6 ms·

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 cas

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.

chongli 6y 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.
- londons_explore 6y ago
  Are there any decisions at all for the player in a "flat bet" game? Or is it simply a game of 100% chance then, with all skill/reading your opponent removed?
  - chongli 6y ago
    This is blackjack we’re talking about, not poker. There’s no “reading the opponent”. The opponent is the dealer who hits on a sixteen or less and stays otherwise. For the people with a flat bet (on a card counting team) there’s no decision making at all. They simply follow basic strategy which prescribes exactly what move to make in each situation.
    - slm_HN 6y ago
      In fact there is opponent reading (literally) in Blackjack. The opponent (dealer) must check his hand for blackjack, if the dealer's upcard is a 10 or an Ace, after having dealt the initial two cards to every player. "Hole peeking" is a technique where a teammate stands behind the dealer so they can see the hole card when the dealer checks for blackjack. They then signal this information to the player so he knows the value of the dealer's hand. Hole peeking used to be so common that casinos now have card readers built into the blackjack tables so that the dealers don't have to expose their hole card to check for blackjack. It is/was also possible for a player at the first seat of the table to see a sloppy dealer's hole card when checking for blackjack. This is called "first basing" while using a teammate is generally called spooking.
      - lonelappde 6y ago
        That's card reading not opponent reading.
      - chongli 6y ago
        Yeah, I read the wikipedia article on first basing and spooking as well. That's not the same as reading people in poker.
  - gameswithgo 6y ago
    There is no reading of opponents in black jack. The player making the flat bets is keeping a count in their head based on all the cards revealed during play. They signal the "big money" teammate when the count is high, to come place some big bets. So they are working hard keeping that count, but they are not directly playing as if they know anything. The roaming fake rich guy is.
  - furyofantares 6y ago
    Blackjack is played against the casino, not other players, and the casino plays robotically, under a simple fixed strategy that is known to the players. There isn't any reading of the opponent to begin with. The only reason the casino has an advantage, despite having a fixed, non-optimal strategy known to the players, is because it acts last, and the players may lose the hand before the casino takes its turn. There is a basic strategy to learn that is "optimal" about when to take each action, but it is easily memorized, and I wouldn't call it much of a skill element. Now, if you track cards, you can claw back a little bit of the advantage by varying the strategy dependent on what cards remain, but going very deep on this is a lot of work for not a lot of payoff. You get a much bigger payoff by simply betting big when the deck is in a favorable shape, and continuing to follow roughly basic strategy. Fixed betting as described is exactly the same as varying your bets, in both cases you're playing roughly basic strategy with varied bets, it's just that in fixed betting your vary your bets by having the big better change tables rather than by having an individual change bet sizes, because this is harder to detect.
- ethbro 6y ago
  That's essentially just a team way of varying your effective total bets at any given table.
  - rco8786 6y ago
    Correct. But each individual is betting flat. Thus defeating that restriction.
- T-hawk 6y ago
  Casinos defeat this tactic now, after the MIT team became known. A player wanting to enter a table must wait until the next reshuffle, which of course foils any count in progress. (In practice, this isn't usually enforced unless the casino has some reason to suspect it's a counting attempt.)
  - jwilber 6y ago
    Yep. The only time you can join a table mid-game at most casinos is at tables you wouldn’t want to join anyways: $5-15 minimum bets (important because the lower the minimum bet, the lower the spread you can bet before check play gets called), unfavorable rules (no surrender, no double after split, etc) and a large number of decks.
  - alanpca 6y ago
    In double deck, or 6? You can join any time at 6 deck.
- duxup 6y ago
  Reading the comments that was my first theory on how to beat the variable bets being noticed thing, just have some low level players playing normally surveying the deck and the big better only just shows up at the right time, his bets are all high so they don't seem strange. Of course that also is easily defeated... now.
jwilber 6y 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.
- andrewtbham 6y ago
  I got thrown out for counting once, I was in Biloxi MS. The manager struck up a conversation with another player while he was watching me. The count was really high, I made a huge bet and he went ballistic. He was cursing and telling me to never come back and that he was sending my picture to all the other casinos. The other players were shocked, especially the guy he was talking to. I said this is how they treat people that know how to play. 2 securities guards followed me to cash out and to my car. one of them looked like jeff Foxworthy. I was planning to go back in a disguise but the next week Katrina came and completely destroyed the place.
  - jwilber 6y ago
    That interesting. I guess it’s something you wouldn’t know if you didn’t spend much time playing blackjack, but for others reading: casinos are usually open about identifying people counting. For example, Barona casino, which had some of the most favorable tables for counting in the country for years, will call checkplay if you spread more than 8 times the minimum bet. A pit boss will walk over and literally obtain the count from the cards in the discard tray. This is more of an intimidation tactic, as you likely won’t get banned right there if the count is high, but you will have your account marked (when that occurs, your watched every time you sit down at a table). Sometimes the dealer will even call check play based on your play, though this is rare and against the interest of the dealer (as they want tips). Having a marked account definitely makes for some interesting plays, as you’ll have to work to deceive the pit boss that you’re not counting (Eg randomly betting large spreads when you know the count is low).

