8 ms·

"[...] casino security, who were constantly on the lookout for card counting". Why this is something "forbidden", this isn't cheating, am I missing something? A

"[...] casino security, who were constantly on the lookout for card counting". Why this is something "forbidden", this isn't cheating, am I missing something? Anyway, how security can detect that someone counts cards? I assume gamblers are not doing that aloud.

mikaelmello 7y ago
It is forbidden by casinos because it is in their best interest to keep winning players away. Even if the house still gets their cut, it can create a bad image for players that are losing.
- curiousgal 7y ago
  I wonder how online casinos deal with card counters.
  - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    I often think, why don't online games deal from an 'infinite deck'? That is, every card is simply random from among 52 choices, regardless of the previous cards dealt. Then card-counting would be pointless. I know - it would change the games entirely. So? The games are arbitrary. They would be new games, and it would defeat many modes of cheating.
    - richbradshaw 7y ago
      I think the idea of games like Blackjack/Poker is that intuitively it feels like it's a skill game, rather than just a game of chance. It feels like if you played enough you'd get better - after all, with only 52 cards, how hard can it be to get an edge on the house? This is different to a slot machine, where clearly it's just a game of chance. In reality casino card games are 99.9% chance, but I think the infinite deck idea would remove the skill feeling and hence the attraction for many players.
      - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
        Poker is somewhat a game of probabilities related to the 52-card deck. But any professional poker player would tell you, the big pots come from reading the other players. That wouldn't change.
        moate 7y ago
        It's so much harder to read a hand (and player) value when there are an infinite number of possible outcomes. If I have AA in a game of hold 'em with an A on the flop, I know there's no possibly way anyone else has AAA. If there's an infinite deck, there's now no way of knowing if I'm tied for the best hand or not. How the hell can you read a player if you have no way to possibly peg him to a hand? The game would be unplayable with an infinite deck
        dointheatl 7y ago
        That's also the reason that you can't play poker with multiple decks shuffled together, despite this being common in blackjack. The rules of hold 'em don't allow for the possibility of two players both having the nut flush, nor is there any concept of "five of a kind," which would of course at some point happen with multiple decks in play concurrently.
        cygaril 7y ago
        Two players having the same hand is no issue - just split the pot. This already happens when neither player can improve on the five community cards. Adding five of a kind also seems like a pretty easy adjustment. The most obvious difference is the possibility of cards matching both suit and rank. So if you have HA HK and the flop is HA HJ S2 you have both top pair and also a very strong flush draw (although HA HA would be better), a combo which is impossible on that board with a single deck.
        moate 7y ago
        Yes, the game can deal with these things. There's been wild card games forever and people like them just fine. The issue is that this is a completely different game. It might be a fine game. People might like it (maybe even more than Texas Hold 'em). But this isn't the same game anymore. They're both played with the same 52 data points, but the frequency of those 52 data points makes these games and the skills needed to be good at them very different. My previous comment of the game being "unplayable" might have been hyperbolic. The point I was trying to make is that it's not the same game when you change one of the rules so dramatically.
  - jessicalondon 7y ago
    Online casinos can shuffle cards without having to use automated shuffling machines and set the cut card earlier[0], which makes it less profitable/ harder/ worthwhile to Card Count. [0] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-casinos-know-that-you_b_6857442 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-casinos-know-that-you_b_6...?
  - kratom_sandwich 7y ago
    IIRC card counting relies on tracking which cards have been drawn and thus inferring which cards are remaining in the deck. Shuffling by hand is a tedious process, hence it is done only so often and this makes counting possible. With electric shuffling machines, shuffling becomes easier and is done more often. This, in turn, makes counting cards harder because the remaining deck never gets small enough for you to draw any useful conclusions about the remaining number of cards. In an online casino, you would have the same problem I guess ...
  - duiker101 7y ago
    If we are talking about live dealer, they use bigger shoes (6+ decks) and they switch decks randomly around midway, making the counting techniques almost useless.
  - Scirra_Tom 7y ago
    They shuffle a lot. I've seen some online blackjack where it is possible to count cards, but they know this and the stakes are low enough and game speed slow enough it's just not worth the effort.
