If the game can be beaten?
It can’t be “beaten.” The odds are not in your favor. You can do well by counting cards, which is not strictly illegal, but it will likely get you thrown out.
It’s also extremely difficult since most casinos use four to six decks when dealing blackjack.
I read in an article in Ralph magazine about a card counter who claims to have an advantage over the casino, and he travels the world playing blackjack. He claims to have edge of around 1%.
Well, he’d better keep his day job as a gambler ‘cause he’ll never make it as a mathematician.
Well if it can’t be beaten, why do casino’s kick card counters out of their venue’s?
Okay . . . It can’t be beaten if you play by the rules. Happy?
Because they can, and it improves their profit.
Each hand of blackjack is supposed to be played on its own. Historically, the dealers just don’t bother to shuffle each time.
To me, since the casino chooses not to shuffle, counting cards should be allowed. It is no different than other games where knowing what cards have been played is important. This assumes that shuffling would be required anytime a new player joins. You would not want to put new players at a disadvantage.
As I understand it, the card counters bet smallat the start of a shoe, and then if the count determines it is favourable, they bet larger. The table limits prevent this from becoming too abused, and if a dealer notices a person changing his bets frequently, they can put the “shuffle” card about half way into the shoe, rather than the roughly two-thirds they use normally. In other words, counting can give a person a temporary small advantage, but when the house notices it can counter it effectivly. The house still makes lots of money on blackjack, so it will keep offering it.
So if you count the cards, CAN it be beaten? Yes or No?
I should also note that if the house sees a shoe become very favourable to the players, the dealer might start “accidentally” flipping cards, or a card might get stuck and ripped, or they might decide the cards are too old and it is time to replace the decks with new ones. I haven’t seen this done, and I don’t think it is standard practice, but the casino’s do have some ability to shut a game down if it isn’t going their way. They can also boot a person out if they are noticed counting cards, which they would usually do before they resorted to any of the above tactics.
Mad Hatter - there are times when the count determines that the odds are slightly favorable to the player. So yes, if the player greatly increases their bets during these times they can have a slight advantage. The casino crew is on the lookout, however, for people do just this, and will take steps to prevent a significant gain. Don’t play if you don’t get a significant dollar amount of entertainment from playing.
Blackjack is gambling. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. The casino’s are being built by people who know the games, the odds, and the strategies very, very, well. Since there are other casino’s offering the same games, these people can choose which side of the table they play on. They choose to be on the dealer’s side. They are building more casino’s with the money they have won. Get the picture? It is mostly favorable to be the house. The house is the winner in Vegas. There are other winners, but they are small token winners by comparison to the house.
I remember hearing about monkeys that were taught to play checkers. When two monkeys played, the winner got a treat. Soon no monkey’s would play with the best monkey players, so the best players started letting the other ones win every once in a while so they would keep playing and the best monkeys could get more treats. The House’s are the best monkeys, and the players are the not-so-great monkey players.
I can’t imagine that any casino in the world would let a guy who publicly claims to have a “system” to continue to play at its tables. I understand that most casinos make it their business to keep tabs on professional gamblers, especially the ones who proclaim that they have found a way to beat the house. Does he wear a disguise when he goes from casino to casino?
The one card counter’s book I read (written in the early 1960’s) had the following strategy. He use card counting, specifically tens and face cards. Then he’d use his counting rules to determine his bets. He’d also bet the extremes of the table: when it was very unfavorable, he’d bet $1; favorable, $50. Finally, he had run many computer simulations which determined when to stand, hit, double, and split. With the counting and computer stats, he’d get a 1-2% advantage. Taken with the extremes of his bets, he usually won big. (He also didn’t drink the free drinks.)
He also played when only 1 deck was used. Now that 4, 6, and 8 deck shoes are used, counting is dilluted in its effectiveness. Also nowadays, if you start betting like he did, they’d likely watch you very closely and kick you out when they surmised that you were card-counting.
