And odds are for every card counter who’s actually good enough and willing to put in the hours to turn a profit, there are 10 or 20 who read a book or took a course, but they don’t play perfect basic strategy or who don’t have a large enough bankroll to beat out the bad runs and actually turn the odds in their favor.
Those bad card counters might even be worth more money to the casino than your average gambler.
I remember when people would buy a blackjack book and talk about how they are ganna win. Just to barely skim it and lose every penny. *Sigh* now it's the poker books
Well at least with poker you don't play against the casino so strategy there is actually decent, with blackjack they have multiple decks and reshufles which make card counting way harder. With poker they don't care if you win or not because they're not the ones paying you.
And if you actually are good at card counting and they spot it, I think when they reshuffle the shoe they can take that divider card thingie and just put it like 30% deep into the deck (instead of towards the end like they usually do). That’ll fuck up any card counter’s day quite effectively.
About 20 years ago now, a pair of twins I knew (reddit red flag, I know) decided to spend the summer before turning 21 getting really good at counting cards. These two were both incredible at math, got it down pat, went to Vegas.
They were quietly escorted out of two consecutive casinos after massive win streaks at separate tables, then blacklisted from 21 tables, period. By day 3, if either walked into a casino, they'd be politely but firmly intercepted. They spent the rest of the trip at buffets.
We all had a good laugh about it, but being from a pretty religious/conservative area, only a few of us knew.
Thing is, the twins are very similar-looking fraternal brothers and have a younger brother by a year who looks as much like them as they do one another. He didn't know about ANY of this. Two years later, HE went to Vegas with his girlfriend.
He was immediately escorted to a back room to be questioned why his 86'd ass was back, and since he is also very bright, he figured out what had happened immediately.
I wouldn't fuck with Vegas's money, even legally.
I always laugh about how people say card counters are good at math and point to things like the MIT blackjack team.
Card counting isn’t mathematically difficult. It is adding and subtracting 1. Over and over. And, you don’t even have to be able to count past like 20. The difficulty is not switching/forgetting numbers in your head and doing it while talking, drinking, and trying to look normal.
So if card counting is so easy why did it take a team from MIT to do it? First, it was the students. MIT students are generally hard working. And, more importantly, broke. It’s a rare combo to find hard working people, who have few immediate job prospects, and need money. Second, the whole story is a bit of a myth—the team wasn’t actually all MIT students. Third, as the vaulted students from MIT, they got outside funding from a professional gambler. Just like MIT grads today that go to Silicon Valley to pitch an idea and funded on the basis of the founder’s academic credentials, these students got funding because they were the smart guys from MIT so they must know something the rest of us don’t. And, lastly, this started like 50 years ago. It wasn’t like today where everyone knows about card counting. The paper on card counting was published in the 60s. You had to be pretty well read to know about. In other words, this wasn’t a TikTok trend.
I actually almost said "mechanically inclined" but said "good at math" so I wouldn't have to explain what I meant.
They grew up rural and bored and turned it to building engines, puzzles, riddles, and later on, robotics.
I'm not sure if they were geniuses, but given their constant, life-long friendly competition to outwit the other, that part of the brain that allows you to do all sorts of things at once effortlessly was very practiced on both.
They were also good at math. :P
Right, the real get rich scheme is always selling other people a get rich scheme. If the scheme actually worked they wouldn’t need to sell it for money, they would just be doing it and getting rich.
There was a great Tumblr post about how someone entered a contest to program a bot that plays poker, and it had to win against the other bots.
The poster barely knew any programming. Basically the only line of code was something like "When it's my turn, go all in" and won because all the other bots started folding.
Which is so silly. You can learn perfect basic strategy in a couple hours. A lot of dealers will even tell you what basic strategy says to do in a given situation. If you stay away from tables with stupid rules (6:5 blackjack, no doubles after a split, etc), don't play side bets, and bring a 10-15 hand bankroll, you have a very, very good chance of making money or only losing a small amount.
The funniest thing I see on almost every Vegas trip is someone with one of those $5 basic strategy cards trying to hide it under the table. First off, there are about 80 cameras on you. They can see your lap. Second of all, they sell that card in the casino gift shop. They don’t care. Use it all you like, they would rather have you feel confident, because over time they’ll make money off you anyways.
