A casino card shark’s first time getting caught

https://narratively.com/a-casino-card-sharks-first-time-getting-caught/

by smoyer • 6 years ago

252 122 6 years ago

narratively.com

mtm7• 6 years ago

I like her writing style. Each sentence flows into the next.

Although I’m not quite sure what the last sentence means. She gets caught... and then what?

jSully24• 6 years ago

I believe she’s found her missing self confidence to go on in life.

(edit - typo)

tonyarkles• 6 years ago

Lol definitely left it hanging at the end there!

mbrubeck• 6 years ago

This looks like an excerpt from the in-progress book mentioned on the author’s web site: http://rozannatravis.com/

umvi• 6 years ago

But part of me worried that I wasn’t seen as enough of a threat to warrant intervention from casino management. Maybe it meant that I wasn’t as good at this as I thought. Maybe I didn’t belong with the team after all.

She felt like because she never got caught, she "wasn't good enough"? How does that make any sense? I get self confidence issues are often irrational but, c'mon...

That's like a criminal lamenting that they weren't a very good criminal because the police could never catch them; everyone knows real criminals get caught and arrested.

learnstats22• 6 years ago

There's a layer that you're missing, I think.

If you cheat, and cheat badly, it's often the case that the casino has noticed and is choosing to let you continue.

Almost everyone who sits at a high stakes blackjack table thinks they have a system for beating the casino (perhaps by breaking the rules), but in most cases their system doesn't work or they don't execute it well enough to make a consistent profit.

If it's profitable for the casino to allow this type of cheating, they will absolutely let it continue.

I once sat at a table with someone blatantly marking every card that passed through his hand, but not in a way that gave him a hope of profit. The dealer was clearly aware of him doing it, and play continued. (I was quick to leave that table)

nathanlied• 6 years ago

Adding to this as someone who has mingled with people that worked at some casinos: if you're losing very badly and seem like a 'problem gambler', sometimes they'll send someone to try and dissuade you. It's bad PR if the casinos ruin people. On the other hand, if you're winning a lot, you will get A LOT of scrutiny and extra measures, and if you're cheating, you'll probably get caught.

This is likely why she had that level of nagging doubt. "Am I not winning enough to warrant extra scrutiny? Certainly if I was that good they'd have figured out what I'm doing and busted me?"

lisper3• 6 years ago

I once sat at a table with someone blatantly marking every card that passed through his hand,

I find this hard to believe. I've been to a lot of casinos and I've never seen a blackjack table where the players were allowed to touch the cards.

thaumasiotes• 6 years ago

But this doesn't explain much, because in the case of counting cards for blackjack at a casino, there's a very simple and straightforward metric for whether you're doing it well. Are you making money or losing money?

CalChris• 6 years ago

Nobody goes to jail unless they want to, unless they make themselves get caught.

  Henry Hill, Goodfellas

gjvc• 6 years ago

"When I sat down to write, I was no longer paralyzed with self-doubt. I wasn’t thinking of failure, I just wanted to keep trying."

This is a brilliant place to be in.

Zigurd2• 6 years ago

Isn't it a "card sharp?"

smoyer• 6 years ago

They are synonyms - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_sharp. Curiously, I've never heard the term "card sharp" before (or I mis-heard it as "card shark").

Zigurd2• 6 years ago

I suspect card shark has bled over from loan shark or some other term like that

GeorgeTirebiter• 6 years ago

I'm hopeful they will carry slightly different meanings in the future, where "card sharp" isn't pejorative but "card shark" is. Actually, today is the first time I've heard the term "card shark". Ahhh, English...

specialp5• 6 years ago

Yes smart bettors call themselves "sharps" and "AP"s (advantage players) I don't think I have ever heard an AP call themselves a card shark. This seems to be a piece of fiction as most of the terminology doesn't line up and the tactics are odd too.

