The vast majority of professional gamblers do not play standard casino games. There are certainly plenty of blackjack counters, but as has been posted, there are lots of problems with trying to make a living at it. Poker is much easier. Why? Because there is an element of skill. All you have to do is be better than the other players at the table – better by enough to beat the house rake. Perfectly legal.
Then there’s non-casino poker games, where you don’t have to beat the house rake, but you have to worry much more about cheating.
Then there’s gambling on sports. Or being a pool hustler, or golf hustler, and a million other variants. To simply equate card-counting with professional gambling is ridiculous.
Casinos are private property and can refuse service to anyone for whatever reason. Obvious discrimatory reasons already mentioned not withstanding.
Card Counting, in one’s head (which all good blackjack players do), is not against the rules. It is a strategy. Using any form of (Clandestine or overt) mechanical or electronic means to calculate odds, transmit or record information, or affect the chance outcome of a game is not strategy but is cheating and will result in being barred immediately from any casino. More important than being barred, fraud and theft charges can be levied by the local authorities.
All Casino Games are games of chance, the odds however are always in the House’s Favor.
Usually when casinos eject people it is not because they “won a lot of money”, it because they “won a lot of money and were cheating”. Usually people who win a lot of money just attract a lot of attention from the staff, and under that scrutiny something is revealed that either show’s they are just lucky, or that they are cheating.
Another reason Casinos don’t eject people who are winning a lot is because if they continue to gamble they will eventually start losing. Or they will come back to loase another time. I know I’ve done both.
While at the Excalibur in Vegas a few months ago I noticed them using a new shuffle machine in which the shuffler and the shoe were incorporated, with the shuffler shuffling constantly. After the dealer scooped up each hand it went back into the shuffler, making it near impossible to count cards. In fact, you could end up with the exact same card two hands running. At the time they were only using it on a couple of the low-bet tables, as I think most of the high rollers would be seriously put off by one and take their business elsewhere.
Ooh ooh, I can answer something like Anthracite, in excrutiating encyclopedic detail!
I am a card counter in blackjack (I go about 10x a year). I’ve played probably around 200,000 hands a year or so, with a “base bet” of $25.
Facts:
With an 8 deck shoe, counting properly, and having the balls to put the money out there when you need to, you can win ~ 1.8% (or $1.018 for every $1.00 you bet). The dealer needs to go through about 6.5 decks before reshuffling to make counting worthwhile.
Counting cards is incredibly boring. You are no longer playing a game. You are a human computer with no flexibility. For every count, and every total and house hand, there is only one way to play “correctly.” It’s just a matter of memorizing, like multiplication tables. As a kicker, if you make an error 1 out of every 1000 hands, you basically lose your advantage.
It is extremely hard to keep the pit boss away when you are playing for serious money. When you put up $1000 on a hand after starting with a $25 bet, eyebrows get raised. I’ve learned a few tricks of the trade that seem to avoid this problem.
There are two other games where the player can get a small statistical advantage.
Certain types of video poker machines, depending on their payouts for certain hands, have up to a 1.2% player expectation. The problem with this is you will be in the hole until you hit the royal flush. Again, this game quickly grows tiresome as you become nothing but a drone.
Pai Gow Poker, under very strict conditions, can also have a slight advantage to the player. The advantageous situation requires the right types of fellow players and a big big big bankroll.
If you want to go to gamble without having to get into major statistics, you can play games where you “lose less.” The fairest “easy” game in the casino is a pass/don’t pass bet in craps with the maximum bet “behind the line.” These bets have < %.1 house advantage.
Pai Gow Poker, under normal conditions, has a takeout of about 2.82%, which also makes it a relatively fair game.
And, finally, to answer the OP, the casino can throw you out for any reason at any time. It is classified as “a private club.” I think that it even could discriminate, but it would just be very bad PR. After all, they are running a business, and the sight of an unhappy customer being escorted out of a casino kicking and screaming doesn’t do much for your customer service image. Better to take the $10,000 hit and let the guy stay than to risk it.
Ah damn, I’m out of thoughts and I haven’t even filled a page. Anthracite is truly in a class by herself, I guess :).
