Morality of card counting

Great Debates
41

I live in Las Vegas.

Card counting is not illegal, and is not a posted prohibited practice at casinos here.

It IS a discouraged practice, and those who even appear to be making the attempt to count cards are often removed from the premises, sometimes permanently (picture taken, name written, and info IMMEDIATELY sent to all other casinos in town).

Casinos are not businesses. They exist only to make money, not to offer a product or service. Anything you think the hotel is providing you with (that room, the steak dinner, tickets to the show, valet parking, a pool, etc.) are only there because the casino feels that it will somehow help them to seperate you from more of your money, and do so in a more discreet fashion than simply having goons lift your wallet. In the end, there is a lot less legal hassle when someone voluntarily hands over their money.

A word on card counting and why it is not illegal: it cannot be legislated, or within the rules, to delineate that only people with a sufficiently low IQ may gamble. I do not gamble, but I have played blackjack with friends, family, etc. in the past. It would be impossible for me to turn my brain off so that I could not remember that all 4 Kings and Queens had already been seen, but only 1 of the Aces.

Casinos also do not offer gaming without being SURE that the odds favor the house. And I don’t mean like the house wins 60% of the time. A quick call with the Nevada Gaming Commission years ago confirmed that most casino table games (which excludes video poker and slots) have an average house win % of something like 80%. The gambler is at a serious disadvantage because of the rules of the game he plays… no casino will even offer a game unless it is already assured of profitability.

Bottom line: card counting is neither illegal, nor even morally wrong. But since casinos are not in the business of offering games of skill to willing players, but rather are there to take as much money as possible away from the people who enter the establishment, they will do everything they can to discourage the practice and prevent those who do possess this skill from entering.

42

You’re confusing the house advantage with the table ‘hold’. The hold is the percentage of money the player loses out of his bankroll. If I sit down at the table with 100 bucks, and walk away with 80, the table ‘hold’ is $20. But the odds may still be only slightly in the house’s favor. It’s just that I put the same money into action over and over again, until I had lost the $20.

There are no table games in the Casino that have a rake of 20%. Blackjack is somewhere between .3% and .8%, depending on the rules. Roulette is 5.26% with the American double zero wheel. Craps can come close, as some of the sucker bets are in double digits, but the pass-line bet is only about 1.4%, and with odds that can be lowered under 1%. Baccarat has a house rake of just slightly over 1% (if I recall, 1.17% for bank, and 1.3% for player, or something like that).

The real sucker bets in the casino are the side games like the Big 6 or the money wheel. Keno has the worst odds of all for the wost-case bets, but then it has enormous payoffs, too.

43

Thank you for clarifying, Sam.

Like I said, I made that call years ago when I first moved here; please excuse my error. :smack:

Bo

44

Sam, I think we’re talking past each other on this, the disagreement is probably about what constitutes “skilled” in general. I’ll use cooking as an analogy. A skilled cook, in my book, is a person who can be given a trout, for instance, and whip up a unique gourmet meal around it on the fly based on what’s in the pantry. Contrast that with a person given a trout and a set of recipes, and competantly makes the meal from the recipe. They both need to have certain abilities, like frying, chopping, etc., but if all you do is follow a recipe, you’re not showing me that you have any special skills, just that you are a competant cook.

I think of Basic Strategy and Card Counting as following a recipe. If X then Y. Count the cards, do a bit of arithmetic, vary your bet or strategy along these rigid rules. Yes, you need the skill of counting the cards, but that doesn’t seem to me any more unattainable than the skill of chopping an onion or deboning a chicken. The rest is just following a set of rules. If you had an index card with the counting rules on it, you wouldn’t even need to memorize the plays, you just need to make sure you count correctly.

Now, a skilled Poker player is in a very different category. Yes, you need the basics of knowing your odds, following the cards, but you also need that intuitive skill of reading and knowing your opponent. That is not something you can fit on a 3x5 card.

45

I just think you’ve picked a very bizarre definition of ‘skill’. Doing something difficult with speed and precision is a skill. You’re basically saying that a ‘skill’ requires creativity and judgement, which is absurd. Doing a handstand is a skill, and requires neither.

In any event, there is judgement involved in card counting. Game selection is a skill. So is estimating the remaining size of a shoe with good accuracy.

46

It’s not calling it a skill that bugs me, really. It’s the presumption that the casinos kick counters out because they are better, smarter, more expert than the average player. I don’t believe that counters are better players, just that they choose to use a well known strategy that others choose not to use. The choice to not use it isn’t based on the strategy being too difficult to master, it’s based on the fact that it will get you booted from the casino.

47

Er, no I’m not. In the mathematically ideal case (no limits on bets or bankroll), they are guaranteed to work eventually (e.g. if you keep doubling your bet every time you lose without fail, you will eventually win, and you will be one unit ahead at that point).

Of course, the catch is that the mathematically ideal case does not obtain in reality, for several reasons (one of which, as I said, is that casinos set minimum and maximum bets, with only a few powers of two between them).

48

I can hardly see how Card COunting could be made illegal. How would this work? Memory and a bit of mathematical ability makes one a criminal? Its certainly not going to become so as long as gambling debts are not legal debts.

49

Now you’re confusing me even more. Counters aren’t better players, simply because ‘they’ve chosen a well known strategy’ that others choose not to use? That’s ridiculous. Choosing the right strategy in ANY game is what separates the good players from the bad players. And if the goal of the game is to make money, then it’s a proven fact that card counting strategies are better than mere basic strategy. So you’re wrong, and I have no idea why you are trying to draw this particular line. It makes absolutely no sense.

