I just got back from Vegas a few days ago and yeah, the computerized blackjack tables were everywhere.
One more Covid casualty.
A couple of thoughts occur to me: First, since they have cameras on all of the tables anyway, it’d be easy for the casino to have a computer keep a count, too, and communicate it to the dealer somehow, so the dealer could see not just that a big better was sitting down, but that he happened to sit down just as the count got good, which would be a very strong sign of a counter.
Second, if the casino is keeping track of this, and is shuffling whenever it happens, then they’re hurting not only the counters, but also the “honest” players (meaning those who are playing basic strategy but not counting). The whole point of a count is that, depending on what cards are left in the deck, sometimes the odds are a little better or worse, and occasionally, they’re enough better that the game slightly favors the player. With fair play on both sides, the player sometimes benefits from the good count, and sometimes suffers from a bad count, and it evens out. If you’re re-shuffling whenever the count gets good, though, you’re still suffering the bad counts, but without the good counts to make up for it.
We’ll see how this works out. I’ve been in plenty of casinos with both live tables and electronic tables, and it’s very common to see the live tables stuffed with players while the electronic games go largely unused. People who like cards don’t seem to like the electronic tables much.
@Chronos
They don’t have a camera recording every table all the time – they have cameras that are able to record any individual table when the operator chooses. The computing power and manpower to record and analyze every game all the time is not economically feasible. Even in a large casino there are only a small number of people working in Surveillance, often only one or two, and they are looking not only at BJ tables but also at other casino employees, wandering patrons, slot players, etc.
Your second point: If a casino could actually do this the game would not be “fair” and I’m sure the Gaming Commission would put a stop to it.
Yeah as I understand it there was huge concern among the casinos when this first broke (including some of the more ahem old school casino owners suggesting that maybe someone’s burly, maybe Italian-American, “friend of a friend” could pay this MIT guy a visit and convince him to stay quiet about this card counting thing.) But actually it was a net win for them for this reason.
Its actually pretty hard to count cards, and your average casino patron, after a few comped drinks is not going to end up in the black trying it (especially with the changes mentioned in this thread), so convincing them they can is actually doing the house a favor.
I don’t know about the legal situation, but technologically, a system that watched all the tables and kept the count would be within the reach of many of the individuals on this message board, and would be utterly trivial for an entity with the resources of a casino. The hardest part would be a system that could recognize images of playing cards, and nowadays, that’s so easy you could do it with a phone.
@Chronos
I myself wrote a computer program to count cards on a blackjack table on a surveillance camera over 30 years ago. It worked somewhat but lacked some accuracy and missed some actions because player’s hands got in the way – that required some educated guess work with a dedicated operator.
Cameras can literally count the hairs on a players knuckles but when players and dealers hands, cards, and chips are constantly quickly moving around the table one camera is not enough to capture all the action. Casinos do not have a camera on every table and certainly are not going to spend the money to put multiple cameras on every table connected to a custom programmed computer dedicated only to counting cards in hopes of catching a card counter. One competent floor supervisor or surveillance operator can make that determination reasonably quickly and at far less cost since he is already on the payroll.
You are out of your element on this. I’ll mention that I have not only been a computer programmer (started in 1967) but have also spent many years in casinos on both sides of the tables – as a professional blackjack player, dealer, Floor Supervisor, Pit Manager, Shift Manager, Director of Table Games, Surveillance Supervisor, and 14 years earning my living as a poker player both live (in Las Vegas) and online, as well as writing quite a few computer programs to analyze and detect winning methods for beatable casino games both live and online.
The key phrase here with your wired up system is “economically unfeasible” with “pointless” coming in a close second.
I am quite certain every casino has one or more cameras aimed at every table.
It’s a little difficult to believe that the two incidents below coincidentally happened at slot machines that had cameras on them - and it’s just as hard to believe that all slot machines are on video all the time but not all tables. They might not have multiple cameras on each table, and they may not be capable of or intended to detect card counting , but doesn’t mean they don’t have a camera recording every table all the time and only view and analyze the video as needed.