(Note: I’m no pro, but I am a fairly serious amateur gambler.)
Then you’ve never been to the Barbary Coast in Vegas. Great hotel–great price, perfect location–and not even a bad game of blackjack, but they have no problem with barring you if you’re winning. I was asked to leave there one night after winning a good amount, and I was betting flat (which means I certainly was not counting). I don’t think it makes much sense, but that’s why I don’t run a casino.
Actually, most of the time, it’s for counting cards. It isn’t explicitly against the rules, but casinos don’t like you to do it. You don’t find many people bold enough to use mechanical devices, computers, etc., since, as you point out, they’re actually illegal. (The exception is Atlantic City, where it is actually illegal to bar someone for counting. Unfortunately, the casinos have just taken countermeasures to negate the advantage.)
I encourage people (even the non-counters among you) not to patronize these tables. If you look around, you’ll usually find a hand-shuffled table at the same minimum bet. I know it doesn’t make a difference to the casual non-counter, but the pros (and the hobbyists like me) would appreciate it.
There are multiple issues running through this thread…
First, you have a right to count cards. The casino has a right not to deal you any more cards. Sometimes these rights conflict.
A casino will treat you like royalty merely on the expectation that you will bet heaps o’ money. They don’t care whether you win or lose on this particular trip, because they know the odds are in their favor, and the more often you come back, the more likely they are to get their money back.
And, based on anecdotal evidence (never happened to me personally): if you win a ton of money in a big slot jackpot–not only will the casino not throw you out, they will treat you like a king. Room upgrades, limo rides, meals, a discrete in-room “massage”, all on the house. Again, they want you to stay and put some of their money back in the machines.
Though you claim ~1.8% advantage, you’re basing that upon the final calculated cash flow, based upon a shifting amount of cash bet. If you were to take the amount of money out of the equation and calculate the odds of purely winning or losing a hand and the stated payoff the odds would still fall to the favor of the house.
If you use good money management techniques you may change your personal win loss percentage. You will not however alter the basic fundamentals of a casino’s odds. That is why they stay in business even when people bankrolled with millions come to game.
Yardstick, I don’t think you’re right. The whole basis of card counting is that at certain identifiable points, the odds are not in favor of the house, but favor the player.
The fundamentals change in blackjack, that’s the whole point of this little exercise. You cannot simply say the odds are 48.4% or whatever, you must take into consideration the strategy being utilized by the player, and the makeup of the deck at any given point. And those odds do get above 50% occasionally.
They stay in business because because they reduce those odds greatly so it’s very rarely >50%, make it harder to take advantage of those odds, discourage card counting as much as they can, and have 1000 customers either not card-counting, or card-counting incorrectly for every successful blackjack card counter who takes them for a chump change 1.8%. Not to mention the massive income from slots, sports gambling, craps, baccarat, etc ad nauseum.
Another point about professional gamblers: Many of them (such as the infamous Nick the Greek) don’t play against the house, at all. Instead, they make side bets with the other patrons. For instance, if they’re standing at the craps table and someone’s saying “I know it’ll be a 9”. The pro then says “I’ll give you four to one that it isn’t”. Of course, the pro knows that it’s only one chance in 9 that it’ll be a nine, so he makes a killing on it. He’s not taking any of the casino’s money, so they don’t mind.
Nick the Greek, once he was famous, made money another way. Tourists wanted to beat Nick the Greek, so they would take bad bets against him. Say it was 2-1 against the tourist, and they bet even money. For the tourist, the 33% change is fine, because the payoff is more than just even money, it’s bragging rights to be able to say to his/her friends, “I beat Nick the Greek!”. Obviously the odds are good for Nick also. There’s a man who knew who how to leverage his celebrity…
During the one and only time I played blackjack at a casino, I was momentarily distracted and didn’t get my bet down in time. The dealer made me wait several more hands until he shuffled before I could resume play, saying it was a rule to thwart card counters. I’m sure this is a fairly standard practice.