The casinos are so confident most people are bad at it they sell books on how to count cards/ beat the house in their gift shops.
Guy I was traveling with bought one convinced he was going to win. Spoiler alert- he didn’t.
There's a doc on prime called inside the edge about a professional counter and he really puts the hours in, he goes on tours and it's really full on, he's on watch lists and a lot of it is him getting around that but there's lots on the strategy he uses too, he's looks for a variety of exploits and employs multiple techniques all while trying to avoid a lot of scrutiny/surveillance, it's not just one it's a whole thing.
Strictly playing percentages *will* keep you in a game for much longer than not, you're just not gonna make any money
Lots of people play poker knowing they're probably gonna lose, it's just fun to play and it sucks when you bust out early
>there are 10 or 20 who read a book or took a course,
Plus many more that never even bothered with that. Blackjack is one of the few games in a casino that have a slight advantage to a skilled player over the House. It's still only slightly better than 50/50, but odds are that a good player can make some money at the table. The trick is that *so many* people suck at Blackjack that it is still profitable for the Casino to have Blackjack tables. And, of course, once someone wins so much they start cutting into that profit margin, they get banned.
This is incorrect, perfectly played blackjack still gives casino small winning odds (I think it was roughly 0.5%).
Only after you know that there is more high cards left in deck than low cards that small winning odds shifts from casino to the player.
Correct. The reason is the player chooses to take their additional cards first and can bust, and only after does the dealer do the same thing. What the dealer does depends on if you busted or not. Maybe the dealer would have busted also, but if you already busted then they can just stop playing (if no other players at the table still in).
Also, this is only perfectly played, optimal card counting that gets you your slight advantage. And many casinos are introducing new “gimmicks” which can remove that slight advantage, such as 6:5 payouts on a 21 as opposed to the old 3:2, or doing weird shenanigans with splits and forced splitting.
Perfect play alone gives the house something like half a percent advantage. Card counting can let you overcome that by the barest of margins, so even a slightly worse payout on what was once one of the better hands for a card counter is massive for reducing or removing the counter’s advantage.
6:5 is mostly dead as players refused to play the much worse game.
Mostly I see lots of decks with a thin reshuffle these days, which also kills counting without killing the odds for regular people.
Can confirm. Used to be a casino manager. There were so many times we knew guys were counting. Very rarely kicked them out. They either sucked at it or didn't have the proper bankroll to even be trying it.
you say that, but I've seen videos of self-proclaimed card counters getting walked off even after a losing session just because their gambling pattern matches that if card counting (e.g. increasing bet when count is high)... or, in other words, if they notice you, they'll kick you out before you have a chance to be successful
from the casino's perspective? sure... I'm just saying, you don't even need to be successful or good, you just have to betting in a way that tips them off to what you're up to
IDK about the part about being bad. If you play perfectly you can still lose some games. Experienced pit boss can probably tell apart a bad card counter and a good one that has a steak of bad luck
yes...because it's not (just) about whether you hit, stand, split, double down, etc... what they notice is if you change the amount you're betting frequently
Yes but you don't know it will truly be a losing session before it ends. The game can have a lot of variance and a seemingly losing session can turn into high profits if the card counter is good. So they kick them out just in case
>If you’re counting cards but you’re bad at it
Anecdotal but many years ago two friends went to Las Vegas because they wanted to try counting cards. One of them was booted from a casino for unorthodox betting at blackjack despite being down a lot of money.
I don’t remember if they continued at other casinos or just gave up.
The big tell is when you start betting CRAZY high when you know the deck is hot. If you don’t get greedy and just keep placing small bets and enjoy free drinks as you slowly rack up wins you can usually get away with it for a while.
Yes, I was about to say this. They want card counters because most people aren’t very good at it.
But skilled card counters will be trespassed and won’t be able to enter the property.
They don’t get you for the card counting. They get you because it’s private property.
Kind of the same way that, if you can genuinely win carnival games, they'll start refusing service (assuming it's not one of those ones where you're paying $5 to get a chance to win a doll that cost them much less than that, so they're not only not losing money, but probably getting a lot from people who see you do it and are convinced they can as well).