@RickJay
Not in Nevada they don’t
@doreen
“ but doesn’t mean they don’t have a camera recording every table all the time …”
They don’t. I’ve been there. I know.
I have listed a short summary of some of my 50+ years of experience with this stuff. What are you basing your information on?
There were a few systems set up some years back that attempted to computerize blackjack surveillance. They all failed and were taken off the market.
A little background:
http://www.blackjackforumonline.com/content/Mindplay.htm
Note than my experience includes having taken the Surveillance class taught by Bill Zender mentioned in the article and later working with him at the Dunes when he was Casino Manager. I knew Arnold Snyder and had a personal relationship with several members of Stanford Wong’s organization (but Wong and I never met personally, only looked and nodded at each other from across the room due to his paranoia about me being a casino insider).
Not sure if this link will work – it is regarding the lawsuit filed in Nevada against the MindPlay company explaining how their software cheated blackjack players.
ETA: It worked.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160305162315/http://bj21.com/allen_vs_nevada/complaint.html
Your link doesn’t seem to work though.
Sorry. Works for me, though it took a little while to load from the web archive.
I’m basing that information on the fact that apparently they do have a camera on every slot machine all the time and it would be a lot easier for someone to say , grab chips off the table than to get money out of the slot machine.
And although I hadn’t searched before my post, there is this :
https://lasvegassun.com/youre-being-watched/
The age of anonymity is largely extinct in casinos these days, thanks to rapidly evolving technology and surveillance teams tasked with keeping resorts safe from criminals and cheats. Most Strip casinos operate at least 2,000 surveillance cameras on property, said George Joseph, a casino surveillance consultant and former director of surveillance at Bally’s.
The “eyes in the sky” have become much smaller and more discreet, blending in with casino interiors to give surveillance operators a bird’s-eye view of the floor or a close-up shot of someone’s face.
“What has really changed is that casinos have 100 percent coverage of virtually every square inch,” Joseph said.
Derk Boss, a licensed private investigator and casino security surveillance expert from Nevada, says “Once someone arrives at our property, if we needed to put together their movements over their entire stay, we could easily do so. We would be able to track their movements on the property just about wherever they went — except for like the bathroom and into their hotel room”.
https://www.thetravelmavens.com/surveillance-in-las-vegas-casinos.html
On a recent trip to Las Vegas, the folks at Bellagio allowed me to spend more than an hour in their surveillance chamber, which was a room about 15 feet by 30 feet. The cramped room was full of computers and 56 screens for security personnel to see the efforts of Bellagio’s 2,000 cameras. All 144 gaming tables in 116,000 square feet of casino are under camera, and 500 VCRs digitally record nearly every movement round the clock.
I’m on video walking down the street, driving my car, in stores and restaurants and so on - but somehow when I go to a casino, they don’t have 100% video coverage of the floor?
As I said earlier, they don’t have a camera recording every table all the time – they have cameras that are able to record any individual table when the operator chooses.
None of the links in your post disagree with the statement. I have been in some of those surveillance rooms and have known some of those writers. You are reading into what your posts are telling you things that they do not actually say.
Once someone arrives at our property, if we needed to put together their movements over their entire stay, we could easily do so. We would be able to track their movements on the property just about wherever they went — except for like the bathroom and into their hotel room”.
Are you saying that this actually means " if we needed to put together their movements over their entire stay , we could easily do so if we had determined that we needed to track them in advance. "? Or that
We can look at every card played," said Mescall, “see who bet what and when. If you win $100,000 or more at a table, we’ll run the tape, take a look, analyze the play, make sure it was clean.”
and
Surveillance operators can retrieve footage and review play when someone wins big, or floor bosses can tip off the surveillance center to suspicious activity.
means they can only review the play if there was some sort of suspicion ahead of time? Because that isn’t what they say.
Don’t know where you got that bit about “… if we had determined that we needed to track them in advance …”
If a player is betting thousands of dollars a hand there will be a tape started as soon as he starts playing.