50

No. First, if we are talking about an infinite number of trials, then mathematically the result of any combination of negative expectation bets will always converge to that negative expectation. Second, if the table had no limits whatsoever, it wouldn’t guarantee your ‘bet until you win’ strategy, because even in the absence of table limits other limits will come into play rapidly. For example, if you start with a $5 unit and double up after each loss, it would only take ten losses in a row before you’d be forced to bet $5,120 to try and recover your one unit. And after 20 losses in a row you would have to bet $5,242,880. After 30 losses in a row, you would have to bet 5,368,709,120. Better call up Bill Gates, because you probably don’t have five billion dollars under the seat cushions. And after 40 losses in a row, you’ll have to bet 5,497,558,138,880, or about half of the entire GDP of the United States.

51

FYI, in the United States gambling debts are, in fact, legal debts.

Bo

52

OF COURSE poker is different than blackjack. In blackjack, no intuition is required. Blackjack follows rigid rules that cannot be violated. There is no unknown element as there is in poker. You’re only playing against the house, not against the other players. Memorizing and following the mathematically-correct strategy is the ONLY way to maximize your winnings. I too find your definition of “skill” bizarre. I think the word you’re looking for is “creative”, as in an artist. A card-counter is not an artist, but certainly is skilled.

53

The terms used to describe counters here in this thread were “smart” as if non-counters are dumb, “good” as if non-counters are poor card players, and “skilled” as if non-counters are unskilled. I think that’s an unfair characterization. My argument has probably gone way off on a tangent along the way, but that’s really it.

People are claiming that these counters are getting kicked out because they’re better than other players, when I think it’s really just that they’ve chosen a path to better odds that other players choose to not take because you risk getting tossed out on your ear.

54

Ummmm counters ARE better players. They win more often, and the point of any game is to win. Higher win percentage = better player. What is the problem you have with this concept?

Non-counters are unskilled. They have no skill at counting, and thus win less of the time, thus they have less skill at the game (just as someone who can run and catch and throw is a better baseball player than someone who can only throw and run).

You can phutz all you want with ridiculous explanations of your personal semantics, but the fact is that those people who win a game more than others are more skilled. It isn’t an unfair characterization. It’s a fact based on the meanings of the words and the results of each players participation in this competetive game.

Capiche?

55

I doubt it. I’d count cards in a second if I were any good at it. I tried to learn it and I sucked at it. I’d be willing to wager that the reason the majority of blackjack players do not count cards is simply that they do not know how, or lack the ability to do it well.

Although I do agree with you that this doesn’t necessarily mean that non-counters are “dumb”, “bad”, or “unskilled”. Just playing basic strategy correctly takes a good deal of skill. It’s all rote memorization, but that doesn’t mean there’s no effort involved.

56

Any sufficiently large number of trials selected independently of the individual trial results will converge on the expectation. However, the selection in this case (stop the series after one win) fails to meet that requirement.

It’s easy to get tripped up on this point – even the Master had to clarify himself when a similar issue arose in the “Monty Hall” problem (Monty’s decision of whether or not to reveal an unselected door is dependent on whether or not the contestant guessed correctly to begin with).

Er, that’s just repeating what I said in the first place (the reason the system doesn’t work in the real world is that the assumption of unlimited bet range does not hold).

57

The assertion that “if you have an infinite amount of money, you can guarantee winning by doubling up an infinite number of times” comes under the heading of “true but demonstrably useless”, I feel. For anything less than an infinite purse, a doubling-up strategy against a game with worse than even odds is a guaranteed losing strategy in the long term.

58

Just to nitpick, no, he’s not repeating what you said. You said:

Which isn’t really true. The range of betting is limited as a counter-measure against card-counting, not against progressive-betting schemes. As Sam correctly points out, progressive-betting wouldn’t work even if casinos didn’t have limits. Such systems would fail with or without the table limits. The limiting factor is reality itself, not what the casinos permit, which is not what you said.

59

OK, first to clear up the misconception.

In no casino game does the odds favor the house. At the end of the day, the house will win or lose an equal number of dice rolls, blackjack hands, whatever. The reason casinos make money is because they don’t pay the bets at true odds (sole exception, the “free odds” bet on a craps table, but they make it back off the prop box). So, for example, if you’re really into sucker betting, you can bet twelve or aces (I know, thread’s about blackjack, but I dealt craps for about five years, and have maybe six months of dealing blackjack, which I did very badly and never studied the subtleties of the game, so…). True odds are thirty-five to one. The bet at most Las Vegas casinos will pay thirty to one leaving your bet up for the next roll (the layout says thirty-one for one, but this includes the amount of the original bet, which the floorman will happily have the dealer return to you if you bitch loudly enough). So, out of thirty-six rolls, the house wins thirty-five, you win once, and you’re down five bucks.

But back on topic. I really don’t think there’s anything unethical or immoral about card-counting. As long as you aren’t doing anything to influence the outcome of the hand, you aren’t doing anything wrong. You’re just using your brain power to decide how much to bet and when. And the casinos do a lot of things to foil card counters- using multi-deck shoes and not dealing the last deck’s worth of cards, stuff like that (and hand shuffling a six deck shoe is a real bitch. I speak from experience.) I say, if you can do it, more power to ya’, especially if you’re making lots of bets for the dealer. The worst the casino can legally do is to ask you to leave and never return.

60

Of course the odds favor the house. The casinos exist to make money. They aren’t going to give out more money than they take in.

Not true. The house will actually win more blackjack hands than the players. That’s because as soon as a player busts, he has lost that hand. But the dealer always hits last. So if you and the dealer both bust, the dealer still wins.