daniel_levine 7y ago
The casino can track the count too and see if a good player is adjusting their play accordingly
jessicalondon 7y ago
Card counting is typically against House rules. There's an interesting article on how security detect card counting[0]. My take is that it's not a science, instead the security/ pit boss' who spend significant time watching players would develop a 'feeling'. [0] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-casinos-know-that-you_b_6857442 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-casinos-know-that-you_b_6...?
- smudgymcscmudge 7y ago
  Just like the feeling gamblers get that the table’s count is high.
  - jessicalondon 7y ago
    Yah, I would guess so!
- wil421 7y ago
  They likely do some kind of cop tricks to get the player to admit to counting cards. I wonder how many people have been banned from casinos for bragging on social media about their skills.
  - sokoloff 7y ago
    Casinos have way better information on large players' win/loss figures from in-casino surveillance (eye in the sky and pit bosses) than they could ever get from social media.
  - specialp 7y ago
    They don't need to get the player to admit it. It isn't illegal, and is easily spotted in many cases. Casinos are private establishments and can either toss the player out, or if they are nice, allow them to only make the same bet every time (flat betting) which makes it impossible to make money counting. Egregious counting which makes decent returns will be spotted almost immediately anywhere that isn't asleep. More subtle camouflaged counting is harder to spot, but the return is also much less. So whenever that player starts varying their bet more, or moving to high roller tables they will get more scrutiny.
EastLondonCoder 7y ago
A casino makes its money on the house edge which is for example for European Roulette 1/37. If you win on a single bet you get 36 times in winning. But you do have the number 0..36 on the wheel so 37 numbers. If you are good at counting cards the casino will have a negative edge and if all customers would be doing that it would lose money over time.
- vmh1928 7y ago
  Interesting story about a group of UC Santa Cruz students using slight tilts in roulette wheels which increased the probability of the ball falling in specific sectors the wheel. http://physics.ucsc.edu/people/eudaemons/eudaemons.html http://physics.ucsc.edu/people/eudaemons/eudaemons.html Or see the 1985 book, The Eudaemonic Pie
Iv 7y ago
If you can count perfectly, you can beat the odds. An obvious solution would be for casino to reshuffle cards at ever game but I suspect they don't do it because they bank on a lot of people who underestimate how hard it is to count cards or overestimate their mental skills. Blackjack is an incredibly boring game, remove the ability to count and beat the odds and no one would play it.
- theelous3 7y ago
  You don't really need to count absolutely perfectly. The more you count the better, of course, but it's a probabilistic system with a thin edge to begin with. They don't reshuffle every time because your last statement is very wrong. The money card counters can take before being caught is a rounding error in the face of the masses of people who are happy to play with no edge.
  - mohaine 7y ago
    I haven't personally done the math but one of the articles I read (Scientific American?) mentioned that 1 error an hour makes you basically at the break even level. Higher error rates brought the house advantage _higher_ than non-counting methods. Is this incorrect?
    - jandrese 7y ago
      It probably depends on the technique. Some counts are pretty easy to manage, like simply keeping a tally of the number of 10+ cards vs. total cards. It does take practice, but it's way easier than trying to keep a tally of every card you've seen in your head. But yeah, it's really easy for casinos to keep a track of your betting pattern and kick you out if you're playing the game too well. That's why the really successful card counters play as groups with personas. They'll station a bunch of low key guys around the casino and have them maintain a steady stream of cheap wagers while they count. When a table gets hot they'll signal a flamboyant high stakes looking guy to sit down and play a few rounds. The Casinos will eventually catch those guys too, simply by correlating who is sitting at what tables when the high stakes guy comes to play, but it takes a lot more work and they make out with a bunch more cash. Worse, because what they're doing isn't illegal the casio can't even deny them the winnings, only kick them out and plaster their faces all over the blacklists the casinos use.
downandout 7y ago
Anyway, how security can detect that someone counts cards? It’s pretty simple. Surveillance and the pit bosses also know how to count cards. All mathematically correct counting systems will tell you to raise or lower your bet at almost exactly the same, because a counting system is simply a way of quantifying your positive or negative edge at a given time. So if you modify your bet in correlation with the count even 4 or 5 times, the odds that you did that on a hunch become very small. Do it 10 times in a row, and the odds are nearly 100% that you are counting. It isn’t counting that casinos hate, per se. They hate anyone that can consistently beat their games - “advantage players”. Counting just happens to be the most easily detectable form of advantage play, so the people that still do it are cannon fodder for surveillance. Most professional advantage players today don’t count cards. They use a variety of other techniques, such as hole carding and taking advantage of promotions created by mathematically challenged casino marketing departments, that are both more profitable and far harder to detect than counting.
