Casinos *CAN* be beaten

Factual Questions
41

thanks for the explanation. I hadn’t considered the blackjack probability. as you say, a high deck count with good penetration can also be very profitable.

that wouldn’t be named after John Wong, would it? Wasn’t he with the MIT blackjack club? They were known for making suitcases of money and buying houses in cash. They had elaborate ways of signalling people to ‘just happen to’ come into the game when the count was good.

It seems we agree that general knowledge about cardcounting is actually good business for casinos. Not enough people can do it well enough for it to hurt them. And they’ll just make it harder for the good ones.

Which makes card counting as a discipline come to encompass far more than cards. It now includes hiding ones actions, not looking too alert or smart, physical disguises, etc.

42

Here’s a little bottom line: when was the last time you met (or even heard of) a rich blackjack player? I’d guess never. Even if you can get the ~1% advantage that comes with counting, even if you manage to avoid detection by the pit bosses, you’re still only making a 1% return on your investment. Doing all that is required to create these slightly favorable odds is a lot of work. A lot of very tedious work.

People gamble because there’s always the chance that they could get lucky. When you go to ridiculous ends to achieve a small advantage (which can evaporate immediately upon detection/reshuffling/etc), there’s no fun in it. What’s the point?

43

sorry occ, i may be in a tiny minority, but I’ve known some. One did buy his house for cash, another doesn’t have to work a regular job anymore. I don’t want to sound like some advertisement for blackjack as a career. as sam stone points out, it’s extremely hard to succeed at.

it’s not quite like the ROI on a normal investment. You have a 1% chance of beating the house on a given hand. With a big enough betting bank, 1% is real tasty.

44

ackk! that should be 51%.

45

Yeah, a 1% advantage PER BET is a lot different than a 1% ROI in a standard investment. How about looking at it this way: If the casino had no countermeasures, and you were allowed to bet as much as you wanted whenever you wanted, you could play blackjack and double your bankroll every few months. Within a couple of years, you’d be a rich, rich man.

That’s the theoretical maximum. In the real world, you will rapidly hit theoretical bet maximums either due to house limits, heat, or bankroll limits.

A more realistic expectation is this: If you are winning on average 1% of your bet per hand, and you play 100 hands per hour, then you’ll win one average-sized bet per hour. For a player betting between $100 and $500 per hand, that’s a LOT of money.

The catch-22 is that the only way you can bet that amount of money while staying within kelly limits for bankroll growth is to have a bankroll of $50,000 or more. And most people with that kind of cash have real jobs and real careers where they can do even better than playing blackjack.

The real danger to casinos, BTW, is not the individual counter. It’s the professional teams and syndicates. There are groups out there that have scouts travelling the world looking for exceptional games. When they find them, they call in the team, and suddenly a casino can find itself with 20 professional players sitting at their tables, each one being able to bet the house limits when the count warrants it. THIS is what scares the blackjack pit.

Teams are where the real money is, BTW. Whenever I’ve been a member of a team, my income skyrocketed. Why? Because if 10 people pool their bankrolls, they can each bet as if the whole bankroll was theirs. So if I join a team and contribute $10,000 along with 9 other people, then I can start betting as if my bankroll was $100,000. And because 10 people are playing at 10 different tables, the daily variance is cut way, way down. So my risk is lower, and my income ten times higher.

There are a few blackjack teams kicking around that have been in existance continuously for 20 years. Members come and go, but the team continues on. They have their own accountants, bank accounts, and formal rules for how the members are paid. There are a couple of Ivy league schools with long-running teams, and I know of at least one team made up of NASA engineers. These guys do it as a hobby - they take a 1 week vacation together and take $50,000 or so and all head to Vegas or Reno and try to make some serious cash for a week. It’s a lot of fun, and this is the kind of playing I would still do. Forget about the career - think of it as a challenge, a unique vacation opportunity.

But you have to really trust the guys you are playing with. For some people, the temptation to pocket an especially big win when the other team members aren’t around is great.

Learning to count cards is almost trivially easy. I could teach anyone here to be a world-class technical counter in a week (maybe a weekend). But being a professional card counter is tremendously difficult. There are just so many pitfalls. Many of them are emotional - you have to be the type of person who can avoid ‘steaming’ when losing, who isn’t sucked in by goofy ‘systems’, who has the flair and panache to be able to count while putting on an act for the casino, who can stand a long run of bad luck without ‘losing it’, etc.

I’ve seen lots of losers. Guys who can count like a pro, but who won’t leave a ‘hot’ shoe even though the pit boss is staring them down. Or guys who get overconfident after a series of wins and start over-betting their hands. Or guys who get lazy and won’t leave a casino when they should.

