That’s simply not true. If the house has an fixed advantage on each bet, then making bigger bets just means you lose more money. It’s always going to be the same percent of your total bets, on average, though.
A funny counterpoint to your point on mechanical aids is that Las Vegas casinos, IIRC and supported by this hastily-Googled TripAdvisor discussion, will let a player sit with a card showing basic blackjack strategy. I guess their logic is that it’s the player recognizing when the house expectation is negative—the point of counting cards in the first place—that’s objectionable to the casino. Do strategy cards induce people to play or play longer, who normally wouldn’t?
For poker, I have heard of tournament players using computer utilities on e.g., an Ipad, to figure out things like optimal percentages for a deal between the remaining players. OTOH, things like MonteCarlo Omaha equity simulators or multi-player Nash push/fold calculators during the flow of play definitely strike me as cheating.
I think card-counting has been profitable for Nevada overall! Some people will be attracted to a game that can be beaten, even though they’re not the ones who can beat it. Even players who have the discipline and skill needed to beat blackjack may fail due to errors, e.g. playing when tired.
BTW, I see in this pdf that Baccarat has been booming and, although there are still far fewer tables than Blackjack tables, has passed Blackjack in total Nevada revenue. The pdf shows that revenue dropped significantly between 2007 and 2011 in most games, but Baccarat Winnings rose from 0.91 to $1.26 billion over that period.
Not quite. The Martingale strategy can be used effectively to make a bit of money in this case.
Unfortunately, there are two requirements that will rarely (if at all) be satisfied.
- There are no table limits
- You have an infinite bankroll (or close enough not to matter).
Chess is a complete game of skill - notice how no casinos have chess tables?
Counting, along with proper bet management, gives you an advantage against the house, just as the house has an advantage against you in a non-counting situation. I wouldn’t call it guessing, you can compute a table of recommended moves depending on the state of the deck, just as they have now. Clearly even good poker players “guess” but there are definitely better and worse players.
I’m not saying casinos should ban counters - that is a marketing decision. If they think that by “allowing” counting they’d get enough people who think they can count but can’t that they’d come out ahead, they should allow it.
As for mechanical aids, we are talking money, not sport, so fairness has nothing to do with it. It is going to get harder and harder to prevent mechanical aids as they get smaller. I suspect they can tell counters from betting patterns; by banning it they don’t have to worry about finding radios.
There is plenty of evidence that casinos don’t mind winners, since there will always be some lucky people (in the short term) and their model allows that. And encourages it, which is why slots make so much noise paying off. What they don’t want is for the model to change so that it is possible to win in the long run.
In the game of blackjack the house does not have a fixed advantage. That is the point of counting cards – to find and exploit the times when the advantage is to the player. But that’s beside the point.
The table limit prevents players from winning through any sort of progressive betting system, the Martingale being the classic example. Even if you assume a game with no mathematical house edge, like coin flipping, Variance (Standard Deviation) combined with the relative bankroll sizes lead to a higher Risk of Ruin for the player than for the house … and once the player has reached the table limit he has no effective strategy to pull out ahead (or even to get even, even in an even money game.) He is doomed to either quit the game and eat his loss, or continue on in a battle of Variance and Risk of Ruin until he goes completely broke.
@Gray Ghost: Playing strictly by Basic Strategy assures that the house always expects (in the long run) to have the mathematical advantage. Card counters change the advantage to their favor by varying their bets and/or playing strategy in certain situations.
In my 20+ years in the casinos both as a card counter and working in them, I can recall only one instance of a casual player who actually followed their Basic Strategy card on every hand – and I married her. I did, however, hundreds if not thousands of times say “That’s not how your card says to play that hand.”
Nearly all casual players make numerous mistakes even when they have the printed strategy right in front of them; they split (or don’t split) incorrectly, fail to make certain soft doubles, and rarely hit soft 18 when they should. While the house edge is generally around 0.5% for basic strategy play, the casinos earn right around 2% from actual play.