PhasmaFelis 7y ago
The purpose of a casino isn't to provide a venue for betting on cards. The purpose of a casino is to take your money. Cards are just the mechanism. Some wins are allowed to maintain the fiction and keep gamblers coming in, but they won't allow anything that jeopardizes the overall direction of flow from gamblers' pockets to the casino's. They don't differentiate between being "too good" at the game and simply cheating.
- rolltiide 7y ago
  Exactly, and they also change the laws of the states they operate in to favor this reality.
theelous3 7y ago
The most obvious way they are caught is changing their bets. If you bet 10$ every hand, then suddenly 100$ when you think the count is good, and are winning, then back to 10$, you're done. Good card counter will level their perceived variance by dumping money back, just like a poker player will sometimes call with a wider hand range than they consider their play style to be profitable in. One of the ways casinos combat card counters is to lock their betting. So, they'll see someone with variant betting, between 1 and 100, and tell them they can keep playing, but only if they bet 20$ per hand. That's an easier thing to kill card counting than outright banning players, as they still may be losing players at slots or some other table game.
- PorterDuff 7y ago
  They play in teams.
- twox2 7y ago
  That's not enough variance to win in the long term. Counters actually work in teams and will bet closer to the table maximum when the count favors them. They also stop playing as soon as the count is not in their favor. Someone sitting down to play 5 hands at the table maximum is a pretty big red flag.
GuB-42 7y ago
Casinos are private properties, they can kick you out for any reason without having to justify themselves. Playing too well is one of these reasons. Of course, kicking you out is the only thing they can do. They can't take your earnings, prosecute you, detain you, or use force unless you resist. Usually the player will be kindly asked to cash-in and leave. Security can track your play patterns, your gains and losses. Card counting result in very characteristic patterns, and if your gains are too consistent to be explained by chance alone, they are going to watch closely. If you are just lucky, they will offer you free drinks, if you are an advantage player, you will be asked to leave, if you are a cheater, you are going to have problems. Edit: I think there are some places where casinos can't just kick people out for no reasons. But anyways, there are ways of making card counting impractical. The use of continuous shuffling machines is one of them.
- hansthehorse 7y ago
  Card counters increase their bets when the see the deck as favorable. The casino watches for patterns.
  - cortesoft 7y ago
    And in fact, the casino also counts cards so they can correlate your bet changes with the state of the deck.
- dsm4ck 7y ago
  boy do I have news for you https://pokerfuse.com/news/industry/210407-borgata-gets-green-light-seize-phil-iveys-assets-nevada/ https://pokerfuse.com/news/industry/210407-borgata-gets-gree...
  - moate 7y ago
    That isn't "counting cards" that's edge sorting. Counting cards isn't considered cheating because you're manipulating numbers in your head and in NJ, where the case happened, you can't be asked to leave a casino just for counting cards. Edge sorting is considered cheating as it's basically a form of marking cards. (This is an oversimplification of the rulings in the US
gaoshan 7y ago
I count cards and it is not hard at all to spot the patterns that counters use. The most common counting system follows a very specific pattern that, if used, would leave anyone following along with an identical count. In response to that count people will change their betting patterns and this is what is generally being watched for (and guarded against, to your earnings detriment, by people that don't want to get caught). More serious counters will work in teams and the casinos can try to look for the signaling that such teams traditionally employ (in addition to betting patterns). Even with counting (at the individual level) you are really only giving yourself a very slight edge and this assumes that all other advantages are being taken (playing a perfect game, playing favorable rules... unfavorable rules are everywhere these days... managing your bets to take advantage of the count without getting caught, having a properly sized bank roll, etc.). Sadly, after all of that you can still get your butt handed to you on a bad night. On the aggregate you can beat the house with counting and all of the above but only just.
gnopgnip 7y ago
This is explicitly legal in Atlantic city as a result of a lawsuit, Uston v. Resorts International Hotel. In all other areas the casinos can kick you out except for a few legally prohibited reasons like race.