Slots are huge money makers for casinos but I also think they have one of the best payouts of all casino games. In Illinois riverboats I believe the state mandates a minimum payout of something like 85% on slot machines (casino keeps 15%). In reality the casinos compete on this and actually improve the odds for the patron. Some casinos claim 95% or better payout on their slots. In this fashion they lure players to the casino and get your money other ways (other games, liquor sales, etc.). In ‘normal’ businesses such a practice is called a loss-leader (i.e. a supermarket lowers the price on lettuce to $0.10 a head thus not making or losing money but raises prices on salad dressing or tomatos or whatever else goes with lettuce and make their money back on that and then some).
Slots make lots of money because they are cheap…you can cram a lot of them into a small space and you don’t have to pay dealers to tend them. A one time investment in the machine plus some maintenance and they just sit there making money…not a bad deal for the casino.
I always heard the flat out worst odds in a casino is Keno (I saw something on TV where a casino said in 26 years of business no one had won the big pot at their Keno table). Of course, the worst odds of all are lottery tickets which people buy all the time. At least at a BJ table you can get free drinks while you lose your money.
I also recall seeing something on The Discovery Channel about the Horseshoe(?) Casino that had a policy of never refusing a bet. They had one extremely lucky gambler on a major hot streak in their casino who was apparently one or two hands away from bankrupting the casino. They could have stopped him but let him continue playing and instead of bankrupting the casino the casino won all of its money back (millions of dollars). That may seem stupid but that casino also probably attracts serious players since they know the potential to break the bank actually exists there.
I don’t gamble, so I haven’t ever really thought about it much.
But… Why are the odds in favor of the house in a game of chance.
Why doesn’t a player have as good a chance to win as the house in a game of chance?
There’s a documentary making the film festival circuit called “American Dreamer: The High Adventures of a Card-Counting Low Roller” that has this as the subject. Basically the film maker read a book about card counting, then he and his buddies set out for Vegas with a camera to record his “big winnings.” Needless to say, his plan goes awry. Pretty funny yet somewhat sad too. The film maker spoke at the festival I saw the movie at and said he had to enter Gamblers Anonymous after the movie - that he just couldn’t let go of the idea that he could win big with his scheme. Check it out if it comes to a town near you…
Simple…you don’t stay in business giving money away. Calculating odds is something any casino is VERY good at and I guarantee that any game you play in one will have the odds stacked in the casino’s favor. For some games the difference might be small…a percentage point or two, while in other games (like Keno) the odds are hugely in the casino’s favor. In general the greater the odds against your winning the greater the payout if you do win (as long as the up side for the casino is greater in the long run).
Basically all games are rigged for the casino to win. Take blackjack for example. If you are playing a friend (just the two of you) you both have an equal chance of winning assuming both have the same skill level. However, when you play the casino they work things in their favor. There are three outcomes in a hand of blackjack. You win, your opponent wins and you both tie. In the event of a tie the casino wins. In this case it is the ‘tie’ where the casino makes its money. Basically it wins on two out of three outcomes.
In roulette even betting all black will lose for you in the long run (ever notice that there is a green 00 spot on the wheel…getting black isn’t quite a 50-50 proposition).
In slot machines the mechanics are rigged according to well defined probability schemes.
Just remember…the longer you stay in a casino the more money you will lose. If you get lucky and win early take your money and run. The only caveat to this is if gambling is your entertainment. I rarely gamble but when I do I go with (say) $300 and expect to lose it. If I win early that just means I get to play longer. Once I run out of my gambling money that’s it for that trip. If I’m really lucky go home up a little but usually the casino takes my money. I have no problem with this since I consider that entertainment money that I’d have spent doing something else equally wasteful.
I’m sorry, but I’m having trouble comprehending much of what you said about blackjack.
First: if you’re playing a friend, one of you is dealing, and one is playing. The nature of the game (ie, the player goes first, and may bust regardless of what the dealer has) favors the dealer, no matter who it is. Second: I assume by definition of “tie”, you mean a push: you and the dealer get the same value. The house doesn’t win on this outcome; the player gets his money back.