Here’s a big one: In blackjack, because of variance our bankrolls take huge swings. Sometimes it’s raining money - it feels like every time you go into the casino you walk out with a huge wad of cash in your pocket. And then dry spells hit that are AMAZING in their length and pain.

But for many people, when the going is good the temptation to spend the money is high, because it’s such easy money. It’s tough to resist a steak dinner after you just won $2000 in an hour at the tables. Or maybe you have a good week, make $10,000, and so you go out and buy a new camcorder and TV or something. Then when your luck turns bad, you don’t have the bankroll to withstand it, and get busted out of the game. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen that.

46

A couple of posts in this thread seem to be saying that video poker can also be beaten. Is this true? How so?

47

Why is this true? Since the additional decks have the same number of aces and ten-value cards, I’d expect the frequency of blackjacks to be independent of the number of decks.

48

The reason you get more blackjacks in a single deck game as opposed to a 2-deck game is because the effect of the removal of the other card is more important.

For example, let’s say your first card is a ten. The odds of getting an Ace on the next card (assuming all other cards are unknown) is 4 in 51, or 7.84%.

Now let’s say you get a ten in an 4-deck shoe. The probability of getting an Ace on the next card is now 16/207, or 7.72%.

Now imagine the smallest possible deck with a each value card present - say, all the Spades, or 13 cards. If you get dealt a face card now, the chance of getting an Ace to go with it is 1 in 12, or 8.3%.

KarlGauss: There are two types of video poker machines. The first type has a fixed payout table. Usually, these are unbeatable. But some casinos have VP games where the player actually has an edge of maybe 1% or so with perfect play (these games are typically identified by a ‘9-6’ payout for the full house and flush). They can do this because very, very few video poker players play the game properly, and because the fixed bet sizes means that even with perfect play you can’t earn more than maybe $5-$10 per hour, which is too low to attract the pros and teams.

The other type of video poker game is the ‘progressive’ payout type, which generally pays less for the lower hands, but has a royal flush ‘jackpot’ that grows over time. If the jackpot gets high enough, the player actually has an advantage. The same thing exists for any other game with a progressive payout, including some slot machines or the powerball lottery (the latest powerball actually had a pre-tax advantage of about 52 cents for each $1 ticket, assuming that only one player would win the whole jackpot.)

There is an Australian syndicate which tracks all the lotteries in the world, and when they find one where the jackpot indicates a positive expectation for the player, they swoop in and try to buy all the tickets. They have derived a complex infrastructure for being able to buy millions of tickets in a few days, and some states have had to pass laws specificially to protect their lotteries against these guys and others like them.

It should be mentioned that the Vegas average for vig on the slots and video poker games is something like 8%, which is huge. So unless you know what you are doing, these are generally sucker plays. In contrast, roulette has a house advantage of 5.26%, craps can be as low as about .6%, and baccarat is about 1.2%. Blackjack without card counting but with perfect basic strategy play is almost always the best game in the house, at about .5% house advantage. So a slot machine on average will have a house vig about 16 TIMES worse than a blackjack game. That’s why slots are taking over. A casino can set up a slot pit, staff it with one person, and it will bring in more cash than a whole pit of blackjack tables with a staff of 12.

49

It seems like a good time to re-post a long message I wrote a couple of years ago:

Dan’s Guide To Smart Casino Gambling

Okay, you’re going to Vegas for a vacation. You’re not a professional gambler, and you don’t plan on being one. You’re willing to accept that the house has an edge over you, but you’d like to have a good time, spend as little money as possible while still getting that thrill from the risk, and maximize your chance of actually winning overall while you’re there. So, what can you do to make this all happen? Here are some guidelines:

Know your Games

There are a lot of gambling games in Las Vegas that actually have a very low house percentage. For the best of these games, the player is playing close to even-money against the house. However, there are some real sucker bets in Vegas, and if you get attracted to them you’ll get slaughtered.

There are two ways to look at how good or bad a game is - first, is the percentage of your bet that the house will eventually keep. Some games have a house ‘vig’ as low as .5% of your bet or less, and some can be as high as 30%! The second criterion is speed of the game. When the house as the edge against you, speed kills. The best chance for you to be ‘lucky’ and beat the house comes with the fewest number of plays. The more you play, the less chance you have of winning. And, your cost per hour goes up. Your best chance of beating the house is to find a game with a low percentage, and put your whole trip bankroll on one bet. Win or lose, quit. You’re very close to 50-50 to double your money that way. Trouble is, it’s not much fun to be in Vegas if you lose that first bet. So you want to draw a balance between how much you play and how likely it is to lose. The best way to do that is to find the slowest-playing games that have a low house percentage.