rcthompson• 6 years ago

I think I've only ever heard "card shark" used to refer to a person who is really into the game, plays it competitively, and generally knows the probabilities of various hands, but generally isn't counting cards or otherwise keeping track of any hidden game state. They're also generally into betting strategy, bluffing, reading people's faces, and other such things. I don't think I've ever heard it used to refer to someone playing to win by counting cards, except in case where card counter is mistaken for the above.

pfarrell• 6 years ago

I think it’s a British usage versus American usage thing. Also might be historical as you can see in the title of Caravaggio’s famous work: https://www.kimbellart.org/collection/ap-198706

dreamcompiler• 6 years ago

I've always thought of "card shark" as a common American mishearing of the correct phrase "card sharp." Like saying "mute point" instead of the correct "moot point" or "take a different tact" for the correct "take a different tack."

stOneskull• 6 years ago

I like that they all still make sense.

specialp5• 6 years ago

Card counting is romanticized but really it is almost impossible to get away with now (while making any meaningful money). The whole premise of card counting is to vary your bets where you are betting more when the count is in your favor, and less when it isn't. Also "penetration" into the deck is important because the less cards there are remaining in the deck the probability of you getting the cards you want (positive count big cards) is higher.

So with that said:

- Casinos employ methods such as continuous shuffling machines that make counting impossible. Tables that have hand shuffling of 6-8 decks cut the deck and reshuffle with 2 decks remaining or so. So it is harder to get penetration.

- The way to be maximally profitable is to vary your bet very widely depending on how positive the deck is. This could be 30x your low bet. Behavior like this will get you detected.

- Security personnel and even dealers keep counts. It is not some savant activity. It is not hard especially since all these people do all day is look at cards. So they know when the deck is positive and if you are always betting big when that happens you will be detected.

So the people that are left counting have to avoid heat by "camouflaging" their actions. They don't vary their bet that widely and make purposeful bad decisions to make it appear they are not keeping a count. They want to appear like someone that does not know how to play basic strategy and raises and lowers their bets based on superstition (there's a lot of them). This all eats into their advantage substantially. Then in addition betting big at high limit tables is going to be more carefully scrutinized as well.

With that all added together the life for a modern card counter is grinding out for comps and very low player advantage for very long times. Casinos aren't dumb anymore. So while we watch the chronicles of the MIT team, and others, those days are long, long gone. Makes for great stories as people love Robin Hood like tales, but it just isn't happening like this anymore.

Edit: Also the tactic she mentions: Entering a game mid shoe after watching for a while, and waiting for a positive deck, is called "Wonging" After Stanford Wong a longtime gambling expert and advantage player. There is NO WAY you'd get away with "flashy big bettor Carlos" coming in after she counted detected a positive count. Tables with any meaningful limit usually do not allow mid shoe entry for this reason. It is one of the oldest tricks in the book and you wouldn't get away with that for long or at all.

hodder• 6 years ago

Yup. As I was reading along, I thought a) this story is complete fiction, or b) of course they were caught.

I’m no casino regular but every single one I’ve been into in my life use large 6-8 deck shoes and reshuffle as it hits about 2 decks. Counting just isn’t profitable anymore unless you are blatantly obvious about it.

icelancer2• 6 years ago

Large shoes are not unbeatable. In some conditions an 8 deck shoe is better than a 6 deck shoe. Penetration does matter though, a 25% cutoff would be pretty brutal.

> Counting just isn’t profitable anymore unless you are blatantly obvious about it.

Game selection is a big part of it. You might be looking at large corporations. Plenty of small shops to beat.

LanceH• 6 years ago

Every time card counting comes up in discussion there seem to be people talking about how it works (not taking a shot at you, just attaching my comment here). But not once have I seen a link to the actual numbers.

If I want to know something about chess, the source code is available, endgame tables are available, everything that we say we know about chess can be confirmed.

Everyone seems to know how card counting works, with vague things like a count goes up with 5's or down with 10's, but there is no first post link to the "solution". The only thing I see referenced is some 1 deck study from the early computer days.

I'm halfway convinced the money making avenue of card counting is telling stories about card counting.