mikaelmello 7y ago

It is forbidden by casinos because it is in their best interest to keep winning players away. Even if the house still gets their cut, it can create a bad image for players that are losing.

curiousgal 7y ago
I wonder how online casinos deal with card counters.
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  I often think, why don't online games deal from an 'infinite deck'? That is, every card is simply random from among 52 choices, regardless of the previous cards dealt. Then card-counting would be pointless. I know - it would change the games entirely. So? The games are arbitrary. They would be new games, and it would defeat many modes of cheating.
  - richbradshaw 7y ago
    I think the idea of games like Blackjack/Poker is that intuitively it feels like it's a skill game, rather than just a game of chance. It feels like if you played enough you'd get better - after all, with only 52 cards, how hard can it be to get an edge on the house? This is different to a slot machine, where clearly it's just a game of chance. In reality casino card games are 99.9% chance, but I think the infinite deck idea would remove the skill feeling and hence the attraction for many players.
    - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
      Poker is somewhat a game of probabilities related to the 52-card deck. But any professional poker player would tell you, the big pots come from reading the other players. That wouldn't change.
      - moate 7y ago
        It's so much harder to read a hand (and player) value when there are an infinite number of possible outcomes. If I have AA in a game of hold 'em with an A on the flop, I know there's no possibly way anyone else has AAA. If there's an infinite deck, there's now no way of knowing if I'm tied for the best hand or not. How the hell can you read a player if you have no way to possibly peg him to a hand? The game would be unplayable with an infinite deck
        dointheatl 7y ago
        That's also the reason that you can't play poker with multiple decks shuffled together, despite this being common in blackjack. The rules of hold 'em don't allow for the possibility of two players both having the nut flush, nor is there any concept of "five of a kind," which would of course at some point happen with multiple decks in play concurrently.
        cygaril 7y ago
        Two players having the same hand is no issue - just split the pot. This already happens when neither player can improve on the five community cards. Adding five of a kind also seems like a pretty easy adjustment. The most obvious difference is the possibility of cards matching both suit and rank. So if you have HA HK and the flop is HA HJ S2 you have both top pair and also a very strong flush draw (although HA HA would be better), a combo which is impossible on that board with a single deck.
        moate 7y ago
        Yes, the game can deal with these things. There's been wild card games forever and people like them just fine. The issue is that this is a completely different game. It might be a fine game. People might like it (maybe even more than Texas Hold 'em). But this isn't the same game anymore. They're both played with the same 52 data points, but the frequency of those 52 data points makes these games and the skills needed to be good at them very different. My previous comment of the game being "unplayable" might have been hyperbolic. The point I was trying to make is that it's not the same game when you change one of the rules so dramatically.
- jessicalondon 7y ago
  Online casinos can shuffle cards without having to use automated shuffling machines and set the cut card earlier[0], which makes it less profitable/ harder/ worthwhile to Card Count. [0] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-casinos-know-that-you_b_6857442 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-casinos-know-that-you_b_6...?
- kratom_sandwich 7y ago
  IIRC card counting relies on tracking which cards have been drawn and thus inferring which cards are remaining in the deck. Shuffling by hand is a tedious process, hence it is done only so often and this makes counting possible. With electric shuffling machines, shuffling becomes easier and is done more often. This, in turn, makes counting cards harder because the remaining deck never gets small enough for you to draw any useful conclusions about the remaining number of cards. In an online casino, you would have the same problem I guess ...
- duiker101 7y ago
  If we are talking about live dealer, they use bigger shoes (6+ decks) and they switch decks randomly around midway, making the counting techniques almost useless.
- Scirra_Tom 7y ago
  They shuffle a lot. I've seen some online blackjack where it is possible to count cards, but they know this and the stakes are low enough and game speed slow enough it's just not worth the effort.

