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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 fla

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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y ago
      That's card reading not opponent reading.
    - chongli 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y ago
That's essentially just a team way of varying your effective total bets at any given table.
- rco8786 7y ago
  Correct. But each individual is betting flat. Thus defeating that restriction.
T-hawk 7y 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 7y 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 7y ago
  In double deck, or 6? You can join any time at 6 deck.
duxup 7y 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.

londons_explore 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y ago
    That's card reading not opponent reading.
  - chongli 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y ago

That's essentially just a team way of varying your effective total bets at any given table.

rco8786 7y ago
Correct. But each individual is betting flat. Thus defeating that restriction.

T-hawk 7y 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 7y 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 7y ago
In double deck, or 6? You can join any time at 6 deck.

duxup 7y 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.