The conspiracy theory part of my brain says these stories are written by casinos to give players hope.

So, where is that github link?

dna113• 6 years ago

with vague things like a count goes up with 5's or down with 10's

That is not vague at all and shows you how simple card counting is. Pair that with a blackjack strategy card which is based on the odds of winning certain hands and its easy to tell how a deck that has a higher proportion of 10's is better for the player.

https://wizardofodds.com/blackjack/images/bj_4d_s17.gif

specialp5• 6 years ago

I agree with you on that. The money is to be made telling stories about it vs doing it. Which is why I think the article is complete fiction. But the math behind counting is sound and it is indeed profitable if done right.

https://github.com/seblau/BlackJack-Simulator is an example of this. The house advantage of blackjack is under 1% for good games (for example 0.33% at Mohegan Sun). So to beat it you just need overcome that which IS possible by counting. But you can see if you play with that sim, decreasing penetration, bet spread and amount really starts to eat into your numbers.

But with the mitigation strategies listed like low penetration, heat gained by betting big, or wild swings in bet amount, and finally no mid-shoe entry it is not possible now to do it and make good money.

https://wizardofodds.com/games/blackjack/card-counting/high-... Michael Shackleford is an expert on gambling analysis and is employed by gaming companies to check out their games. He has loads of detailed information and statistics on his site about every casino game.

But yes. Mathematically possible, and possible in the distant past when casinos didn't know. Pretty much impossible now due to casinos detecting it easily. Not because it isn't mathematically possible.

michaelscott• 6 years ago

Ok so the idea of a statistical edge in blackjack, as well as the strategies of card counting and what is called basic strategy, were developed by mathematician E.O. Thorp in the 70s. Thorp has a large body of research on the mathematics of many casino games that are worth taking the time to read, some of them with the father of information theory himself Claude Shannon (with whom he used to go gambling, along with both their wives).

The empirical testing of his work was conducted over a number of years by MIT, Harvard Business School and others to show that indeed card counting and other strategies were effective at giving the bettor a statistical edge [1]. Casinos being casinos, they learned of this soon enough and effectively banned card counters in many outlets (as well as putting various measures in place to prevent or minimize those who are more subtle about it, as discussed in OP's comment). In modern times, even a small town casino will have measures in place to stop card counters, the simplest of which is just to have an automatic deck shuffler.

As for his papers on the academic research that have led to strategies like card counting, you can find most or all of them on his site[2]. Of particular note is his paper "Blackjack Systems"[3] describing a proto card counting strategy, "The Mathematics of Gambling"[4], and of course the book that started it all: "Beat the Dealer"[5].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Blackjack_Team [2] http://www.edwardothorp.com/articles/ [3] http://www.edwardothorp.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Black... [4] http://www.edwardothorp.com/books/the-mathematics-of-gamblin... [5] https://www.amazon.com/Beat-Dealer-Winning-Strategy-Twenty-O...

ryguytilidie• 6 years ago

Why not make this calculation yourself versus demanding a stranger does it?

swader9992• 6 years ago

Agree 100%. It's a grind at best even with a team. Casinos love card counters because by far a large number of them make errors and can't overcome the tactics to thwart card counting. They make a lot of money off of the card counting fantasies. These articles get popular every time there's a recession.

NikolaeVarius• 6 years ago

Card counting is something a child can understand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_counting

Asking to prove it is like asking to prove that tic-tac-toe is a solved game, since its trivial to understand how it works

qiguai• 6 years ago

Is there a form of card counting for sports betting that produces results

icelancer2• 6 years ago

I mean, hi/low is fairly well understood, as are hi-opt methods and such. Casino Verite is a long-standing simulation software used for over a decade (at least in my case) to test theories and strategies. Illustrious 18 is a sample modification table for basic strategy and so forth.

Card counting can be profitable. It's not invented by the casinos, I assure you of that. I've earned enough backoffs from them.

Wizard of Odds is a good site to peruse if you want derived tables/odds/simulations. The author of the blog (Shackleford) is a fairly good statistician and computer modeler.

