I agree, but it appears that while he doesn't "count", He plays a more general "averages" game. Per the article: "More useful, for his purposes, is running a smaller number of hands and paying attention to variation. The way averages work, the larger the sample, the narrower the range of variation. "
Edit: I would guess he's developed some algorithm for keeping track of swings and general variation, so he plays not hand by hand the way counting goes, but rather "batch" or "streak" While will also have wild swings of him making and losing lots of money, but if he keeps tabs on these variations, he can swing them in his favor over time.
Probably the best evidence for your argument is the fact that he apparently negotiated a hand-shuffled shoe. I'm amazed anyone would agree to it, since it's pretty much a giant warning sign that the guy is planning to exploit poor shuffles.
The shuffles needn't be poor. The existence of the hand-shuffled shoe just means he has the opportunity to count or shuffle track. The former is impossible if they use a continuous shuffle machine and I imagine the latter is either impossible or too difficult to use effectively. I agree it makes no sense for the casino to agree to that if that's outside their normal rules. I guess they want high rollers to think they've got an edge, but the casinos realize that most high rollers don't actually know how to count fast enough to realize that edge. And until this guy, they've always been able to identify the successful advantage players (not counting group players a la the MIT blackjack team) before losing millions of dollars...
another factor: as an inside guy, he probably knew their precise algorithm for catching counters. I suspect he does count, but knows exactly how to vary his play to keep just south of the model targeting him as a counter.
What I'm saying is, they have mathematical models that they follow to decide whether someone is counting. I suspect this guy was in fact using information about cards played to vary his future bets -- in effect counting, but he was doing it in a way that did not fit the house's models for what card counters normally do.
He clearly knew more than the people who were watching him, so the fact that all the 'experts' were paying attention doesn't mean he wasn't following a winning strategy.
This is correct. If the variation is high enough, the per-trip discount starts to approach the value of a per-hand discount, which of course is tremendously favorable. If he's a real whiz with the numbers, he could even have altered his play to slightly less absolute advantage but greater variation, and therefore greater advantage in the model given per-trip discount vs probable # of hands played per trip.
What struck me as very odd was the description of the 800k play: He had two tens and two elevens, and decided to stand. That makes no sense to me, as he would have lost nothing by getting four more cards.
Also, the article made some reference to variation, without explaining the edge. I'm guessing there was a real point lost there.
When you double down, you have to stand, and you can only double down on your first hit. The article makes it seem that he doubled after getting the card, when reality he made that decision before he got the 2's and 3's.
He split his 8's to 4 $100k hands, and then doubled down on each, for 4 $200k hands. He just got really unlucky on each hand, that the point value was so low.
Edit: I would guess he's developed some algorithm for keeping track of swings and general variation, so he plays not hand by hand the way counting goes, but rather "batch" or "streak" While will also have wild swings of him making and losing lots of money, but if he keeps tabs on these variations, he can swing them in his favor over time.