The Worst Games

In terms of the house percentage, the worst games you can play are:

  • Keno (-17% to -34%)

  • The Big Six Wheel (or money wheel)

  • The proposition bets in craps (the hard ways, etc) (-5% to -26%)

  • Roulette (-5.26%)

  • Slot Machines (-1% to -15%)

  • Caribbean Stud (-5.74%)

  • Most other small side games

In terms of speed, the fastest games in the casino are:

  • Slot Machines ( 200 to 400 Plays/hour)

  • Video Poker (200 plays/hr)

  • Craps (up to 200 rolls per hour)

  • Baccarat (150 hands/hour)

  • Blackjack (50-100 hands per hour)

  • Roulette (50 spins per hour)

The Best Games

In terms of house percentage, the best games in the casino are:

  • Blackjack (0% to -.8%)

  • Craps (-.4% to -1.2%)

  • Baccarat (-1.17%(bank) -1.36%(player))

  • Video Poker (.3%(rare) to -1.4%)

It’s no coincidence that the best games from a percentage standpoint also tend to be the fastest. The house can afford to take a smaller percentage if they’re getting many more plays per hour.

The big exceptions here are slot machines and prop bets in craps. They are both the fastest games in the house and have the worst odds.

One more thing: of the games above, only blackjack requires a reasonably sophisticated strategy. To play it inexpensively, you MUST learn basic strategy. There are lots of books around to teach you, and the casino will probably even let you keep a little plastic reference card on the table with you if you forget. Learn the strategy, and don’t deviate from it. Forget streaks, hunches, etc. If hitting a 16 agains a 7 is correct (and it always is for a non-card counter), then always do it. Never take insurance, even if the dealer is ‘due’ for a blackjack or is ‘on a streak’ of blackjacks (neither exist, of course).

If you don’t want to go through the effort of learning the game properly, I suggest you stick with mini baccarat or pass line bets at craps. Contrary to what the other players might tell you (especially the ones frantically writing on their little pads of paper at the Baccarat table), there is NO STRATEGY to these games. It’s essentially a coin flip. Put your money down, cross your fingers. To my way of thinking, that makes them as boring as watching paint dry. But to each his own.

Calculating your Cost of Gambling

So how much money do you need to play in Vegas? To figure out how much the casino will earn from you (if luck evens out), take the size of your bet, multiply it by the house percentage, and multiply that by the number of hands per hour that you’re going to play. For example, let’s say you’re going to play $5 blackjack (.7% house edge), for four hours a day. Here’s what the casinos expect to earn from you:

4 hours X 75 hands/hr X 5 X .70% = $10.50

Ten bucks for a whole afternoon of gambling is pretty cheap. Now let’s look at the worst games. Let’s say you’re going to play dollar slots, one dollar at a time for four hours. Typically, the house take will be something like 3% on machines like this (worse on quarter slots, worse yet on nickel slots). Your cost of gambling:

4 hours X 400 spins X $1 X 3% = $48

So it costs you $48 to play the slots. (the quarter slots aren’t much better - you’re risking 1/4 the money, but the house edge is often 3 or 4 times higher than on the dollar slots). Also, the slot payout includes the longshots, which you are unlikely to hit during a 4 hour period or even a weekend (or a lifetime). The more likely odds you’ll face at the slot machine is probably something like 5-10%.

However, there’s another factor - how much could you lose if you’re really unlucky? Without getting into heavy math, you can roughly figure that in one hour you could lose as much as 50 times what you should. Over 10 hours you could lose as much as 14 or 15 times what you ‘should’ (at 2 standard deviations). So if you’re playing $5 blackjack for 10 hours over a weekend, expect it to cost you about $26.50, but you could lose as much as $425, (or equally likely, win $375). Most of the time you won’t win or lose that much playing $5 blackjack, but winning or losing 200 isn't out of the question. If you plotted the results of 1000 players who just walked out of the casino doing exactly what you did, it would form a bell curve with the median at -26.50, and with 95% of the people being somewhere between down $425 and up $375. The other 5% will be somewhere above and below those numbers. As you can see, you only have to be a little lucky to post a profit over that time.

Let’s look a the worst case: You just saw ‘Hard 8’ at the theatre, and decide to go play craps and bet the hardways just like the pro in the movie. You’re betting $5 at a time, 200 times an hour, at a house advantage of maybe 15%. This fun little game will cost you $150/hr.

So, the difference between the best games (blackjack, $10.50 for four hours) and the worst (prop bets in craps, $600 for four hours) is a factor of sixty! And that’s with the same $5 bet size on both.