daniel_levine 7y ago

The casino can track the count too and see if a good player is adjusting their play accordingly

jessicalondon 7y ago

Card counting is typically against House rules. There's an interesting article on how security detect card counting[0]. My take is that it's not a science, instead the security/ pit boss' who spend significant time watching players would develop a 'feeling'. [0] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-casinos-know-that-you_b_6857442 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-casinos-know-that-you_b_6...?

smudgymcscmudge 7y ago
Just like the feeling gamblers get that the table’s count is high.
- jessicalondon 7y ago
  Yah, I would guess so!
wil421 7y ago
They likely do some kind of cop tricks to get the player to admit to counting cards. I wonder how many people have been banned from casinos for bragging on social media about their skills.
- sokoloff 7y ago
  Casinos have way better information on large players' win/loss figures from in-casino surveillance (eye in the sky and pit bosses) than they could ever get from social media.
- specialp 7y ago
  They don't need to get the player to admit it. It isn't illegal, and is easily spotted in many cases. Casinos are private establishments and can either toss the player out, or if they are nice, allow them to only make the same bet every time (flat betting) which makes it impossible to make money counting. Egregious counting which makes decent returns will be spotted almost immediately anywhere that isn't asleep. More subtle camouflaged counting is harder to spot, but the return is also much less. So whenever that player starts varying their bet more, or moving to high roller tables they will get more scrutiny.

EastLondonCoder 7y ago

A casino makes its money on the house edge which is for example for European Roulette 1/37. If you win on a single bet you get 36 times in winning. But you do have the number 0..36 on the wheel so 37 numbers. If you are good at counting cards the casino will have a negative edge and if all customers would be doing that it would lose money over time.

vmh1928 7y ago
Interesting story about a group of UC Santa Cruz students using slight tilts in roulette wheels which increased the probability of the ball falling in specific sectors the wheel. http://physics.ucsc.edu/people/eudaemons/eudaemons.html http://physics.ucsc.edu/people/eudaemons/eudaemons.html Or see the 1985 book, The Eudaemonic Pie

Iv 7y ago

If you can count perfectly, you can beat the odds. An obvious solution would be for casino to reshuffle cards at ever game but I suspect they don't do it because they bank on a lot of people who underestimate how hard it is to count cards or overestimate their mental skills. Blackjack is an incredibly boring game, remove the ability to count and beat the odds and no one would play it.

theelous3 7y ago
You don't really need to count absolutely perfectly. The more you count the better, of course, but it's a probabilistic system with a thin edge to begin with. They don't reshuffle every time because your last statement is very wrong. The money card counters can take before being caught is a rounding error in the face of the masses of people who are happy to play with no edge.
- mohaine 7y ago
  I haven't personally done the math but one of the articles I read (Scientific American?) mentioned that 1 error an hour makes you basically at the break even level. Higher error rates brought the house advantage _higher_ than non-counting methods. Is this incorrect?
  - jandrese 7y ago
    It probably depends on the technique. Some counts are pretty easy to manage, like simply keeping a tally of the number of 10+ cards vs. total cards. It does take practice, but it's way easier than trying to keep a tally of every card you've seen in your head. But yeah, it's really easy for casinos to keep a track of your betting pattern and kick you out if you're playing the game too well. That's why the really successful card counters play as groups with personas. They'll station a bunch of low key guys around the casino and have them maintain a steady stream of cheap wagers while they count. When a table gets hot they'll signal a flamboyant high stakes looking guy to sit down and play a few rounds. The Casinos will eventually catch those guys too, simply by correlating who is sitting at what tables when the high stakes guy comes to play, but it takes a lot more work and they make out with a bunch more cash. Worse, because what they're doing isn't illegal the casio can't even deny them the winnings, only kick them out and plaster their faces all over the blacklists the casinos use.

downandout 7y ago

Anyway, how security can detect that someone counts cards? It’s pretty simple. Surveillance and the pit bosses also know how to count cards. All mathematically correct counting systems will tell you to raise or lower your bet at almost exactly the same, because a counting system is simply a way of quantifying your positive or negative edge at a given time. So if you modify your bet in correlation with the count even 4 or 5 times, the odds that you did that on a hunch become very small. Do it 10 times in a row, and the odds are nearly 100% that you are counting. It isn’t counting that casinos hate, per se. They hate anyone that can consistently beat their games - “advantage players”. Counting just happens to be the most easily detectable form of advantage play, so the people that still do it are cannon fodder for surveillance. Most professional advantage players today don’t count cards. They use a variety of other techniques, such as hole carding and taking advantage of promotions created by mathematically challenged casino marketing departments, that are both more profitable and far harder to detect than counting.