If a known player is likely to bet thousands of dollars a hand the tape will start as soon as he walks in the door and will follow him throughout his visit. Some players even call in advance to say they are coming and the Shift Boss or Casino Manager will schmooze him and meet him at the door (with a security guard of two if he is known to come with large wads of cash.)
If an unknown player suddenly makes a very big bet out of the blue there may or may not be a tape of his action but surveillance will be notified and a tape will quickly be started. If there is anything suspicious about it a surveillance operator will attempt to patch together clips from previous camera shots to observe his movements and the movements of anyone he appears to be in contact with. The operator may well be able to track him all the way from entering the door to his entire visit. It does not have to be done ‘in advance’, in fact, the decision might not be made the same day. The player might be greeted on his next visit with something like “You’re welcome to play the other games but we don’t want your blackjack action.”
I’ll repeat it one more time. Las Vegas casinos can record every blackjack table but they do not record every table all the time in a manner able to identify card counters.
I’m getting that from where the article said " We would be able to track their movements on the property just about wherever they went".(emphasis added) rather than “we might be” or “we may well be” or “we could track his movements after it came to our attention that he was betting thousands of dollars a hand.”
I didn’t say they did it in a manner able to identify card counters. In fact, I specifically said
they may not be capable of or intended to detect card counting
Although I am rethinking whether I should go to a place where lots of people are carrying a lot of cash that can record everywhere but might not have chosen to turn on the cameras that would have recorded a customer being robbed.
…I’m not sure what you’re arguing, here. You’re saying that it can’t be done, and as proof that it can’t be done, you’ve done it?
It seems bogus to me for the casino to set up a game that’s defeatable, then decide not to let the people who know how to beat it play the game. The same casino could rig one-armed bandits and other games as well…there’s an element of trust here. Why let them be judge, jury and executioner?
There was a series awhile back about people trying to beat Vegas by various means.
Top review on that page describes it thus
Breaking Vegas documents the attempts of various people trying to gain an upper hand on the house. While most of the methods shown on the series are technically “legal” in courts, anything that gives a player an advantage over the house will get you kick out and banned from the casino. Although each cheater has their own unique method, they share a similar story. They get interested in gambling and want to find a way to win more than the house, usually out of sheer curiosity. They develop their method and use usually with good results and a lot of money. However, the pressure of remaining unnoticed by the pit bulls exhaust them and they quit. If anything the show should warn the viewers not to try anything they watch on the show in Las Vegas.
I think the reviewer means “pit bosses,” but there you have it.
The episodes involved roulette, dice, and more. IIRC some copied a casino’s chips.
I think in that series plus the film “21” some of them got roughed up in the back room after being detected. I wondered how accurate that was. Here’s an interesting read;
One anecdotes involves some lawyers and a construction guy playing a friendly game of poker and talking.
…none of the players were major gamblers – including the construction guy who told us about being roughed up by security guards in a casino. They mistook him for an undesirable of some sort. He was handcuffed, taken into a back-room, and threatened – before they realized that they had the wrong person.
Hearing his story, debating whether or not he had a case against this particular casino, the other lawyers said, “You’ve got dick. You can’t get anything from a casino.”
I said, “Wait a minute. We’re talking talking about false imprisonment and battery here. Once you’re handcuffed, it becomes battery.”
What happened to our friend didn’t seem right and, as things turned out, it wasn’t. He and I sued the casino and we wound up with a five figure settlement.
And another incident:
Though Grosjean got treated badly, one of the worst abuses of power that I’ve seen involved a known advantage player – a guy who excelled at card-counting, sorting, sequencing, shuffle tracking – he was just the best in the world at everything. He got spotted eating dinner in a casino. Security responded by having some guards hold him down on the floor while others kicked him repeatedly. He was internationally famous for legally winning lots of money from casinos, so the casino’s goons beat the shit out of him. That makes no sense, and it resulted in a healthy but confidential settlement.