
A casino card shark’s first time getting caught - smoyer
https://narratively.com/a-casino-card-sharks-first-time-getting-caught/
======
specialp
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.

~~~
LanceH
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?

~~~
specialp
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-...](https://wizardofodds.com/games/blackjack/card-
counting/high-low/) 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.

~~~
kthxbye123
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
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.

------
dkersten
> 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?

~~~
specialp
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
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
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
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
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
That's card reading not opponent reading.

------
cubano
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
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.

~~~
cubano
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.

------
mtm7
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?

~~~
tonyarkles
Lol definitely left it hanging at the end there!

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

------
supernova87a
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...

~~~
kelnos
> _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.

------
umvi
> 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.

~~~
learnstats2
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
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?"

~~~
bluntfang
>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.

That's a really good point. Casinos aren't a windfall business. They're there
to rake the 1% advantage on blackjack. It's important to have people at the
tables moving money, not to have 1 person lose their $100k nest egg in 12
hours.

~~~
rlucas
I disagree. Although I'm not in the business, my understanding from wide
reading in the topic is quite the opposite.

Casinos make money from "whales," who may or may not end up ruined to a man,
but who are certainly losing enough money to ruin an average bettor.

The guy losing $500 at BJ once in a while (and once in a blue moon winning
some back) is the "economy coach class super saver" flyer. Yes, enough of
those small fry help defray the fixed costs of the flight. But it's the last
minute business class flyer that brings the margin.

Similarly, the real money for the casino is in some mix of 1. problem
gamblers, almost by definition, and 2. money laundering.

------
gjvc
"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.

------
throwanem
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.

------
1e-9
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.

~~~
dehrmann
> 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.

------
teej
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.

------
woobar
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/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3575954/)

------
Zigurd
Isn't it a "card sharp?"

~~~
smoyer
They are synonyms -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_sharp](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").

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

~~~
rrauenza
Pool shark perhaps?

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pool_shark](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pool_shark)

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

~~~
ec109685
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.

~~~
swader999
With face/gant recognition and other means of tracking, once you are barred
from play at one casino you are at almost all.

~~~
swang
they already had this long before facial recognition came into play. they were
called griffin books/black books. when you were "caught" they took a photo and
a company called griffin investigations would pass this info around to all the
other casinos.

~~~
defen
So was there a person who had the job of memorizing hundreds (thousands?) of
faces from a book and then watching every person who came to the tables?

~~~
swang
These people eventually start winning money at the tables, which will draw
attention from casino security. When that happens, yes, someone at security
would have to recognize the person there. But once that happens security will
also notify the rest of the casinos and its pretty much over by then.

------
paulpauper
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.

~~~
kd5bjo
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.

------
rebuilder
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
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.

------
dapids
"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
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.

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

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

~~~
unnouinceput
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

