# Could a World-Class Card Counter Win Big in a Single Evening at a Casino Before Being Thrown Out? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 27, 2023, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-world-class-card-counter-win-big-in-a-single-evening-at-a-casino-before-being-thrown-out/984681 "2023-05-27T19:54:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2023, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-world-class-card-counter-win-big-in-a-single-evening-at-a-casino-before-being-thrown-out/984681/21 "2023-05-27T23:12:44Z")
Also, my card game is bridge. Everyone tries to count cards in bridge, and good players do so perfectly. It’s not cheating, it’s being a good player. ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2023, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-world-class-card-counter-win-big-in-a-single-evening-at-a-casino-before-being-thrown-out/984681/22 "2023-05-27T23:41:52Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > The rules don’t derive from any fundamental moral principles. Surely the casino sets the rules for the games they offer. If they _say_ it’s against their rules, it seems to me that makes it cheating. I dislike gambling. But on top of that, I resist the legitimacy of a rule based on your inner mental state. Knowing what I am really thinking — say, if there was a mind-reading machine — would be a deep, maybe the deepest, privacy violation. Having a rule against an inferred mental state isn’t as bad, but I sure don’t like it. Now, if their rule is that you can’t play anymore after you win too often, that’s fine with me. And winning often surely correlates with card-counting. But if you followed all the rules, except for what goes on in your mind when you says hit or stay, that is not cheating. Older folks here will understand this analogy: Jimmy Carter was not admitting to cheating on Rosalynn just because of unacted-upon thoughts he admitted to in his Playboy interview. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2023, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-world-class-card-counter-win-big-in-a-single-evening-at-a-casino-before-being-thrown-out/984681/23 "2023-05-28T00:13:19Z")
Certain betting patterns which 99.99% of the time indicate card counting are a policy violation and the casino is within their rights to not allow it. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2023, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-world-class-card-counter-win-big-in-a-single-evening-at-a-casino-before-being-thrown-out/984681/24 "2023-05-28T00:14:41Z")
> [@PhillyGuy](#): > > I resist the legitimacy of a rule based on your inner mental state. I had not thought about it this way, but this is an excellent point. I agree with you. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2023, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-world-class-card-counter-win-big-in-a-single-evening-at-a-casino-before-being-thrown-out/984681/25 "2023-05-28T00:35:13Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > If the casinos didn’t kick out the counters, they have to either shut down blackjack, or they have to change the way it’s played - continuous shuffling machines, 6-8 deck shoes that are reshuffled halfway, preventing mid-shoe entry of new players, all that stuff. I strongly suspect that, even if a casino took no measures at all to counter counting, they’d still make money on the game. Sure, there would be a few pros who’d know what they were doing and could make a steady income, and so the casino would make less money than they do now, but there are a lot more idiots than folks who know what they’re doing. > [@puzzlegal](#): > > Also, my card game is bridge. Everyone tries to count cards in bridge, and good players do so perfectly. It’s not cheating, it’s being a good player. There’s a trick-taking game called Casino, that I learned from my grandfather. He rarely lost, because he could remember, not just a plus-minus count of certain kinds of cards, but exactly which cards had been played all game. By the last hand, you might as well just put your hand face-up on the table, because he knew what you were holding. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2023, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-world-class-card-counter-win-big-in-a-single-evening-at-a-casino-before-being-thrown-out/984681/26 "2023-05-28T01:02:36Z")
> [@Caribbean\_cruiser](#): > > We all know casinos reserve the right to eject card-counters, [Wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_counting#Legal_status) tells me that in some places it is illegal to ban card counters. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2023, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-world-class-card-counter-win-big-in-a-single-evening-at-a-casino-before-being-thrown-out/984681/27 "2023-05-28T01:08:29Z")
An overall comment about “card counting” It was made famous 60 years ago, in a more innocent, albeit highly mobbed-up, era. You can’t practically count cards against an 8 deck shoe that’s auto-shuffled after every few hands. The count never moves far from neutral. Back when dealers played deep into single or two deck hands, radically favorable counts occurred often enough to pay. And back when casinos were unsophisticated enough to let players play, and let them ramp their bets wildly, “big” money percentagewise could be made. Now? Not so much. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2023, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-world-class-card-counter-win-big-in-a-single-evening-at-a-casino-before-being-thrown-out/984681/28 "2023-05-28T01:09:26Z")
Good bridge players remember every card. Mediocre bridge players remember as many cards as they can. ( edited to remove swypo) ---