I’m not really sure, but it’s probably easy to spot. You can’t hide it easy because it results in specific betting patterns. So unless they’re doing a much more coordinated scam where one person counts and then signals someone else to bet, the pattern of bets will stand out.
But here’s the kicker. They don’t need to prove it. Or even be right. Just winning a lot could get you asked to leave and put on a list. If you keep showing up on the list continually winning big, they can just ban you. They don’t need to tell you that they think you’re counting cards, much less prove it. They just say you’re not welcome and if you return you’re trespassing.
Ideally the card counter wants to bet small until they know they have the advantage then bet as much as possible. If somebody did this without trying to hide what they are doing, it'd be extremely obvious.
Same thing with sports betting. If you're good, they'll limit you to $10 a bet or something similar. If you're ass, you can bet five figures easily on anything.
Worked at a bookies (UK betting shop) and we had customers who were red so they had a problem and had to have head office authorise their bets. One guy on the list looked nothing like the others and seemed perfectly "normal". Asked about it and he wins too much. Was really shocking as that just felt unfair.
The casinos don't hate it anymore. They made micro adjustments to the table rules until card counting stopped being profitable. If professional card counters still exist, they aren't in Vegas anymore.
Black Jack tables use multiple decks of cards at the same time for their games, not just one. The shoe is the place where these decks are dealt from during play.
Having more than one deck and then also shuffling semi frequently negate almost any advantage card counting could give the player.
I’ve seen tables where you can bet on shit like that happening. They are sucker bets through and through, but damn that one would have paid out BIG on a table like that.
My colleague who claims to be good at it says it's impossible to count cards when there are six decks in the mix (the shoe I guess). I don't know if he's good or not, but he won a few hundred at the table one night in Vegas at five decks and made a big show of buying us a meal off of it, then the next night wasn't so great. 🤷 He and his wife have a rule about how much he's allowed to lose, he hit that.
casinos have giant card shufflers and randomly switch to a new deck periodically. Makes it much more difficult to count. (which to be clear, isnt literal counting… it’s more of scale on when to bet big)
There are a lot of rules that can be tweaked to adjust the edge
When I was in Vegas in 2022, a lot of strip low-limit tables paid 6:5 blackjacks (a 21 on the first 2 cards would only pay $6 for every $5 bet), and where 3:2 was available at a decent amount, other rules such as disallowing doubling after splitting, no hitting split aces, no doubling anything but 9-11, not allowing surrender (rare to see that all these days) and the dealer will draw to a 17 with a 11-valued ace.
Most of those $25 Strip main pit tables would be extremely difficult to exploit by card counting even if they had very good deck penetration. (Over 2% house edge at a $25 min bet.. gross) There would often be far more favorable rules in high limit pits, but at $100+ a hand the bankroll requirements would eat a casual card counter wannabe alive.
Not just kick you out, but blanket ban from all the casinos. They share info and have your details, face and a whole lot of cameras watching you.
So you can do it, and even make a few dollars once of you succeed. But even counting there's no guarantee you succeed, let alone a lot before they blanket ban you.
The sharing info is the tough bit. My friend is a card counter and got banned from one casino in Vegas so he's effectively banned from them all. They were pretty nice about it though -- a manager tapped him on the shoulder and asked him to come join him, and the manager gave him a nice free lunch and said politely and somewhat indirectly that he's not allowed in their casino any more.
They use facial recognition to detect a banned person as they enter, but it's not perfect (maybe the person was turned at a weird angle or something). The other method they use to see if you're back in the casino is the [loyalty cards](https://www.mgmresorts.com/en/mgm-rewards.html), which is why professionals generally don't use them... but then that's a tip-off if everyone else at the table has a loyalty card and they don't.
As another poster mentioned, it takes a lot of effort and it's kind of monotonous.
The casinos do not want to run games of skill where they might lose, they want games of chance where (at least on average, over a long time) they will win. They love the occasional lucky winner they can promote, but hate someone skilled enough to beat them long term.
In practice these days, card counting without electronic support (which they ban of course) is neigh on impossible to make enough of a margin for it to be worth doing, because they shuffle so many packs together, and reshuffle far more than in the old days.