Overall, though, people don’t play according to the most effective means. For example, if you had 2 queens, the computer says it’s best to stay. But you are allowed to split those. It’s very tempting to do so, especially if the dealer is showing, say, a 4. Thinking that 10’s are likely to appear, you might think you’re going to get two 20-counts if you split and that the dealer probably has a 14 that will bust with another 10. Enticing, but not worth the risk.
I’ve played enough to see lots of poor players. The real strategy of Blackjack is not “to get as close to 21 without busting”, but “make the dealer bust”. If you have 14 and the dealer shows a 4, it’s best to stay and watch him bust more likely than not.
The first line of defense against card counters is the multiple deck shoe, which is good enough to defeat all but the very, very determined. Card counting is perfectly legal but it is illegal to take notes or keep track of cards with anything but your unaided memory.
I watched a TV show about this a long time ago and the thing that I remember is them asking one casino operator why he allowed known card counters to play. His reply was that they did lose occasionally to a few people but that “there are a lot of people out there who think they are card counters!”
My experience with inveterate gamblers is consistent with his comment. I know several otherwise rational people who believe they have an unbeatable system for winning at <insert casino game here>. Deluding yourself that you can count cards well enough to increase your odds significantly is just one example of these “unbeatable” systems.
This guy is an Aussie, and the magazine I read it in was Australian. I doubt he would be recognised overseas, but he said mst Australian casino’s recognise him.
I counted cards seriously for more than ten years. My take in all that time was about $50,000. As one pit boss said to me “if you want to sit in this place all day on one of those ratty little stools be my guest”.
In the book “Comp City” an old Vegas hand said “Counting cards is a tough hard grind best left to those who do not have a respectable way to make a living.” Wise words.
I enjoyed winning but it is brutally hard work, very stressful and unforgiving, and it will get you kicked out. The mathematical cycles you must endure are appalling. When I went to Vegas I could usually tell within ten minutes if there was another card counter at the table, so obviously it’s almost impossible to hide what you are doing from the casino staff.
If I had known how hard it was going to be to become a proficient card counter I would not have taken it on. I saw a few card counters lose their life savings during my career.
One time I was unemployed and hadn’t played blackjack in months. I went to the casino with $500 and proceeded to win. For six months I played 20 hours a week and had $25,000 profit. This was cool, but then for the next three months I was on a down cycle and lost about $9,000. This was not so cool.
Then the local casinos switched to six decks and started cutting thick on counters and I quit.
This is a very serious undertaking and not a casual parlour trick. My advice is stay away from it. I never go to casinos anymore and am a lot happier. I make enough money and don’t need to moonlight. I’d hate to turn 65 counting cards in a casino, have an extra few hundred thousand dollars in lifetime winnings, and be wondering where my life went. If I’m travelling I might drop into a casino for an evening. I can still play a very good game. I was in Budapest on business in 1997 and spent an evening playing blackjack. I watched the locals, chatted a little, and won $300.
Engineer Don: What you describe is called “preferential shuffling”. I’ve seen it done. If the dealer has a rough idea of the count and thinks the remaining cards may favour the players he/she may shuffle up early. This is very arguably cheating the players but it’s hard to prove.
Is that really how it works in practice, pluto? From what I’ve read in the various threads on this topic here, I got the impression that they’ll give you the boot if you’re even suspected of counting.
Here’s the Straight Dope on Card Counting:
Card counting works because blackjack is not like craps or roulette - each hand is not an independant trial. As the cards are dealt out of the shoe, the house advantage changes depending on the exact composition of cards left.
A card counter keeps track of the cards that have gone by, and when his calculations tell him that he has an edge, he bets big. If he doesn’t have an edge, he bets small or not at all. Some card counters will stand behind the table and count, and only sit down when the count shows that they have an advantage.
Card counting is NOT difficult. I could teach you to count in a weekend. 4-deck and 6-deck shoes are easier to count than single deck games, although the profit is typically not as high. Most professional card counters actually prefer multiple-deck games.
Here is a simple counting method: It involves keeping only a single number in your head. You start at zero, and as you see each card, you are going to add 1 to your count if the card is a 2-6, subtract 1 from your count if the card is a face card or an Ace, and ignore 7,8, and 9.