**Author:** ![Mighty\_Mouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mighty_mouse/32/7776_2.png) [@Mighty\_Mouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Mouse)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2023, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-world-class-card-counter-win-big-in-a-single-evening-at-a-casino-before-being-thrown-out/984681/29 "2023-05-28T01:10:19Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > Medicare bridge players remember as many cards as they can. Trifle ageist, what? ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2023, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-world-class-card-counter-win-big-in-a-single-evening-at-a-casino-before-being-thrown-out/984681/30 "2023-05-28T01:11:38Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > You can’t practically count cards against an 8 deck shoe that’s auto-shuffled after every few hands. Is there no technological solution to allow them to do this easily? Or are the casinos being even more cynical about it, by choosing to allow the possibility of counting? Is it difficult enough to count cards that they want to allow the theoretical possibility to tempt more mugs to play, because 99% of people who attempt counting will still lose? ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2023, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-world-class-card-counter-win-big-in-a-single-evening-at-a-casino-before-being-thrown-out/984681/31 "2023-05-28T01:15:17Z")
There were rumors in the 90s that the shoes were “preferentially shuffled” such that there could never be much variation beyond a zero count. It possible but not very unlikely. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2023, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-world-class-card-counter-win-big-in-a-single-evening-at-a-casino-before-being-thrown-out/984681/32 "2023-05-28T01:15:22Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I strongly suspect that, even if a casino took no measures at all to counter counting, they’d still make money on the game. Sure, there would be a few pros who’d know what they were doing and could make a steady income, and so the casino would make less money than they do now, but there are a lot more idiots than folks who know what they’re doing. No, if they took no measures at all to stop counting, they would be absolutely hammered by counters and teams of counters. The people the casino really fear are counting teams. They don’t have to do amything illegal, or signal each other, or interact in any way while in the casino. No, the danger of counting teams is that if they are at different tables they can each bet as if the entire bankroll is theirs, without violating the Kelly Criterion and risking gambler’s ruin. I’ve played on a team before. I’ll explain how it works: If I go into the casino with $5,000, there is some math that tells me I have to bet no more than my advantage on a hand, and ideally only half that. So if the true count is 5, and my advantage is therefore maybe 1%, I should bet no more than 1% of my bankroll. If I don’t want wild swings in my bankroll, half of my advantage. So with a 5K bankroll, that’s a maximum $25 bet. So I will be forced to play at a $5 table and spread my bets from $5 to $25. if I consistently bet higher than the Kelly criterion, it doesn’t matter if I have an advantage. I will always bust out eventually. Now, blackjack counters can earn roughly one average bet per hour. At a $5 table, the average bet is likely $10 or so, so I can make $10/hr, with an hourly variance 20 times that (i.e. in an hour I will likely have a result centered on -190 to +210. As you can see, that’s a tough way to make a living. Ten bucks an hour under significant risk. And one or two mistaken plays can wipe out your profit. That’s one reason the casinos don’t sweat the small counters. But now imagine I tram up with 10 people, and we all go off to different tables (or even different casinos) to play. Now each of us is playing independent trials from the others, so we can all play as if the team’s joint bankroll is ours alone, wothout violating the Kelly Criterion, So now instead of spreading $5-$25, I can spread $50-$250 with the same risk. And my hourly earning jumps from $10 to $100. Even better, because we are playing ten times more hands per hour, the variance drops dramatically (variance falls by the square root of the number of hands played), and we reach the ‘long run’ where we are guaranteed to win much sooner. Now imagine a team of high powered card counters, each with a $50,000 bankroll. Ten of those guys can each bet as if they have half a million, and can spread from $500-$2500 if the casino will let them, and make $1,000/hr each. In reality, I don’t think there are any trams that can play that large and survive without being caught. But a team of $25-$250 spreading card counters can do serious dakage to the casino’s bottom line. Especially the smaller casinos. If Casinos turned a blind eye to card counting, teams would wipe them out. So they have to patrol and look for high stakes gamblers that may be counting, and stop them when they find them. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2023, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-world-class-card-counter-win-big-in-a-single-evening-at-a-casino-before-being-thrown-out/984681/33 "2023-05-28T01:17:41Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > If the casinos didn’t kick out the counters, they have to either shut down blackjack, or they have to change the way it’s played - continuous shuffling machines, 6-8 deck shoes that are reshuffled halfway, preventing mid-shoe entry of new players, all that stuff. It slows the game down and annoys the other players. My brother was a counter in Vegas, and he always played downtown because the Strip casinos used shoes with lots of decks. The downtown casinos used fewer decks, perhaps to attract people who thought they could count better than they could. He did get thrown out from time to time, so he developed a drunk act to throw dealers off the scent. And I agree that while you can theoretically make money, it won’t make you rich. Outside of movies, of course. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2023, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-world-class-card-counter-win-big-in-a-single-evening-at-a-casino-before-being-thrown-out/984681/34 "2023-05-28T01:18:43Z")