chongli 6y 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.

londons_explore 6y ago
Are there any decisions at all for the player in a "flat bet" game? Or is it simply a game of 100% chance then, with all skill/reading your opponent removed?
- chongli 6y ago
  This is blackjack we’re talking about, not poker. There’s no “reading the opponent”. The opponent is the dealer who hits on a sixteen or less and stays otherwise. For the people with a flat bet (on a card counting team) there’s no decision making at all. They simply follow basic strategy which prescribes exactly what move to make in each situation.
  - slm_HN 6y ago
    In fact there is opponent reading (literally) in Blackjack. The opponent (dealer) must check his hand for blackjack, if the dealer's upcard is a 10 or an Ace, after having dealt the initial two cards to every player. "Hole peeking" is a technique where a teammate stands behind the dealer so they can see the hole card when the dealer checks for blackjack. They then signal this information to the player so he knows the value of the dealer's hand. Hole peeking used to be so common that casinos now have card readers built into the blackjack tables so that the dealers don't have to expose their hole card to check for blackjack. It is/was also possible for a player at the first seat of the table to see a sloppy dealer's hole card when checking for blackjack. This is called "first basing" while using a teammate is generally called spooking.
    - lonelappde 6y ago
      That's card reading not opponent reading.
    - chongli 6y ago
      Yeah, I read the wikipedia article on first basing and spooking as well. That's not the same as reading people in poker.
- gameswithgo 6y ago
  There is no reading of opponents in black jack. The player making the flat bets is keeping a count in their head based on all the cards revealed during play. They signal the "big money" teammate when the count is high, to come place some big bets. So they are working hard keeping that count, but they are not directly playing as if they know anything. The roaming fake rich guy is.
- furyofantares 6y ago
  Blackjack is played against the casino, not other players, and the casino plays robotically, under a simple fixed strategy that is known to the players. There isn't any reading of the opponent to begin with. The only reason the casino has an advantage, despite having a fixed, non-optimal strategy known to the players, is because it acts last, and the players may lose the hand before the casino takes its turn. There is a basic strategy to learn that is "optimal" about when to take each action, but it is easily memorized, and I wouldn't call it much of a skill element. Now, if you track cards, you can claw back a little bit of the advantage by varying the strategy dependent on what cards remain, but going very deep on this is a lot of work for not a lot of payoff. You get a much bigger payoff by simply betting big when the deck is in a favorable shape, and continuing to follow roughly basic strategy. Fixed betting as described is exactly the same as varying your bets, in both cases you're playing roughly basic strategy with varied bets, it's just that in fixed betting your vary your bets by having the big better change tables rather than by having an individual change bet sizes, because this is harder to detect.
ethbro 6y ago
That's essentially just a team way of varying your effective total bets at any given table.
- rco8786 6y ago
  Correct. But each individual is betting flat. Thus defeating that restriction.
T-hawk 6y ago
Casinos defeat this tactic now, after the MIT team became known. A player wanting to enter a table must wait until the next reshuffle, which of course foils any count in progress. (In practice, this isn't usually enforced unless the casino has some reason to suspect it's a counting attempt.)
- jwilber 6y ago
  Yep. The only time you can join a table mid-game at most casinos is at tables you wouldn’t want to join anyways: $5-15 minimum bets (important because the lower the minimum bet, the lower the spread you can bet before check play gets called), unfavorable rules (no surrender, no double after split, etc) and a large number of decks.
- alanpca 6y ago
  In double deck, or 6? You can join any time at 6 deck.
duxup 6y ago
Reading the comments that was my first theory on how to beat the variable bets being noticed thing, just have some low level players playing normally surveying the deck and the big better only just shows up at the right time, his bets are all high so they don't seem strange. Of course that also is easily defeated... now.

jwilber 6y 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.

andrewtbham 6y ago
I got thrown out for counting once, I was in Biloxi MS. The manager struck up a conversation with another player while he was watching me. The count was really high, I made a huge bet and he went ballistic. He was cursing and telling me to never come back and that he was sending my picture to all the other casinos. The other players were shocked, especially the guy he was talking to. I said this is how they treat people that know how to play. 2 securities guards followed me to cash out and to my car. one of them looked like jeff Foxworthy. I was planning to go back in a disguise but the next week Katrina came and completely destroyed the place.
- jwilber 6y ago
  That interesting. I guess it’s something you wouldn’t know if you didn’t spend much time playing blackjack, but for others reading: casinos are usually open about identifying people counting. For example, Barona casino, which had some of the most favorable tables for counting in the country for years, will call checkplay if you spread more than 8 times the minimum bet. A pit boss will walk over and literally obtain the count from the cards in the discard tray. This is more of an intimidation tactic, as you likely won’t get banned right there if the count is high, but you will have your account marked (when that occurs, your watched every time you sit down at a table). Sometimes the dealer will even call check play based on your play, though this is rare and against the interest of the dealer (as they want tips). Having a marked account definitely makes for some interesting plays, as you’ll have to work to deceive the pit boss that you’re not counting (Eg randomly betting large spreads when you know the count is low).