a playing decision, you have to take one more step. You divide your ‘running count’ by the number of decks left to play, to get the ‘true count’, which is a PER-DECK indication of favorability for the player. By doing this, we are essentially normalizing the number so we can apply one decision table to it. So let’s say we’re playing a 4-deck shoe, and after two hands our running count is +8. With two hands played, there are probably about 3.5 decks left, so you would divide the count by 3 or 4 (round up or down to the nearest deck, or half deck, depending on the system.). In this case, we see that the true count is just slighly over +2. In most games, a TC of +2 is just about the breakeven point where the gambler has an edge over the house. So you’d double up your bet. Not because you will make more money at +2, but doubling now prevent you from having to go from a minimum bet to a huge one in one hand.
That’s the way it’s done. Professional gamblers typically use a ‘kelly’ betting system, which maximizes the growth of your bankroll. When Kelly betting, you bet a percentage of your bankroll equal to your advantage. So if your total bankroll is $100,000 and the TC indicates you have an advantage of 1%, you would bet 1% of your bankroll on that hand, or $1,000. But pure Kelly betting leads to some big fluctuations, so lots of guys bet 1/2 Kelly.
The last thing to know is that the optimum playing strategy varies with the count. For example, insurance for non-counters is always a sucker bet. But if the count goes above a certain number (Generally +2 or +3, depending on the system you use), insurance becomes a smart bet. Likewise, hitting a 16 against a dealer’s face card is always correct for a non-counter. But if the count is at all positive, the correct thing to do is stand. There are 18 playing strategy variations that gain you about 80% of the value of memorizing hundreds, so they are all you really need to memorize. And even then, you’re not going to use them all the time, because some plays really attract the attention of the pit (splitting 10’s, for example, is the mark of either an idiot or a card counter. If you split 10’s, it’s a huge red flag to the casino. So they’ll start watching you to see if you’re an idiot, and it’ll become apparent very quickly that you’re not. That means you’re a counter).
sam stone, i’ll refer this question to you , as you seem to be the local expert -
some people here have said that the house can defeat counters by using more decks in the shoe. I’ve heard the opposite - that having more decks in the shoe works in favor of the counters, by providing a chance that the deck will become really stacked at the end. It’s just the re-shuffling that defeats counters. The latter makes more sense to me.
which is it?
as for why wouldn’t the house just always shuffle? I think in some sense, they want to encourage would-be counters. Everyone goes to vegas thinking they have a chance at beating the house, novice card-counters included. I’ll bet (!) that the houses make more by teasing bad card-counters than they lose from good ones.
No, the game gets worse as the casino adds more decks. The simple reason is that the frequency of blackjacks goes down when you add more decks. This is bad for the player, because while the house gets as many blackjacks are you do, the house only wins your bet if it gets one, but you get paid 3:2 if you get one.
That said, by FAR the most important factor in the profitability of a game is ‘penetration’, or how many cards the house will deal before re-shuffling. An 8 deck game where they deal down to 7 decks before re-shuffling is much more profitable than a 4-deck game where they re-shuffle after 2 decks are played.
If you find a game with really, really deep penetration, it can be very profitable. I’ve had advantages over the house of over 2% on average in some casinos that cut really deep.
Remember the True Count I mentioned, and how you have to divide by the number of decks left to get it? That means that in the first part of the shoe, the true count is relatively stable, and the house is usually favored. So if you play through all those negative or neutral counts, you have to play through some positive counts to stay ahead. Late in the shoe is when all the really big counts happen (with half a deck left, a running count of +4 is a true count of +8, given the counter about a 3-4% advantage. The same running count at the start of a 4-deck shoe is a TC of +1, and the game is still slighly unfavorable). If the house re-shuffles after you get halfway through the shoe, the game is very tough to beat.
When there are a lot of decks in play, the player has to play through a lot of unfavorable situations, reducing his overall profit. So one strategy against 8 deck shoes is to ‘wong’ the tables, which means to count while standing behind the table, and only sitting down and playing in positive counts. And if you’re playing and the count goes negative, you get up and leave. The problem with this is that the house will spot the pattern very quickly. So it takes really good ‘cover’ to pull it off.
Why doesn’t the house shuffle after every hand? Mainly because it slows the game down, which limits their profit from the suckers. Also, the casino generally tries to walk a fine line, because they recognize the advertising value of offering good games. Blackjack exploded in popularity when the first edition of “Beat the Dealer” made the best-seller list. The casinos soon realized that for every card counter who makes real money, there are a thousand people who skim a book or come up with a ‘count’ based on incomplete information (such as reading this thread), go to Vegas, and lose all their money. If they make the games so tough that the counters go away, they tend to lose a lot of non-counters, and overall revenue suffers.
The general balance most casinos have struck is to allow low-limit counters (anyone betting under ‘black’ ($100) or maybe ‘green’ ($25) will get no heat, typically). The mid-limit counters generally get ‘backed off’ only when they are being turds (And that, surprisingly, is a lot of them - counting tends to attract, well, nerds with no social skills), not tipping, giving advice to other players, etc. But the casino expends most of its surveillance effort going after real cheaters (dice cheats, chip thieves, etc), and high-limit counters (those betting more than $100 a hand on average).
It’s very tough to survive as a high limit counter, but I know a few guys who have been betting as high as $5,000 a hand for years and they are still out there, making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. There are maybe a handful of counters in the world managing that.