To return to the original question: the house wins in the long run because it computes the probability of a player winning on any particular bet, and pays that bet off at a rate less than that. The easiest example is, as noted above, roulette: the odds of any one number coming up are 38:1. If you hit one number, the house pays your bet at 36:1. That 2/38 difference is how the casino stays in business. To put it more simply, if you put a dollar on every number, you will lose 2 dollars.
Calculating the odds varies from game to game and even bet to bet within a game, but the principle remains the same. (This is why the best bet in a casino is placing an odds bet on craps: it is paid off at the actual true probability–the casino makes no money on this bet).
Have you ever played blackjack at a casino, Jeff? In standard and almoast all types of blackjack, a tie does not result in a “win” to the house. It results in a “push”, and the amount bet by the player is simply returned to him.
The casino gains their edge when the player busts. Even if the dealer busts on the same hand, the house will still take all bets on those who busted. That is where the casino gains their edge.
Playing the correct mathematical move on every hand reduces the casino’s edge to around 0.65%. Card Counting will tip you over the edge and the odds can swing in your favor up to just over 1%.
Don’t believe me?
There are professional schools around where they actually take in students and TEACH them how to beat blackjack. One such place I am aware of is http://www.bjmasters.com.au
There’s a Harry Anderson book called something like “Games You Can’t Lose” which goes into great detail on the odds and house “edge” for various games of chance.
To quote the book: There are no non-profit casinos. Got it?
According to the book “Casino” and a recent documentary on the Discovery Channel [sub](the channel you watch when you “discover” there’s nothing else on worth watching)[/sub], a casino will in general not throw you out if you are winning honestly. The casino operators know that someone who keeps winning will keep betting. If you keep betting, in time you give it all back. And even if you walk away a winner, dozens of other people will see you betting and will try to imitate you.
However, if they suspect you of dishonesty, the casino operators will if you are lucky merely throw you out of the casino and add you to the town-wide blacklist. If you’re unlucky, you may end up in the back room visiting with 14-Week Freddy (that may have been more true in the older, wilder days of Vegas and Atlantic City, but it’s a good myth to remember).
Scruff: The casinos will throw you out if, A) you are betting big enough, and B) are playing with an advantage. That’s all. Honesty doesn’t enter into the equation. As has been repeatedly said, card counters get booted all the time, yet they are doing absolutely nothing dishonest. In fact, it’s the casinos that are dishonest when it comes to blackjack. They advertise it as a game of skill, but then they watch you carefully to see if you actually exhibit any real skill, at which point they will prevent you from playing. You tell me who’s on the side of the angels.
I used to be a pro card counter. I gave it up because I got tired of the skulduggery. When you’re young and single, it’s kind of fun to slink around the casinos and try to get your bets down without the house figuring out what you’re up to. When you’re married and have children, it gets a little too difficult to stomach, both for you and for your wife who has to come up with creative answers whenever her friends ask, “So, what does your husband do for a living?”
I switched to years ago, and made a pretty good living at it. But I ultimately got bored and went back into software development. when it comes right down to it, gambling for a living is an empty existance. Sure, you might make money, but you’re just playing a stupid game.
I realized that when I’m 80 I don’t want to look back at my career as a never ending string of poker hands. I still play, and it keeps us in some nice pocket change, and that’s the way it’s going to stay.
Why are blackjack odds for the house? There are many ways of looking at the ways the rules breakdown. For instance, when both of you go over 21, the house wins, because you always go first. You could say that is where the house edge. It doesn’t really matter how you breakdown the outcomes or processes to look at certain parts. It’s just mathematics in the end. And the math says the sum of the probability of their outcomes times their payoffs is less than even odds. The rest is just semantics and players trying to throw their own analyses in.
To answer inor specifically:
You refer to games of chance. Not all games of chance are equal.
Suppose we roll a pair of dice, and every time doubles come up, I pay you one dollar. Every other roll you pay me twenty-five dollars. Would you play that game with me? Of course not, though it is clearly a game of chance.
Casino games are all arranged so that they’re like that dice game. The odds aren’t as dramatically tilted as in my example, but they are definitely tilted. Much like the dice game, it is possible to win against the odds (just roll a bunch of doubles and quit), but it extremely unlikely.