The information is out there.

In modern times, most of the value of card counting comes from game selection and beating bonuses/weak side bets/match plays. It's not likely a good full-time job. But good advantage players have a wide set of skills, of which beating blackjack is simply one.

vmception• 6 years ago

You can usually card count and run all of the old tricks when new jurisdictions just get into the casino business.

Like a new tribe finally gains consensus to open a casino and have no idea what they're getting into or have the enforcement procedures. The same for states and municipalities, but they typically have more resources to course correct quickly.

You can take them all to the cleaners though.

throwaway2245• 6 years ago

Card counting is possible but extremely sensitive to the precise rules of the game being played.

The principle is that you bet (more) when the cards remaining in the deck are favourable to you. Even if you can identify when that happens, precisely or heuristically, it's then also important to consider what percentage of your bank you can bet to best avoid bankruptcy.

If you've considered all of this carefully enough, your method will likely no longer work when the casino modifies the rules in any way - most crudely by increasing their take to cover any variance in bet value.

Edward O Thorp explains the mathematics of card counting extremely clearly and readably.

shultays• 6 years ago

How does it work with multiple decks? Can you get same cards on same rounds?

That would kinda break yhe illusion for me but maybe other people/casino doesnt care

__s• 6 years ago

Yep, not really sure what the illusion is, so long as you know how many copies of each card there are, you could even go so far as to consider 52 card deck to be 4 sets already

alasdair_• 6 years ago

I know some magic: the gathering players who did very well counting cards as part of a team. The “big bettor” sometimes worked in the way you mentioned but sometimes it was something completely different, like a crazy religious person who would bet small for a while while clutching a rosary, then When the deck was hot they would go douse themselves in a nearby fountain while praying loudly, then come back to the table, wet, and loudly claiming the Lord told them they were going to win big today and start placing max bets.

Can you do this every night at the same casino? Absolutely not. Can you do it once, then switch to a completely different persona at a different place? Apparently you can, at least ten years ago.

Edit: also, while the big vegas casinos do all this stuff properly, a lot of the small casinos on Indian reservations are more lax with their safeguards. The issue is that table maximums tend to be in the $500 range which makes the dollars per hour somewhat minimal.

fortran77• 6 years ago

I'm suspicious of these stories, too. With continuous shuffling, I can't see how you can beat it. The "team" counting techniques perfected by the MIT groups only work if you never make a mistake and are prepared to play for a while.

I think Casinos like to propagate these stories about counting to encourage people who know a little about it to come down and bet big. Odds are, they'll lose.

leshenka• 6 years ago

What is the point of playing it then if being good at the game is forbidden? Where is the joy of it?

Vastov• 6 years ago

How exactly do card counters get caught, beyond abnormal winning streaks? For instance, there is nothing outwardly happening when you count cards, how can it be proven that you are, in fact, counting?

teej• 6 years ago

I challenged myself to learn to count cards last year and I found it really fun. Being able to count a deck in under 30 seconds is one thing, but putting the skill to work is another challenge completely. It is hard work.

Ultimately, if you aren’t playing with a team or $50+ minimums, you won’t make a huge amount of money on a per-hour basis. I still count occasionally but now only for one or two shuffles before getting back to having fun with friends.

kingkawn• 6 years ago

Forgive my ignorance but why is tracking the play of the deck not a legitimate strategy?

zzo38computer• 6 years ago

It is a legitimate strategy, and I think the casino is not actually allowed to arrest you, accuse you of cheating, take back your winnings, etc for it. They can ban you though; casinos can ban you whenever they want to. I think they can also refuse to give you any comp bonuses. I am not really so sure how it works; I don't gamble in a casino and do not intend to.

SaltyBackendGuy• 6 years ago

I don't gamble in a casino and do not intend to.

This is the only long term winning strategy I've seen work in practice.

