During her misspent youth, my wife was, briefly, a card counter in Atlantic City. She explained the system to me and I think I have a rudimentary understanding of it. The trick is, apparently, not the actual counting of cards, but doing it without getting caught, because the casinos refer to counting as “cheating.” So how exactly, does counting cars differ from what I do when I play hearts with my kids and remember which hearts have been thrown before I shoot the moon? My wife’s explanation is “there is none, that’s what they mean by ‘the house always wins.’” I’d just like a little external verification on that.
There’s no difference, and it’s not cheating. The house usually doesn’t even call it cheating, except to the media. Most of the time, if you get barred counting it’ll be with a comment like, “I’m sorry sir, but your play is a little too strong for us. You’re welcome to play other games, though.”
It was my understanding that you could be asked to leave and not allowed back in.
Sure. It’s their place. The reserve the right to refuse service. If you don’t comply, you’re tresspassing.
That doesn’t make counting cheating or immoral.
As for how important it is to hide the fact that you’re a counter… In most places, the casino couldn’t care less if you’re a card counter until you start betting serious money. That usually means ‘black chip’ betting (i.e. individual bets of $100 or more). If you’re a counter who is betting $5.00 per hand, spreading to the occasional $40-50, most casinos will look the other way and write your modest winnings off as a comp.
That is, unless they want you out of there for other reasons. Most small time counters who get barred are barred because they are obnoxious, and the counting gives the casino a good reason to get rid of a bad customer. So manners and a pleasant demeanor are at least as valuable as camouflage for the small-to-medium limit counter.
If you’re a huge limit player, manners don’t matter because A) The casino will look hard to try and spot betting and playing patterns that match a card counter, and throw you out if they spot it, or B) You’re a losing player, which means they’ll kiss your butt even if you personally peed on their blackjack table.
Yep, that is my understanding also. Which is more or less what Sam Stone said. He is just giving the polite scenario. If you watch the TLC programs on Vegas the casinos they can basically allow or not allow you to play on any criteria except those that the government has said you can’t like say race and sex and certain age groups.
Booty. Do a search.
A casino can throw you out at any time, whether you’re counting cards or not. All you have to do is win too much, and their assumption will be that you are counting cards.
After all, there is no way they can prove you’re counting, unless you move your lips or take notes.
60 Minutes II (I think) had a story about a guy who makes his living this way, though his picture is in most of the casinos’ “books” as someone to keep out. Since he’s so well known, he now makes his living by teaching his method to others, bankrolling them, and taking a cut of their winnings.
I used to go to AC when I was 16 and count cards at a now defunct casino. Since they were on their way out and desperate for customers they were only using 4 decks and allowed early surrender. One of the dealer’s, a lovely older woman, knew I was counting cards (and that I was underage) but appreciated youthful moxie and kept a seperate ace count for me.
Yojimbo,
They don’t just assume your counting if you win. The dealer is counting also and watches your betting relative to the count.
It’s a lot more than remembering what cards have already passed by. Most “Single Parameter” counts, just keep a relative idea of how good the deck is to the counter.
Then, there’s money management, shuffle tracking, casino comportment, psychology, higher math, team play…
Well, it gets endless.
I count. (Can you tell?)
I play about 3 times a year. For a lark. I live in Ontario Canada, and table conditions ain’t the best. But if I’m stuck at a casino, I’ll play… Overall, I’d say I’m to the good, but not when I factor my time, gas, and practise.
There are a zillion people out there who CLAIM to count, who don’t even know basic strategy.
Can the casino kick you out? In Ontario, they can.
Can the casino really spot counters? Bet variation was a common way to spot 'em, but now, with newer betting strategies, like Opposition betting, it’s tougher.
The dealer isn’t counting. The only dealers I’ve ever met who were counting did it for fun because they are card counters themselves, and they are the last people to turn you in.
