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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 behin

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 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-low/ 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.

darkerside 6y ago
I was in Nassau earlier this year, and the quality of dealers was noticeably lackluster. I wonder if your chances of getting away with it there would be increased.
heleninboodler 6y ago
> The money is to be made telling stories about it vs doing it. Which is why I think the article is complete fiction. It's funny, but it also just reads like bad fiction to me. The dialogue doesn't seem natural, and the writing doesn't sound so much like someone describing something they actually experienced as it does like someone mimicking a storytelling style they've seen elsewhere. Add on top of it that almost every aspect of it seems ripped directly from the first half of "21" (the Kevin Spacey movie about the MIT crew) and it just comes across as an amateurish attempt to borrow someone else's story. The fact that these techniques she claims they used just don't work anymore seals it for me.
dmix 6y ago
You don’t really make much money writing articles these days either...
kthxbye123 6y ago
You can spend about five minutes Googling around and learn that the events in this story happened in the early to mid 2000's, mostly at smaller regional casinos, and no, the participants did not make much money - about enough to be useful to a struggling grad student (as described in the article!). You can find the author and one of her teammates discussing their careers on a podcast from a couple of years ago here: http://bobdancer.com/podcast http://bobdancer.com/podcast But I appreciate your commitment to upholding the proud HackerNews tradition of supremely confident snap judgments uncontaminated by actual knowledge.
- specialp 6y ago
  Here are some quotes from the article: "Carlo was betting stacks of orange chips we called “pumpkins,” up to $10,000 per hand." "Our Big Players naturally drew attention with their wagers in the thousands." No I didn't read every single story about this ever just the one linked. And yes it is a snap judgement from what I know that it is complete fiction. That doesn't sound like small casino action to me. Also, please let me know about the casino that allows 10k bets mid shoe entry.... I've never seen one. If this was a story written about some struggling grad students that made small amounts of money on small action at small casinos as you claim on your throw-away account I would not have posted what I posted. But alas this thread is about the article posted and I stand by my claim that it is almost certainly untrue from what is contained in it. I don't need to know the entire history to decide that. The article contains information that is at best highly embellished.
londons_explore 6y ago
As a casino, why not forget tracking card counting or other trickery, and simply track the total spendings and winnings of each customer? Any customer that wins more than they spend over >50 games is probably doing something not great for business, ban them.

darkerside 6y ago

I was in Nassau earlier this year, and the quality of dealers was noticeably lackluster. I wonder if your chances of getting away with it there would be increased.

heleninboodler 6y ago

> The money is to be made telling stories about it vs doing it. Which is why I think the article is complete fiction. It's funny, but it also just reads like bad fiction to me. The dialogue doesn't seem natural, and the writing doesn't sound so much like someone describing something they actually experienced as it does like someone mimicking a storytelling style they've seen elsewhere. Add on top of it that almost every aspect of it seems ripped directly from the first half of "21" (the Kevin Spacey movie about the MIT crew) and it just comes across as an amateurish attempt to borrow someone else's story. The fact that these techniques she claims they used just don't work anymore seals it for me.

dmix 6y ago

You don’t really make much money writing articles these days either...

kthxbye123 6y ago

You can spend about five minutes Googling around and learn that the events in this story happened in the early to mid 2000's, mostly at smaller regional casinos, and no, the participants did not make much money - about enough to be useful to a struggling grad student (as described in the article!). You can find the author and one of her teammates discussing their careers on a podcast from a couple of years ago here: http://bobdancer.com/podcast http://bobdancer.com/podcast But I appreciate your commitment to upholding the proud HackerNews tradition of supremely confident snap judgments uncontaminated by actual knowledge.

specialp 6y ago
Here are some quotes from the article: "Carlo was betting stacks of orange chips we called “pumpkins,” up to $10,000 per hand." "Our Big Players naturally drew attention with their wagers in the thousands." No I didn't read every single story about this ever just the one linked. And yes it is a snap judgement from what I know that it is complete fiction. That doesn't sound like small casino action to me. Also, please let me know about the casino that allows 10k bets mid shoe entry.... I've never seen one. If this was a story written about some struggling grad students that made small amounts of money on small action at small casinos as you claim on your throw-away account I would not have posted what I posted. But alas this thread is about the article posted and I stand by my claim that it is almost certainly untrue from what is contained in it. I don't need to know the entire history to decide that. The article contains information that is at best highly embellished.

londons_explore 6y ago

As a casino, why not forget tracking card counting or other trickery, and simply track the total spendings and winnings of each customer? Any customer that wins more than they spend over >50 games is probably doing something not great for business, ban them.