(Former Poker Dealer)

ec1096852• 6 years ago

It is a legitimate strategy, but if you do this well enough, the casino will not allow you to play, since you can turn the game’s odds into your favor.

swader9992• 6 years ago

With face/gant recognition and other means of tracking, once you are barred from play at one casino you are at almost all.

pas2• 6 years ago

Why don't they just add a lot more cards, like just use 20 decks?

dkersten• 6 years ago

Counting cards isn’t illegal, but a casino, like any business, has the right to refuse service to anyone. I know players who have been handcuffed, searched and dragged into windowless back rooms

But surely handcuffing someone for doing something that isn't illegal is itself illegal search and detention?

specialp5• 6 years ago

That treatment, along with the tactics used in this story like Wonging at the table, last occurred/were effective long before the author was born. Typically casinos if they are nice put you on a "flat bet" which makes counting completely useless since profiting on it is predicated on varying your bet. Another thing would be not allowing the player to play blackjack anymore. Usually the harshest punishment is banning the player from the casino, having them cash their chips, and leave. Subsequently coming back would be trespassing then you'd be put in cuffs and brought in the back.

chongli3• 6 years ago

You can profit from counting cards with a flat bet. The MIT team did exactly this. The trick is to have counters at multiple tables, all betting a small but flat amount, and floaters that move from table to table while betting large, but also flat, amounts.

The counters lose a small but steady amount of money over time while the floaters make large amounts of money by only playing at the tables with favourable counts.

jwilber3• 6 years ago

This is correct. I’ve been removed from three casinos for counting. First time: two men in suits came over, made me leave the table, walked me over to cash out and said I couldn’t come back again. The other two times I was only banned from table games. These three were in San Diego. I do know people who have been roughed up at Indian casinos in rural states, though.

xnyan2• 6 years ago

If you have the need (and I would say cynically if you also have the money and political connections) you can commission a private police force that has (in a limited way) the legal authority to arrest.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_police

jandrese2• 6 years ago

Even the police can't arrest you without probable cause. Until it is illegal to count cards any such arrests would be on shaky legal grounds.

paulpauper2• 6 years ago

probably more than just counting . collusion , use of computers and other aids, etc.

dehrmann2• 6 years ago

Seems dangerous if you detain the wrong card counter.

paulpauper2• 6 years ago

I dunno why so many people keep trying to beat the casinos. Casinos hire professionals whose job it is to track card counters and collusion , as well as advanced security systems. All these signals an gestures are obvious to those whose job it is to detect them. Certain patterns of behavior become obvious to the trained eye.

ausbah• 6 years ago

risk is very alluring! the higher the stakes the higher the draw for some!

kd5bjo• 6 years ago

The explicit goal of every gambler is to walk out of the room with more money than they started with. The casinos make sure that actually happens sometimes, or else they would have no customers. Under those circumstances, it’s basic human nature to look for ways to maximize your return. Many people do that by not gambling, but others try to find loopholes that the casinos haven’t figured out yet.

defertoreptar• 6 years ago

I go on business trips to Vegas along with a friend. My friend has been playing blackjack for decades. I'm not a gambler, but counting allows me to join in while mitigating risk (in the long run). We have a really good time.

Initially, I spent about 40 hours training on blackjack counting software. Nowadays, I'll practice for one day before the trip, and I'm sharp again. My "lifetime earnings" are very good, but I'm not trying to make money so much as not lose money.

Counting is only a small part of the game. You need to memorize basic strategy for the different types of tables, as there are subtle differences in rules. You have to know how many decks are left on the shoe. You have to divide the count by the decks remaining and calculate how much to bet based off of this information. Lastly, you have to execute all of this nearly perfectly all while in a loud environment while people are talking to you. Even a small percentage of mistakes can mean negative expected value.

woobar• 6 years ago

Amazon Prime has the "Inside the Edge" documentary about Blackjack Advantage Player. A lot of insights about how hard it is and how much money they can make now. Basically it looks like this only makes sense against smaller casinos who are behind on countermeasures.