They don’t need the dealer to count anyway. If you fall under suspicion of being a card counter, they can have someone in the surveillance office put a camera on you and count along from there.
Once they go to the level of putting surveillance on you to see if you are counting, there is nothing in the world you can do to stop them from figuring it out. I don’t care what betting system you use - if you’ve got a positive expectation over the house, so does the guy counting along with you in the surveillance room.
I’m not up on the latest surveillance tools, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all to find out that they have a computer program that the surveillance guy can use. All he has to do is type in the cards as he sees them and your bets, and the program could spit out the exact advantage the player has, given enough time.
I also fully expect that optical recognition technology will at some point allow the casino to track the count of ALL games in the house at all times, and print reports of player expectations and sound alarms when counters are spotted. This would be particularly useful as defense against teams, which are the real threat to the casino’s bottom line. If on the average day the compute report says there were 3 suspected counters in the house, and then one day it says there are 15, then you can guess that a team has come in.
2 things:
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I am yojimboguy. There is a yojimbo on this board, but not me.
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The dealer counting cards is irrelevant to being able to prove that a customer is counting. It’s still an assumption (usually a good one). And I know a couple of dealers in WI, at the Ho Chunk casino in Baraboo. They, at least, don’t count cards. They have no need to: the odds favor them, so they don’t bother.
Yojimboguy,
lol sorry about the name. But like said before noone needs to prove anything. It’s been 15 years since i counted cards in a casino and nothing I know now would give me a big enough edge with current rules, but when i asked the dealer who I spoke of earlier about her counting she said “We all count the cards.” Maybe she was overstating and I do agree with Sam that dealers would be the last to turn someone in.
It’s probably more like when you start winning big, the pit boss comes over and watches and suspicion leads to a big brother onslaught, etc.
This is actually at the heart of my question. I don’t know their leagl status, because I am not ANAL, but I would imagine that a casino would be a “public accomodation” in the “State of New Jersey,” which complicates things, as any scoutmaster can tell you.
Counting seems to me to be, basically, intelligent play. If you can remember what cards have been dealt, and this affects your chances of succeeding, then why wouldn’t you? It is my wife’s contention that, essentially, you can be ejected for not playing like you have a short-term memory dysfunction.
Yes, they can throw you out for merely playing well. Card counting is NOT cheating, yet it swings the odds in the smart gambler’s favor. In the 60 Minutes story I saw, the player was ejected after winning about $4k. Not that it was too much money, but it was enough to draw atention to him, and he was recognized as one of the “banned” players. The reporter (Susan Spencer, IIRC) who accompanied the gambler asked the casino rep if he was implying that there was cheating going on. The answer was (paraphrased), “No, but your business is no longer welcome here. Ever.”
And yes, that does seem unfair. And yes, it would seem there ought to be a law against the casinos acting in such a manner.
In a handheld game, it’s called Selective Shuffling.
In other words, dealers know, if they deal a bunch of good cards, aces and 10’s, and few fives, keep dealing another hand.
On the other hand, if a lot of 5’s go out, and few aces, shuffle.
In a single deck game, you can BARELY squeeze out two rounds of 7 hands each.
If a lot of 5’ves go out, more cards will be used, so at the end of the first round the dealer can say, “Not enough cards for another round, I’m shuffling” (The remaining deck, rich in 10’s and Aces would be good to play)
If a lot of aces and 10’s go out, fewer cards will be used. The remaining deck will be poor, so lets deal another hand.
Now, as a counter you EXPECT an even distribution of good and bad decks.
No counting system can defeat this, btw.
Natch, you can use this system to your advantage. Where single and double decks are plentiful, wander the casino and browse the dealt cards and sit down where you see a lot of 5ves.
Leave if the count goes negative.
This, basically, is one man team play.
(Your statistical swings will thank you)
I remember a funny sequence where a team was playing in Vegas. A team member was counting, and signaled the big player over many times in the course of the night.
An old fogie playing at the table exclaimed, “I don’t get it. The dealer deals a bunch of little cards and you appear out of no where”
saoirse: You mentioned “The State of New Jersey”. You just happened to pick the one place where they CAN’T kick you out. A card counter named Ken Uston successfully sued the casinos in Atlantic City and won the right to play blackjack without being barred, which has been extended to all blackjack players who are playing within the rules. As a result, the blackjack games in AC are significantly more difficult to beat than those in Nevada and most other places.
That’s really the bottom line: It’s GOOD for card counters to allow the casino to bar the ones they wish. Because if you take that power away from the casino, their only other defense is to make the blackjack games too difficult to beat for significant amounts of money. If Vegas casinos couldn’t bar counters, the games there would all be eight decks with lousy penetration and poor rules.
My wife and I work in a casino. She’s in surveillance, I’m a sysadmin. I can tell you that even the shoddiest casinos will probably have software that can tell if a player is counting. It really helps backing up a report made by surveillance that gets turned in with a security report. I can’t go into a whole lot of detail about the company I work for though.
Casinos have every right to run their business as they see fit and turn away business if they deem it necessary. I’ve seen people ejected for really bad body odor (other customer’s left), pissing their pants and beating up slot machines. They’ve turned people away at the door because we were at our occupancy limit. I’d say if the casino doesn’t want your money they have the right to refuse it by asking you to leave or play another game. If you want to play their games you have to abide by their rules. This isn’t a whole lot more different than a grocery store with a sale on 24-packs of Pepsi stating that there is a limit of two to a customer. They have their business reasons.
There are only four casinos in my neck of the woods but be rest assured that if you’re suspected of counting/cheating and are asked to leave or barred outright that the other casinos will know within 20-30 minutes with your picture, name and game(s) of choice. Depending on the type of suspected cheating the nationwide network of casinos subscribing to services offered by a few Vegas companies will also know about you in very short order. One of the best former card counter/cheaters in the world (Mr. Andy Anderson) will be keeping tabs on you.
Now I don’t necessarily agree that people should be harassed or barred from playing because of card counting. I think if you’ve got a system down then you should be able to use it. I myself have developed a system of probablility that only requires I keep track of my own bets. It works pretty good (though not as effective as counting cards) in that I rarely walk away from a table with less money than I bought in for. FWIW, there is at least one method of betting on roulette that I’ve seen demonstrated that is guaranteed to make you money if you’ve got enough to start out with. Using this method will probably get you barred from casinos if they figure out what you’re doing.
Horseflesh, you say, “counting/cheating”.
Since you seem to be the expert here, can we get it straight whether the industry or the law considers counting as cheating.
Odds don’t accumulate in roulette, do they? It’s not like you can count how many numbers are left after a certain number of rolls, so I can’t see even a conceptual basis for a roulette system. Care to do any more enlightening?
I’ll take a stab at what it is. It’s been called many things over the years. I think it was invented in 1600 or something.
Anyhow. I call it the crossout system.
What you do is write a string of numbers. Say,
1 2 3 4
Now, you bet the sum of the outside numbers. In this case, 1+4 =5.
If you win, well and good. Cross 'em off.
If you lose, write the amount of the loss at the end. (5 in this case)
Now, if you lost, bet 6. (5+1). Keep going.
What happens is you cross out two numbers every time you win. You add one number when you lose.
Now, the red/black bet at roulette is almost 50/50.
So, since you can lose twice as many as you win, you eventually will come out even.
Now the bad news.
It doesn’t work.
All systems do is re-distribute the win/loss record. A very respected professor of mathematics (And gambling) Julian braun, tested this system, against a more favourable french/european wheel.
It won 10 units 25/26 times.
It lost like, 1000 units 1/26 times.
Trust me. It doesn’t work.
Now, I have to qualify this:
If you have infinite money, and if the house will fade all your bets to eternity, then, yes… it will win. (But you may not be alive to
But that doesn’t exist.