Weird swypo. I meant to say mediocre bridge players. And i was thinking of myself. In fact, that might be offensive, to I’ll go fix that. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2023, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-world-class-card-counter-win-big-in-a-single-evening-at-a-casino-before-being-thrown-out/984681/35 "2023-05-28T01:21:11Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > My brother was a counter in Vegas, and he always played downtown because the Strip casinos used shoes with lots of decks. The downtown casinos used fewer decks, perhaps to attract people who thought they could count better than they could. Some friends of mine would do that in the 90s. They mostly just went to get drunk and played at low level tables. They tipped well and weren’t very good so the staff were amused and tolerated them. They’d sometimes even openly talk about what the count was when they were down a lot. A couple of times they got hot and were asked to leave. It was funny to see the looks on the other gamblers faces when they got kicked out. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2023, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-world-class-card-counter-win-big-in-a-single-evening-at-a-casino-before-being-thrown-out/984681/36 "2023-05-28T01:23:05Z")
> [@hajario](#): > > Some friends of mine would do that in the 90s. They mostly just went to get drunk and played at low level tables. He never, ever got drunk. He just pretended he was drunk. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2023, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-world-class-card-counter-win-big-in-a-single-evening-at-a-casino-before-being-thrown-out/984681/37 "2023-05-28T01:25:47Z")
I got that. They were there just to fuck around and didn’t expect to make money. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2023, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-world-class-card-counter-win-big-in-a-single-evening-at-a-casino-before-being-thrown-out/984681/38 "2023-05-28T01:26:20Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > [Wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_counting#Legal_status) tells me that in some places it is illegal to ban card counters. Yeah, Atlantic city is one of them. A card counter successfully sued to allow him to play after they kicked him out of all the casinos in AC. The result was that the casinos were forced to make blackjack unprofitable for counters. The easiest way to do that is to deal from an eight deck shoe and reshuffle after four decks. The first four decks rarely have high counts, so this makes the game unbeatable. Well, they also had to ban mid-shoe entry because the one way to beat such games is to never make a bet unless the count is already high. So counters would walk around looking for a new shoe being dealt, then watch the first few hands. If a real clump of low cards comes out, they’ll sit down and play. Otherwise, they keep walking. That’s easy enough to thwart by banning mid-shoe entries. All this of course annoys all the players, not just the counters. That’s why I said the best way tommanagemthe situation is to keep it ‘gray’ and let casinos stop counters from playing blackjack at their discretion. This is why ---
**Author:** ![Mighty\_Mouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mighty_mouse/32/7776_2.png) [@Mighty\_Mouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Mouse)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2023, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-world-class-card-counter-win-big-in-a-single-evening-at-a-casino-before-being-thrown-out/984681/39 "2023-05-28T01:34:18Z")
I was only joking! I think it’s pretty obvious what you meant. At the last bridge event I was at, I was the only one not old enough to be on Medicare. Actually I doubt anyone else was under 70. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2023, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-world-class-card-counter-win-big-in-a-single-evening-at-a-casino-before-being-thrown-out/984681/40 "2023-05-28T01:41:11Z")
Oh, by the way: blackjack in Vegas is ruined. Almost all the casinos have moved to paying 6/5 on a blackjack instead of 3/2. This makes the game much worse for the players (including non counters), quadrupling the house’s vig from an average of .5-.7% to over 2%. That’s just about impossible to overcome, especially since the primary value of high counts is the increased number of blackjacks, and lowering the payout for them kills counters. It also kills everyone else, but I don’t think the casinos care about the table games much any more. They make much, much more from the slots. They are also dealing out of multi-deck shoes with terrible penetration. There may be some decent blackjack games left in Vegas, but I didn’t see any when I was there last month. Do not sit down at a 6/5 blackjack table whether you are a counter or not. Well, unless you are doing that rather than playing Roulette or Pai Gow or something, which have much worse odds. But you will get better odds playing baccarat player/bank bets (not the tie bet, which is awful), or pass/don’t pass at craps. None of them are winning games, though. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-world-class-card-counter-win-big-in-a-single-evening-at-a-casino-before-being-thrown-out/984681.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-world-class-card-counter-win-big-in-a-single-evening-at-a-casino-before-being-thrown-out/984681.md?page=3)