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3575954/

dapids• 6 years ago

"Counting cards isn't illegal"

it all depends how you are counting them, if you use a secondary device or person assisting, that is cheating, which is illegal, even though you are using it to count.

burnte• 6 years ago

Counting cards is legal, because counting cards is a solo, mental thing. Yes, once you bring in devices or other people, it's not cheating.

unnouinceput2• 6 years ago

to article's author: -it was too short, I want more. Some epilogue or something. This only made me thirsty for more.

pepy• 6 years ago

Looks like the article is an advertisement for a book, it seems it served its purpose

unnouinceput2• 6 years ago

well, i like it, so i won't mind buying the book. and if all ads on internet would be written like this then we'll welcome them instead frown upon...my 2 cents

supernova87a• 6 years ago

It's always fun to read these kinds of stories.

But still in the end, if you distill it all down, doesn't it always come out to the conclusion:

If your potential winnings are capped (fair or not, by the casino), and your losses are unlimited, what is gambling but a slower way to lose a bunch of money while getting a little entertainment out of it? At least for those of us who are not going to become professional card counters...

kelnos4• 6 years ago

what is gambling but a slower way to lose a bunch of money while getting a little entertainment out of it?

That's generally how I look at it when I'm in Vegas. I'll take $100 from the ATM and sit down at a poker table. Occasionally I get unlucky and play really poorly and I'm out in an hour, but usually I get at least a few hours, and on the flip side, I've spent an entire night at a table on that $100, and it's a blast. Of course this also depends on the other people at the table, and the dealers that come through. Some tables just aren't that fun to be at (you're of course playing against the other people at the table, and some people take it very seriously), while others are great.

Craps can be a huge amount of fun, especially when people are lucky, because you develop a kind of silly temporary camaraderie with random strangers at the table. Blackjack can be the same way, too (though I never learned how to properly play, so I usually don't last long).

Consider that if you go to see a movie (often $15-25 just for the ticket these days), and you're the kind of person to get concessions and whatnot, you can easily spend $50 or more for 1.5-2 hours of entertainment. I'm cool paying $100 for sometimes 6-8 hours of fun, plus free drinks. Now, for people who don't find that kind of thing fun, then sure, that's not for them. And for people who have a gambling addiction, that's great way to spend money they don't have. But if you enjoy it, and are good about setting yourself monetary limits, and consider your buy-in to be a cost of entertainment, it's fine.

cubano2• 6 years ago

Card counting was literally my gateway into professional programming.

The first "real" program I ever wrote was a blackjack simulator, in MS-BASIC, around 30 years ago. My brother and I were getting ready to go with my Dad to Vegas for the first time, and we were keen on not being typical dumb ass gamblers...we wanted an edge.

We quickly learned that the only beatable game in town was card-counting at Blackjack, so I got busy first verifying that card counting wasn't some casino ploy (it wasn't), and then modifying the same simulator code to actually "teach" the systems it was simulating.

I wish I still had this code... I absolutely loved developing it, and eventually it was a very powerful blackjack system. It had configurable everything..system counts, decks, rules, players at the table, etc. I literally spent 7 years plus working on it. Eventually it was ported to Turbo Pascal for speed.

I became a whiz at counting... I eventually settled on "Wong Halves", the most complex but supposedly the most accurate count system there was. Remember, this was in the late 80s early 90s, and back then casinos were wide open to be taken.

I was only a $5 to $25 player though, so I never got any real heat. I used a 1 to 5 bet ratios (1 unit at low counts and 5 as "big bets"), which was very conservative, and looking back, I had a good deal of small-time success. Unlike my brother, I was never banned... I was far better than he at "blending in" and being personable.

Nowadays, I live in Vegas, and they have completely destroyed the chances of winning any real money at the casinos. Hell, I remember my simulations showing me that the primary money advantage was made when you had a large bet out at a high count (favorable to the player), that the fact that blackjacks came at a higher rate WAS THE ONLY REAL MONEY MAKING ADVANTAGE THERE WAS.