Size your trip bankroll

Given this information, figure out what game you want to play, take the total money you want to risk on the trip, and divide it into equal daily amounts. Let’s say you’re willing to risk $1000 on your trip, and you’ll be there for 2 days. Limit yourself to $500 per day for gambling. Based on the info above, you know that you should be playing $5 or $10 bets, and no more. Limit yourself to blackjack, baccarat, and pass line bets in craps. Take your time. If you lose your $500, you’re done for the day. If you win early, feel free to increase your bet sizes a bit if you want (but just a bit). Better yet, pocket the winnings and go buy yourself something nice with it.

If you lose half of your daily bankroll, you might also consider stepping your bet sizes down if you’re not at the table minimums. Remember, you’re in Vegas to have a good time, and that means staying in the game. But don’t be hesitant to just quit gambling at any time and go do something else. Vegas is like freakin’ Disneyland these days.

Going to Vegas on the Cheap

Hotels

When you book a hotel in Vegas, don’t just call and ask for the room rate. When you phone, tell them you want the ‘casino rate’. They’ll connect you to the gaming floor, and you can ask the person you talk to what their requirements are for the casino rate. He’ll tell you that to qualify you’ll have to play at least X hours of a game, betting at least X amount per hand. If you’re willing to do that, you’ll get the casino rate. And it’s a huge difference: At the MGM Grand, the normal rate for a suite is $248/night. The casino rate is $79. The requirements for getting the casino rate aren’t too bad, either. It’s typically something like 4 hours of blackjack a day at at least $10/hand (or equivalent for other games). For a poker player, usually 4-6 hours of play at any limit (even 3-6 or 2-4) will get you the casino rate. Some of the strip hotels have casino rates as low as $49/night. And remember, these are typically four-star hotels that are much, much nicer to stay in than the motel 6.

If they give you the rate, you’re now a preferred guest of the casino, and when you arrive you’ll be able to go through VIP check-in, etc.

Once you’re there, make sure you sign up for any player’s clubs or other special gambler features the casino has. These can shave another percentage off the house edge, and they also give the casino a way of tracking your play to maximize your comps.

Don’t be afraid to ask for comps. You’d be surprised at what you can get, even as a low-limit gambler. If you’ve been playing blackjack for a couple of hours, ask the pit boss for a buffet comp. Even at the low limit tables you might get one. If you’re a big bettor betting $100 a hand or more, you can expect a completely free room, all meals free, show tickets, etc.

If you are planning on going to a show, ask the pit boss for a line pass. This is one of the easiest comps to get because it doesn’t cost the casino anything. What it does is allow you to bypass the lineup and get seated before everyone else. Slide a $20 to the person seating you, and you’ll get front row seats.

When the casino rates you for comps, they’ll track the number of hours you play, and the limits you’re playing. They’re pretty good at this, but you can stretch this a bit by taking long bathroom breaks, betting a bit bigger when the pit boss is watching, etc. When you’re ready to leave, place a few bigger bets, then call the pit boss over and tell him you’re leaving right away and if he recorded your play. He’ll tell you what he’s got you rated for. If it’s higher than it should be, great - you just locked it in. If it’s lower than it should be, you can tell him that he must have missed some of your play because you certainly played longer or bet more than he thought. He may increase your rating just a bit. But don’t overdo it - they’re on to those kinds of tricks mostly.

When you’re ready to check out, don’t assume that you’re only getting the casino rate - You can go to the floorman in the casino and ask him if you can get the whole room comped - you have nothing to lose. He’ll either refuse or say okay, or he may offer to reduce the rate a bit more. Whatever he says, be friendly! Never argue or get huffy. If he says no, politely ask him how much you need to play next time to get the room. The last time my wife and I were in Reno, we were given two buffet comps without asking, just because we were friendly with the staff. We were playing low-limit poker.

Be on the lookout for special offers like ‘match play’ coupons. Some hotels will give you a guest pack consisting of coupons, discounts on show tickets and buffets, etc.

By being smart about comps and room rates, you can get more money back in savings than what the house expects to make from your gambling, which makes the gambling part actually profitable.

50

This I can attest to. I’m a counter, but I use a relatively simple system and do it only for pleasure, so I’m not betting the farm. I usually play at the five or ten dollar table. A few times, a pit boss or dealer has noted that I was counting, but didn’t really care, as I was playing for such low stakes. In fact, the dealers who noted it were all thoroughly convinced that counting doesn’t work. My bankroll disagrees. :smiley:

OTOH, I have seen pit bosses shut down high-stakes counters with reshuffling and law penetration.

Sua