PhasmaFelis 7y ago

The purpose of a casino isn't to provide a venue for betting on cards. The purpose of a casino is to take your money. Cards are just the mechanism. Some wins are allowed to maintain the fiction and keep gamblers coming in, but they won't allow anything that jeopardizes the overall direction of flow from gamblers' pockets to the casino's. They don't differentiate between being "too good" at the game and simply cheating.

rolltiide 7y ago
Exactly, and they also change the laws of the states they operate in to favor this reality.

theelous3 7y ago

The most obvious way they are caught is changing their bets. If you bet 10$ every hand, then suddenly 100$ when you think the count is good, and are winning, then back to 10$, you're done. Good card counter will level their perceived variance by dumping money back, just like a poker player will sometimes call with a wider hand range than they consider their play style to be profitable in. One of the ways casinos combat card counters is to lock their betting. So, they'll see someone with variant betting, between 1 and 100, and tell them they can keep playing, but only if they bet 20$ per hand. That's an easier thing to kill card counting than outright banning players, as they still may be losing players at slots or some other table game.

PorterDuff 7y ago
They play in teams.
twox2 7y ago
That's not enough variance to win in the long term. Counters actually work in teams and will bet closer to the table maximum when the count favors them. They also stop playing as soon as the count is not in their favor. Someone sitting down to play 5 hands at the table maximum is a pretty big red flag.

GuB-42 7y ago

Casinos are private properties, they can kick you out for any reason without having to justify themselves. Playing too well is one of these reasons. Of course, kicking you out is the only thing they can do. They can't take your earnings, prosecute you, detain you, or use force unless you resist. Usually the player will be kindly asked to cash-in and leave. Security can track your play patterns, your gains and losses. Card counting result in very characteristic patterns, and if your gains are too consistent to be explained by chance alone, they are going to watch closely. If you are just lucky, they will offer you free drinks, if you are an advantage player, you will be asked to leave, if you are a cheater, you are going to have problems. Edit: I think there are some places where casinos can't just kick people out for no reasons. But anyways, there are ways of making card counting impractical. The use of continuous shuffling machines is one of them.

hansthehorse 7y ago
Card counters increase their bets when the see the deck as favorable. The casino watches for patterns.
- cortesoft 7y ago
  And in fact, the casino also counts cards so they can correlate your bet changes with the state of the deck.
dsm4ck 7y ago
boy do I have news for you https://pokerfuse.com/news/industry/210407-borgata-gets-green-light-seize-phil-iveys-assets-nevada/ https://pokerfuse.com/news/industry/210407-borgata-gets-gree...
- moate 7y ago
  That isn't "counting cards" that's edge sorting. Counting cards isn't considered cheating because you're manipulating numbers in your head and in NJ, where the case happened, you can't be asked to leave a casino just for counting cards. Edge sorting is considered cheating as it's basically a form of marking cards. (This is an oversimplification of the rulings in the US

gaoshan 7y ago

I count cards and it is not hard at all to spot the patterns that counters use. The most common counting system follows a very specific pattern that, if used, would leave anyone following along with an identical count. In response to that count people will change their betting patterns and this is what is generally being watched for (and guarded against, to your earnings detriment, by people that don't want to get caught). More serious counters will work in teams and the casinos can try to look for the signaling that such teams traditionally employ (in addition to betting patterns). Even with counting (at the individual level) you are really only giving yourself a very slight edge and this assumes that all other advantages are being taken (playing a perfect game, playing favorable rules... unfavorable rules are everywhere these days... managing your bets to take advantage of the count without getting caught, having a properly sized bank roll, etc.). Sadly, after all of that you can still get your butt handed to you on a bad night. On the aggregate you can beat the house with counting and all of the above but only just.

gnopgnip 7y ago

This is explicitly legal in Atlantic city as a result of a lawsuit, Uston v. Resorts International Hotel. In all other areas the casinos can kick you out except for a few legally prohibited reasons like race.