Once you have this number, you need to divide it by the number of decks still remaining in the shoe, to the nearest half-deck. So let’s say the first player gets an A,4. The next player 4,2. The next one K,T. You get 5,6. The dealer has a 3 showing. The ‘running’ count is now +2. It’s a 4-deck shoe, and half a deck has been dealt, so the count is 2/3.5. You don’t need to work the fraction out in your head - just know that the ‘true’ count is somewhere between 0 and +1. You know how many decks are left by eyeballing the cards in the discard tray - counters practice getting the estimation right.
Now let’s say the people hit their hands, and get a 5, 6, 4, and the dealer gets a 7 and a T. The hand is over, and the running count is now +4. The true count is just slightly under 1 (4/3.5).
Now, on the next hand, there are four more cards 2-6 than there are faces and aces. The running count is now +8, and one whole deck has gone by. The true count is therefore 8/3, or just slightly under 3.
At this point, if the game offers good rules the player will have an advantage of about .5% over the house, and you’ll increase your bet somewhat. If the count goes higher, increase it some more. If it goes back down, drop back to your base bet.
To beat the house, you not only have to vary your bets in accordance to the count, you have to get about 8 times as much money on the table during high counts, at a minimum. And, you have to play perfect basic strategy before you even begin to count, and you need to learn to vary your strategy as well as your bets when the count changes. For example, you should normally hit a 16 against a dealer’s 10, but if the count is positive you should stand because there are more high cards in the deck that can bust your hand.
If you play your strategy perfectly, and you are an excellent counter, you can gain as much as a 1% advantage over the house. That may not sound like much, but if you are playing 100 hands an hour at an average of $100 per hand, your profit will be $100/hr.
Two ‘gotchas’ here: The first is that the casino may kick you out. To get around that, you have to learn the REAL hard part about counting, which is to ‘camouflage’ your play. There are many ways to do that so that the casino can’t easily tell what you’re doing. You couple this with ‘hit and run’ tactics - never play in the same place for more than 45 minutes, always leave after making some plays that stand out, etc.
The other ‘gotcha’ is bankroll size. Even though you have the advantage over the house, there is still luck involved. The variance in blackjack is large, and it’s possible for a player to have an advantage over the house but still lose over a period of a week, a month, or even a year. Rule of thumb: You should only bet a percentage of your bankroll equal to your edge. So if you have a 1% edge, you bet 1% of your bankroll. Do the math, and you’ll see that you need a very large bankroll to play blackjack for any real money.
If you over-bet your bankroll, it won’t grow as fast. If you bet twice as much as your edge, your bankroll will oscillate between 0 and its current value. And if you bet more than that, your bankroll WILL crash to zero, even if you have an advantage.
So… Learning to count is easy. Learning to hide the fact that you are counting is hard. If you bet small amounts (under $25 per hand on average), most casinos will leave you alone. If you want to make real money and bet more, you’d better be an expert or you’re gone. If you are content to make 5 or 10 bucks an hour, you can count to your heart’s content and you’ll most likely be left alone.
One last thing: Counting cards is not immoral or unethical. The casinos like to pretend that it is, to discourage potential counters. But there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. If you want to talk ethics, let’s talk about a casino that claims to offer a game of skill, while offering free drinks to players to make them behave stupidly and kicking out players who actually demonstrate an ability to play the game well.
Those two statements are not inconsistent. Counting is legal (how could it not be?) and casinos can and sometimes will give you the boot for it.
They reserve the right to refuse service to anyone…
Oh, I’ll grant you that. As long as we all agree that the “rules” that the casino uses in this regard have little to do with Hoyle.
Basically, they give you the boot if you do too well. They run the place, so they certainly can do this, but it’s important that it be understood why.
Obviously, genuine “cheating” in any of the games would certainly be grounds for ejection. The casinos would like you to think that counting cards at blackjack constitutes such as their justification for giving you the boot. Like you said, that’s ridiculous.