This is why, I feel, that the high end strip casinos NO LONGER PAY 3-2 for natural blackjacks...an outrage if ever there is one! Strip casinos now pay 6-5 for a blackjack. I have had heated arguments with pit personnel that the game should no longer be called Blackjack, so "Blackjack" pay 3-2 for naturals.

Unsurprisingly, they never saw it my way. No matter how well you count, you will NEVER win long term with natural blackjacks paying only 6-5, so save your money and your time and just goto Vegas for a good time.

nemo44x• 6 years ago

I haven’t been to Vegas in a few years but I could still find a few 3-2 tables, generally in the back at some places. Also higher minimum tables tended to have better rules.

The tables that were sure to fill up with low stakes, uninformed players, tended to have really bad rules. I’ve seen 6-5 blackjacks, no splitting aces, and even no doubling after splitting.

Like why not just give the casino the money?

I like playing blackjack because you can sit there for quite awhile and generally not lose too much (that’s a relative term of course) while socializing and getting free drinks. I’ll run a count after a few shoes here and there but not every shoe as I’m not trying to do this for profit so much as entertainment.

cubano2• 6 years ago

Yep...and I never meant to imply that no 3-2 games could e found, just not on the Strip per se. El Cortez downtown still has a banging 3-2 $5 blackjack game that's a lot of fun to play.

Your absolutely correct about your approach to the game now. Just sit, try to find a friendly dealer and some fun people to play with, and you will have an outstanding time.

rebuilder• 6 years ago

The article describes the card sharks using disguises, apparently to get around being banned from a casino. Wouldn't that be trespassing, if they've been told not to enter the casino again?

FireBeyond• 6 years ago

Depends. There is an interim step between formally, legally trespassing you, it seems where you are told you are no longer welcome, they may use your camera footage and “ban” you.

1e-9• 6 years ago

I went through a short beat-the-casino phase for kicks. You can increase your edge significantly beyond standard card counting by targeting flaws in casino randomization methods. Randomization is hard. For example, card shuffles aren't random, not even mechanical ones, and particularly not human ones.

It is possible to carefully observe and model a variety of randomization processes at different casinos, find a weakness in a particular game at a particular casino, and construct a profitable strategy that is nearly impossible for the casino to anticipate. Even so, they will eventually notice someone who is a consistent winner, assume you are cheating, and force you to play a stressful game of cat-and-mouse that will lower your expected profit, increase your variance, and lead to a less-than-desirable lifestyle, in my opinion. A team can improve these things at the cost of adding management and human resource headaches.

If you have the talent to succeed at this, my experience is that the same talent can be applied in much more productive endeavors that pay far better and yield a much higher quality of life.

dehrmann2• 6 years ago

the same talent can be applied in much more productive endeavors that pay far better and yield a much higher quality of life.

I'd guess that the edge you can get, along with max bets and not drawing attention to yourself means you're better off with a tech or hedge fund job? I've heard that pulling six figures playing poker takes a lot of skill and a lot of grinding. The story of the professional gambler is compelling, but in practice, it seems like most people just aren't smart enough or work hard enough to make it work, or they're smart and work hard enough to do better at something more productive.

throwanem• 6 years ago

The comments about card counting are interesting, but not all that relevant to the story, which is a pretty stock bildungsroman-lite of a sort that by design says very little about anything or anyone beyond its author.

I really feel for people in that kind of situation. Say what you like about the wisdom or foolhardiness of deciding out of high school not to go to college and take on student debt, it did put me in the situation of having very quickly to work out whether and how I was going to be worth a damn - less flippantly, it put me in the position, at the beginning of my adult life, of deciding what I was going to do with my adult life, and how to go about accomplishing it.

I can't imagine what it must be like to hit your mid-20s with tens of thousands, if not these days six figures, of undischargeable debt, and then have to start figuring out what sort of worth you're going to have in the world. It's a hell of a racket to run on teenagers, and, just as in the casino business against which this writer chose to try herself, it seems like the house always wins in the end.

A casino card shark’s first time getting caught

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