Here is your daily reminder to read "Masters of Doom", a book about the early days at ID Software. It's an amazing look into a really cool time in gaming and software as a whole.
It's a great book, mostly about John Carmack and the guys at ID!
This thread reminded me that Carmack has been a free software advocate in the past, and my citation is, quite amusingly, that book:
> It was February 8, 1998, and Carmack was about to put his brain to the test: counting cards in blackjack. This had become something of a new fascination of his. “Having a reasonable grounding in statistics and probability and no belief in luck, fate, karma, or god(s), the only casino game that interests me is blackjack,” he wrote in a .plan file. “Playing blackjack properly is a test of personal discipline. It takes a small amount of skill to know the right plays and count the cards, but the hard part is making yourself consistantly [sic] behave like a robot, rather than succumbing to your ‘gut instincts.’ ” To refine his skills before the trip, Carmack applied his usual learning approach: consuming a few books on the subject and composing a computer program, in this case one that simulated the statistics of blackjack dealt cards.
> His research proved successful, netting him twenty thousand dollars, which he donated to the Free Software Foundation, an organization of like-minded believers in the Hacker Ethic.
On his recent appearance on Joe Rogan, he talks about Free Software and making older engine software open when they released new stuff. I think he might have mentioned icculus too but I don’t recall.
Well yes, it wasn't the part that interested me about that paragraph, but if you want the whole thing...
> His research proved successful, netting him twenty thousand dollars, which he donated to the Free Software Foundation, an organization of like-minded believers in the Hacker Ethic. “Its [sic] not like I’m trying to make a living at [blackjack],” Carmack wrote online after his trip, “so the chance of getting kicked out doesn’t bother me too much.” It didn’t take long for him to find out just how he’d feel. On the next trip, Carmack was approached by three men in dark suits who said, “We’d appreciate if you’d play any other game than blackjack.”
> The others at the table watched in disbelief. “Why are they doing this to you?” a woman asked.
> “They think that I’m counting cards,” Carmack said.
> “They think you can remember all those different cards?”
> “Yeah,” Carmack replied, “something like that.”
> “Well, what do you do?”
> “I’m a computer programmer,” he said, as he was escorted out the door.
Wouldn't surprise me - I've read some stuff on card counters and seen a few videos, seems like there's a whole other side of successful card counting beyond the technical skill where you have to read out the social situation, since any pit boss worth their salt will be able to spot a card counter a mile away. Which I'm guessing Carmack didn't really care to do since he was just on an intellectual kick.
Good card counters are always a team, you can't go far solo as it's pretty easy to tell when you're betting 20 dollars one hand, and 500 another.
You usually have a few smaller players just playing fixed bets who call over some higher roller that will do the big betting when the count is high, and then just leave when the count gets low.
Rumor has it that the security cameras now have software that will tally the count automatically, and flag people that play when the count is up. Coupled with player identification (facial recognition/player rewards cards) and correlating player times, casinos are starting to automate this. All rumor, of course, but sounds plausible if you're willing to throw a few million at the problem.
Can confirm that the facial recognition cameras and correlating faces to blackjack play is not rumor. To abuse a joke, "There are more cameras in a casino than in a East Village camera close out store." :-)
Back in 2005 I was approached by one of the casino groups that was looking for a director of technology to manage the team that did "camera analytics". Seemed like a pretty neat job technically.
So just go to Europe? Pretty sure the GDPR prevents these kind of recognitions.
So I looked up the privacy policy of Holland Casinos and there is no mention of facial recognition, only mention of CCTV for security purposes (under which I wouldn't expect prevention of adverse losses to fall) and a seven day storage period of camera footage. They are not explicit but suggest they do not use camera data for profiling purposes.
More like you need to leave before they notice you and make the decision to ban you (once they make that decision it doesn't matter if you've left already or not; you ain't coming back either way).
No, but casinos are private businesses with the right to refuse service to anyone, and they tend to exercise that right against people they believe to be counting cards. Card counters are not a protected class.
If I remember correctly, then that is true in Nevada, but not in Atlantic City. There they have to let you play even if they suspect you of counting cards.