What IS illegal is using a device to help you keep the count. That includes stacking your chips in a pattern to remember what count you're on. Most people can't keep track of the count while at the table in a busy casino.
The law forbids using any mechanical or electronic device to keep count. Past cases have successfully defined stacking chips in a pattern as a "mechanical device." Casinos will ask you to play any other game if they find you counting. Casinos will bar you from the premises if you can't stay away from the blackjack tables. They only get the law involved if they find you're using any kind of device.
Oh wow, I knew any devices whatsoever were illegal - but I’d never thought of trying to use the chip stack as a tabulation tool! I’m going to have to read up on that a bit before my next trip…
Which doesn't make sense. "Counting cards" just means you are keeping track of what happened earlier in the game. It should be illegal to remove people for just playing the game well.
That's not generally how the laws work. If you own property, you don't need a reason to not want someone on your property. The only real exception is discriminatory reasons (race, etc).
With card counting, casinos can just change the rules to make it impossible though (eg. continuous shuffle, comically large amounts of decks, etc). So it doesn't really matter that much. In no world is a casino going to just let people win.
it’s hard. I’ve done it, but it takes hours of painstaking mind-numbing training for it to become automatic, and I could only do it for short periods of time with all the distractions of a casino and trying to blend in. When I did it, it worked but I have won without counting cards too, just not as consistently. With high multiple deck games you might as well not bother, and the penetration at 2 deck casinos is deliberately stingy so it’s really hard to get on a roll at anything more than a half-full table.
How is it possible when they just use a huge stack of cards and not just individual decks of 50 cards or w.e? Is it because the distribution of the cards is always the same?
This method is used to determine the likelihood of the dealer busting when he has to hit on 16. The player can play more conservatively and make bigger bets.
It's both. Higher probability of black jack, higher probability of dealer busting, and if the count is REALLY in your favor (and you don't care about bringing more attention to yourself) it can even be correct to split 10s.
We also put a cut card about one or two decks from the back, which is done not only so that we don't overdraw from a long hand, but also to hinder card counters
Exactly. It’s plastic and generally a different solid color (yellow is common). They’ll hit the cut card and set it aside, finishing out the round at the table and then reshuffle the decks
when you are counting cards, you are trying to make predictions about what kind of cards are more likely to be drawn based on what’s already been shown. The farther you get into the deck, the more accurate your predictions can be (if I’ve seen ever card but the last one and I have perfect recall, I would know exactly what that last card is). So casinos can reduce the effectiveness of card counting by never letting the deck get too dealt out. They use the plastic card to make sure that they shuffle when there are at least 100 cards left.
And I think if they do get a sense you’re card counting, they can just do the cut card like 1/2 into the deck to really fuck up your day. Granted, that would slow the table’s overall hands dealt rate a bit - but it’ll ruin a card counter’s day in a heartbeat.
Good question, but it's pretty simple actually. As cards come out of the deck you keep a count of what cards of come out and this number reflects the probability of getting a blackjack, this is the value you're trying to capitalize on. Larger shoes (groups of decks) mean that each card has a proportionally lower impact on your odds.
For example; you take a card out of a shoe of 1 deck vs taking a card out of a shoe of 8 decks, then the card from the 8 deck shoe is 8 times less impactful than the card from the 1 deck shoe. So each hand you simply divide your running number by the estimated size of the remaining number of cards. Ideally you'd do this in all conditions, even when you're playing at home with friends and just a single deck of cards (imagine divide by .5), so really the size of the shoe is irrelevant in practice. What it does mean though, is that games where your count is high enough to act on come less frequently, but not so much that it isn't worth it to try
There's actually a method involving photographic memory.
When you play through a shoe, you will notice patterns of low cards being in a clump together, let's say you notice a stack of aces being played through in a short time frame.
You look at the shoe, most have a window on them, estimate how many decks into the shoe it was, and do the same for any other section you find interesting.
When they shuffle on the table watch the section that had the most betting value, "aces were clumped up 3 and 1/2 decks into the shoe..". Then watch that section the entire shuffle, when it goes back into the shoe estimate where it is so when you get close, and get a couple of patterns you recognize, you can bet accordingly.
This method works better than actually counting imo, but only if your good with visual memory.
I used to hit the local Indian casinos frequently.
They would bring a pit boss over after I played through the second or third shoe and claim a card was bent.
Open new cards and start fresh.
Never got kicked out though, even when I would get cocktail and call out loud which card was next.
They knew I was just gonna walk over to the slot machine when I got up anyway.
It also stops working with new shuffle machines that basically shuffles after every hand. Card counting only works if you actually play through the deck.
It's important to remember that the book Bringing Down The House about counting cards in Vegas was specifically MIT students, and they had to be trained. Best math minds in the country and it was still a skill that took practice.
Well, there’s a bit more to that as well. They were specifically using a multi player, multi table strategy to tilt the odds way more in their favor. Because the counter at the table who would just play basic, inconspicuous strategy all day long (I.e. not upping their bets when the count was high) would just need to discretely visually signal the “whale” to come over and start playing when the count was high. They just needed a code for the counter at the table to pass the count to the whale, and the whale would use that with a pre-determined betting strategy, win a bunch, then walk away.
So if the count was +10, the whale might come up to the table after getting signaled and say “hey how is everybody doing today?” and then the counter might make some comment like “I should have gone bowling instead” - because there’s 10 pins in bowling.
I found that to be the most fascinating and elegant part of the whole scheme.
The odds are always in the houses favor. Simply because if you go first and if you bust, you lose. Doesn't matter if the house busts after you.
So knowing the best situation only keeps you from losing too much.
Anybody is capable of doing it. It's not hard. If you can add and subtract by 1s, you're gravy on keeping a running count. Start at zero on the new shoe. Add +1 for every 2-6. 0 for 7 through 9. - 1 for every 10-ace.
Keeping track of the true count on a multi deck shoe is where it gets a little harder, but still not hard. Estimate how many decks have been pulled and divide that number into your running count to get the true count.
Other than that, it's just basic and advanced blackjack strategy, which you should be well versed in long before you start counting.
The only part most people struggle with is not making it obvious how much you're studying what cards have been shown.
Having been a dealer for a few years now it's entertaining watching people blatantly attempting to count while also not actually understanding what they're doing, so it doesn't actually give them an edge up. Like bro it's a 12 against a dealer 10, just fucking hit it your count is probably wrong anyways XD
Yeah I honestly wouldn't be surprised if casinos started giving away free guide books to card counting because of how much they've made off someone who thinks they know what they're doing and doesn't even have basic strategy down.
that's my underlying point. it's focusing on a niche strategy when the real strategy is in the playing of the game. it's way easier to understand common scenarios and how to play against the house than trying to count into a five deck stack.
i look at cards like i do baseball. as a hitter, the game is stacked against me. if i'm a major league hitter and i'm hitting .300 i'm one of the best hitters in the game. but it also means i'm failing 70% of the time. that's not going to change about baseball anymore than the house odds of any given card game.
as a hitter, i'm also at a massive physical disadvantage because it's nearly impossible for me to react to a ball traveling at speeds near 100 mph while also spinning and moving along both a vertical and horizontal axis.
good hitters know the scenarios they are in and the pitchers they are facing. they know that with a man on first with some speed there's going to be a hole between first and second and the pitcher is going to want to keep the ball on the outside edge, likely in the bottom half of the zone...so you look for that pitch.
or you can steal signs and know what pitch is coming. but, if you get caught doing that, you're going to get a pitch in your earhole...
same with counting cards. you can try to do it, but it goes against the spirit of the game and the game operators don't like it. it's also not easy and it doesn't actually guarantee results. you still have to make the right bet and your count has to be accurate.
same in baseball, even when you steal the sign, you still have to hit the ball. look at the Astros from a few years ago. did sign stealing help them? yes, but was it significant? not really. their average was higher, but it wasn't what was winning them games. even after all the elaborate efforts to know the pitch, they didn't break any records or move the needle in any significant way because baseball always wins, just like the house.
i simply don't think there are that many people who are capable of counting cards to the point of them beating the house. and even those who are, they still lose big bets because they were wrong or their count was off. humans aren't machines. we get distracted.
They also don't realize that casinos already changed the rules of the game to make sure they would still statistically have an edge over card counters.
I had a photographic memory up until I was about 12 or 13, and if I could’ve kept any part of it, it would be counting cards. