Counting Cards

Factual Questions
21

You won’t even win in infinity.

Everyone repeat after me: There is NO combination of negative expectation bets that will yield a positive expectation. None. Nada. Zip. All money management systems that involve setting stop losses, stop wins, bet progressions, or other ways of shifting the money around may change the the distribution of your wins and losses, but the absolute amount lost NEVER changes.

If the house has a 5.26 percent advantage (American, double-zero roulette for example), then if a billion dollars is bet on the table, the casino will make 52.6 million dollars +/- variance. It does not matter if it was one rich person making the bets, or 1 million average bettors. It doesn’t matter if some of them busted out, if others took their wins and ran when they were up, or anything else. House vig X amount of action == house profit.

There are many myths in the gambling world. One of them is that the casino has an extra edge over the gambler because it has a bigger bankroll. That is not true. Another is that you can change how much you win or lose by setting stop losses or ‘locking in’ your winnings, or by ‘playing with the house’s money’. All bogus. If you want to calculate how much the house will win off you, find out the house advantage in the game, and multiply it by the amount of money you are betting. That’s it. What you CAN change is distribution, which can lead you to believe that the odds have shifted when they haven’t.

22

It still seems to me that given an infinite amount of money and an infinite amount of possible bets, you could guarantee yourself to come out ahead. You just couldn’t guarantee how long it would take.

Say your first bet is $1. If you lose you bet $10. If you lose again you bet $100. Another loss and you bet $1000, and you continue this strategy. If you win at any point you will be ahead. And you are guaranteed to win at some point because you have an infinite supply of money and time. This can obviously never happen because nobody has infinite time and money. And strategies based on this do not change the odds. Having a trillion dollars wouldn’t change the odds. But in theory, having infinite money could be used to guarantee you would come out ahead.

23

How can you come out ahead of infinity?

24

Urk. I really wouldn’t call myself an expert. I’d have to defer to my wife who has been trained how to cheat/count at most of the games (slots included). This is a necessity in spotting people who do it for real. She doesn’t use these techniques herself while patronizing other casinos so she doesn’t risk being told to leave.

I lumped card counting and cheating together because they often result in the same action being taken by the casino. Cheaters (meaning monkeying with slot machines or sleight-of-hand tricks) most definitely will be barred. Suspected card counters may be asked to go to another game or if they have been “caught” a few times will be barred as well. I once asked a table games manager who’s been in the industry for many years about casino policy versus law regarding cheaters and card counters. He told me but I forget the specifics of his answer. I believe it varies with the state. My wife should know and I’ll post her response here.

The roulette betting system I mentioned was brought up in a seminar my wife and I attended that was hosted by our casino. I wasn’t very attentive as I was there for audio/video support. I do remember the speaker (an “expert” in the field) going over this and was astonished that he claimed that he made a living working this system as I’d always heard that roulette had the worst odds of all the games (except maybe keno). I’ll have to ask my wife what his name was and how the system worked. More on that after she wakes up.

Here again I agree that if you’ve got a system that abides by the rules of the game that you should be able to use it. Problem is, if the house doesn’t take in a regular percentage of the bets via house rules and didn’t have a policy that didn’t allow everyone to count cards or use complex betting systems, they’d be out of business in pretty short order. No casinos for anyone to enjoy. I think people ought to use casinos as a relaxing pasttime, not as a means of income.

Feel free to ask me questions about the workings of casinos. I am not directly involved with the gaming but from my perch in information systems I get a pretty good view. If I don’t know an answer, there are scores of people I work with that think I’m some sort of computer god and will tell me anything as long as I show them how to double-click with a mouse. :rolleyes: Again, I can’t get too specific about my particular company as they have a policy forbidding discussing certain things about them on the Internet.

25

There is one, and only one, surefire way to make money at roulette. Follow these steps: First, buy a roulette wheel, and whatever permits or such are required in your jurisdiction. Then, offer others the chance to pay money to bet on the wheel.

It is highly probably that a casino seminar would contain people who make a living working this system.

As for card counting, most casinos allow it because there are many more people out there who think they can count, than there are who actually can. Casinos love a guy with a “system”.

26

Because infinite sets can have infinite supersets.

27

Okay, I had a chance to ask HorseWife a few questions before she went to work.

Apparently card counters are now referred to in the industry as “advantage players”. She said that if the a player matches the card counting computer program at 75% or more then that person is suspect. A picture is taken, all known information is entered into the database, information is uploaded into the nationwide network called CVI (Andy Anderson’s current company), and calls are made to local casinos to dial in for an update from CVI. It all happens pretty quick once the decision is made that card counting has taken place. One of our competitors didn’t update their database on a regular basis and got taken for $40,000 one night by a team. They tried to enter our casino the next night but were turned away at the door.

Horsewife says that card counting is not against the law as long as no external apparatus is used (computers and such), or in other words, you count solely in your head. These people are asked to leave or change games and the above paragraph takes place.

Cheaters (those that use external apparatus or sleight of hand) are detained if possible and law enforcement is called and the same routine with information exchange as noted above happens. She said they are brought up on charges of “fraud”. I’ll ask my table games manager buddy again for clarification. I’m sure that since the state gets a sizeable percentage of the profits from casinos that it is in their best interests to disallow cheats as well.

She couldn’t remember much more than I about the roulette betting. I’ll ask around to see if anybody else that went to the seminar knows how it worked (and if it worked).

28

  1. There ain’t no system in the world that will beat roulette unless it finds a problem in the wheel. The only game played against the casino that can even remotely have a chance at giving the player (who counts expertly) a positive expected value is bj.

  2. In theory, you can always come out ahead at some point in time if you have unlimited funds to martingale upon martingale.

  3. Sort of a question here, but I think a casino would make money even if the games were 50/50 because it could bankrupt players quicker than it could go bankrupt.

29

The Eudamonic Pie described such a system.

A computer in a shoe calculated where the ball would land. Like finding out where on earth a satellite would hit the earth.

44% advantage to the players.

(Really, if you can delete half the wheel, you can bet by Octants and do it that way)

Needless to say, you’ll notice most casino’s have plastic balls that spin down real fast.

There’s another few chapters on winning roulette by finding older wheels that have poorly maintained wheels. In Alan Wilson’s book, methinks.

Phil

30

just for the nitpickers,

I should have included that a successful martingale strategy would necessitate an unlimited bet allowance by the casino too.

31

You guys talking about winning if you could play to ‘inifinity’ - if you want to describe the progression mathematically, you’ll find that it approaches zero as the limit approaches infinity. Yes, if you win your progression you’ll win exactly your original small bet plus your losses. As a percentage of the action you have to put on the table to win that, the value approaches zero. You cannot ever win with a progression system of any sort.

Roulette is another matter. There are no ‘systems’ that can beat roulette (read: betting systems). However, it’s possible to actually predict where the ball will land on the wheel, to a certain degree of accuracy. That’s what the Eudaemonic Pie guys did. Consider this technique:

  1. When the 00 passes a specific point that you have selected on the rim of the wheel, press a switch.
  2. When it does it a second time, press the switch again. Now you know the velocity of the wheel, and it’s position in space.
  3. Do it a third time, and now you can develop a function to predict the deceleration of the wheel due to friction, and come up with a very accurate algorithm to predict where exactly any number on the wheel will be at any time in the reasonable future.

Now, when the dealer spins the ball the opposite way, do the same thing.

The interesting thing about a roulette ball is that it has a ‘capture velocity’, which is the speed at which it will stop rotating on the wheel and drop into the inner playing surface. Tap your computer when the ball drops, and you’ll now know what this velocity is.

There. Now you’ve calibrated your computer. The next time the ball is spun, do your tap-tap routine to get the ball’s velocity and the wheel’s velocity and position. The computer can now calculate very accurately when the ball will leave the rim and drop into the playing field, and it can also calculate exactly which numbers will be under it when it does so.

Now, this doesn’t mean you can predict where the ball will stop, because it bounces around erratically. In addition, the wheel has ‘randomizers’ spaced around it which cause the ball to take odd bounces. So we can’t be right all the time, or even much of the time. But that’s okay, because if we can even eliminate three numbers from the wheel as likely areas for the ball to drop, we’ve gained an edge over the house.

But you can do even better than that. Leave your little computer in ‘learn’ mode, and do your tap-tap on your shoe switches for half an hour or so, and you’ll have a decent lookup table that will allow you to come up with a predictive function that will give you the best numbers to bet on.

Thorp and Claude Shannon built such a computer in the 1960’s, and recording an edge over the house of about 35%. The Eudaemonic pie guys figured they could do even better. But of course, now the use of such a computer is a felony, and the casinos have some pretty sophisticated countermeasures to spot them. I wouldn’t be surprised if people wander around with EMI detectors looking for computers. And they also put cameras on feet to look for toe taps.

Something that interests me is whether or not a human can train himself to do the same calculations, albeit with a much, much lower edge. I think it’s possible, but it would be a ton of work. I’ve done some experiments to see how accurately I could judge the the time interval between revolutions, and I think I could get close enough. But that’s a far cry from being able to do that, calculate the velocity of the ball, and learn to judge things like wheel deceleration. Theoretically, it’s possible. But it may be beyond the reach of the unaided human. I think the jury is still out on that, though.

32

Ah, Sam, your post broke some of my mental block. Yes, that was part of it, timing the wheel with a computer. The other part was finding roulette dealers that did not vary the force with which they spun the ball. The betting part was not to be obvious about your scheme. That’s how casino surveillance will ultimately catch you is by your winnings. Lose a little, win a little more. Still, I do remember the guy saying that you had to have a big enough bankroll to tough out the losing runs you would have, but I still can’t remember what that was about. Maybe there was a betting strategy (hedging your bets with red/black, odd/even, etc.) that he went over in more detail that was in combination with timing the wheel and ball. I believe he said that a human could do it unaided. If you have a roulette wheel of your own and spin it enough times, a person could get a feel for the wheel (this took months/years though) although still not as good as a computer. I’ve heard some longtime roulette dealers can do this. I don’t work again until Wednesday night, so I’ll ask around then.

33

Horseflesh, was this guy named (something) Patrick? When I used to hang out on rec.gambling.craps, he would post a little there, trying to sell his roulette system for $100. That’s how he made money - not by beating the roulette game, but by selling his system.

The rec.gambling.craps newsgroup was a little frustrating. I was trying to dispel people’s superstitions about the game, but there are a lot of people in this world pretty bull-headed about their stupidity. My favorite recurring subject was the people who said they could “set” the dice - meaning affect what numbers were rolled. It didn’t take many probing questions to realize that they had not actually taken the data to measure their so-called ability, but they just couldn’t make the leap that they might not actually have that ability if they haven’t measured it.

34

Hi guys,

This discussion has been very interesting to me and was wondering, rather than me starting a new thread, whether any of you could recommend a good book with the history of ‘systems’ for beating casinos, how the methods were supposed to work and how the casinos dealt with the perpetrators. I think it would make for some interesting reading. Thanks…

35

called Bringing Down The House by Ben Mezrich. The blurb on the cover says “the inside story of six M.I.T students who took Vegas for millions.” In a nutshell, these guys (and women) worked as a team, bankrolled by investors they never met. One person (the spotter) would count the cards and give signals to “the gorilla” (who was also counting) about how the shoe was going. There were also players (the big player) who would get the signals from the spotter but bet on his own. They all had a number of aliases and had a code word for every number from one through eighteen to signal how “hot” the shoe was–the higher the number the more face cards left in the shoe. They also had a set of hand signals for joining a game, leaving the casino, and getting the hell out because the pit boss was on his way over. They won millions but finally got busted by the casinos. It’s a really, really interesting book (but not so good that it’s worth buying the hardcover version).

36

First, my cousin was a card counter was asked never to return to AC. That was a long time ago…not sure if it’d still hold today. (Would they instantly recognize him, etc.?)

Also, this business of multiple decks: How can this work? If I came up with two aces of spades…what would YOU think? So, how can they play with multiple decks?

  • Jinx (Rule #1: The house will never lose money…)
37

Multiple decks are no problem, because the suits don’t matter. To determine your advantage at any part of the shoe, take your ‘running count’ and divide by the number of decks left to be dealt. That gives you the ‘true’ count, and tells you what your advantage is and therefore how much to bet.

I find counting multiple decks to be much easier than counting a single deck, and you can use a much easier counting system because playing strategy variations are not nearly as important in multi-deck games.

And a shoe game with very deep penetration can be most profitable than an average single deck game.

38

Re: The selling of Gambling Systems:

I know one thing:

Names of Gamblers who buy these systems are NEVER rented. Not due to the ethics of the sellers, but the fact that they could ALWAYS make more and more selling new systems than they could renting their lists.

Darwin Ortiz’s GAMBLING SCAMS has interesting chapters on Gambling Systems.

39

I would think you should split, depending on what the dealer is showing. :wink:

Like Sam Stone said, suits don’t matter. Using multiple decks in BJ doesn’t change the overall odds.

Here’s a snippet of info about counting cards:

*One of the most popular card counting systems currently in use is the point count system, also known as Hi-Low. This system is based on assigning a point value of +1, 0, or -1 to every card dealt to all players on the table, including the dealer. Each card is assigned its own specific point value. Aces and 10-point cards are assigned a value of -1. Cards 7, 8, 9 each count as 0. Cards 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 each count as +1.
As the cards are dealt, the player mentally keeps a running count of the cards exposed, and makes wagering decisions based on the current count total.

The higher the plus count, IE: the higher percentage of ten-point cards and aces remaining to be dealt, means that the advantage is to player and he/she should increase their wager.

If the running count is around zero, the deck or shoe is neutral and neither the player nor the dealer has an advantage.

The higher the minus count, the greater disadvantage is to the player, as a higher than normal number of ‘stiff’ cards remain to be dealt. In this case a player should be making their minimum wager or leave the table.*
-http://www.aboutcountingcards.com/

Me again:

The only thing I don’t really get is how the ongoing count can tell you whether the deck is in your favor or not. How can the deck be in your favor? Even if the deck is loaded with nothing but 10’s and Aces, the dealer is drawing from the same deck as you are. They are just as likely to benefit from the plethora of 10’s and Aces. Or aren’t they?

{I’ve got a semi-related question I’ve always wondered about that I think deserves a new post, but not a new thread. Just in case some people didn’t decide to read through this whole post, they’ll at least see the next one. I apologize in advance for my bandwidth gluttony}

40

Ok, me again:

I’ve always wondered what the house’s advantages are in BJ. Is it just that the players stand a chance of busting before the dealer? Is that it and nothing else?

Other than that, it seems to me the player has the rest of the advantages.

The way I see it:
The player has more freedom as opposed to the dealer, but if the player so chooses he could play by the exact same rules as the dealer. Typically, that’s ‘stay’ on all 17’s or higher, ‘hit’ on anything lower. Assuming the player uses their greater freedom wisely, they may have a small advantage there.

If the player gets BJ, the dealer pays 1.5 x the bet. If the dealer gets BJ, the player does not have to pay the dealer any extra. A push/tie is a draw, nobody wins. Clear player advantage there.

Add to this that the player can potentially use the insurance, surrender(sometimes), double, and split options. They are not obligated to use them if they don’t want to, but again, if they use them wisely they can gain an advantage there.

So is it just the fact that the dealer goes last and you might bust first? If so, that doesn’t seem like a whole lot of advantage for the house, particularly if the player is playing with the correct strategy regarding all their decisions.

Do casinos depend on BJ players to go for the long shot and get burned?

Thanks for staying with me, I haven’t slept yet…