Of course that just means they will employ other means to prevent you from counting cards (larger shoes, continuous shuffling, etc).
As we're here, can someone explain the difference between counting cards vs being actually good at the game of Blackjack?
I've always assumed that the two are really the same thing. If you get good at the game then that implies you're using an intuition for the probabilities of certain events based on the history of the cards.
I suppose the casinos don't have to justify this, or have any moral quandaries about it.
It's not illegal. But the casino is private property, and if you don't follow their instructions to stop counting, and ask you to leave, now it's trespass.
If you would have said not many poker rooms ran No-Limit Hold'em in 1998, you would have been right. But poker rooms and poker (limit Hold'em and 7-card Stud) were easily accessible in casinos in 1998. At least in Las Vegas it was.
No-Limit Hold'em is what took off in early 2000 with TV/WSOP popularity and quickly became basically the only game in town by mid 2000's.
I randomly selected this book off a shelf in my high school library when I had to pick a book to do a report on for a bullshit elective in high school. Procrastinated as usual, so on the Sunday before it was due I figured I had less than 24 hours, so I might as well look up the cliff notes and barf 1000 lines on paper. I decided to at least try reading the first chapter for whatever reason and couldn't stop reading. Went from planning to do the bare minimum to trying way too hard to do a good job and somehow convince everyone it was a good book. Now, working as a developer, I credit that book with getting myself into game development and programming in general. This book was life-changing for me.
Counterpoint (just to manage expectations - you should read it for sure!): I was hyped to read the book, but ended up finding it a bit tedious. The technical parts were not technical enough (sometimes flat-out wrong, or maybe, naive sounding?) and the rock star parts got repetitive (even a lot of the same phrases used over and over). Still great fun, but not as good as I'd hoped.
I'd recommend Fabien Sanglards's Wolfenstein and Doom books (https://fabiensanglard.net/gebbwolf3d/). These go into WAY TOO MUCH technical info (in a great way!), but don't cover any of the hilarious rock-star antics.
My secret wish is someone would re-write Masters Of Doom to be 25% more Game Engine Black Book, and fix up some of the prose!
>I'd recommend Fabien Sanglards's Wolfenstein and Doom books (https://fabiensanglard.net/gebbwolf3d/). These go into WAY TOO MUCH technical info (in a great way!), but don't cover any of the hilarious rock-star antics.
The Doom book does mention Romero getting locked into his office one day and Carmack cutting down the door with a battleaxe, but I didn't mind knowing that detail. (There's a picture too)
I hope they bring in some of the people that made Halt and Catch Fire work so well. The Romero id Software years were filled with just enough drama and chaos to make it work.
HCF was great. I can't recommend it highly enough to anyone who hasn't seen it yet, if you have any interest in the history of the computer industry at all. And I say that not because of how historically accurate it is, or isn't. It's just plain good drama. I just finished watching the entire series for the second time, and I wouldn't be shocked if I wind up watching it all a third time at some point in my life.
The caveat being to stick through it for the first season, which is a little rough around the edges and overwrought. From there, it really takes off and becomes fantastic.
That's a fair point. But I wouldn't want to suggest to anyone that Season 1 is bad. There's a lot of good stuff there. But the show does get progressively better as it moves along.
I also often long for that magical feeling of everything being new and exciting again (to you). Like the computer was waiting for you to just press the right sequence of buttons...
I obviously can't guarantee getting that feeling back in full, but I've been able to experience remnants of it by just poking around with completely unfamiliar tools/languages/servers/systems that have little to no use in business. Maybe even obsolete.
Basically, look for anything that you wouldn't be tempted to turn into a job or use to make any real money. Just enjoy it for what it is. Write hacky code. Press all the wrong buttons. Make it do things it was never meant to do. Do stupid things with it just for the sake of doing stupid things. Have fun just for the sake of it being fun.
I really enjoyed the book, especially the part between Softdisk and Quake when the two Johns combined to form a great team and productivity was super high.
It's a great book, mostly about John Carmack and the guys at ID!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_Doom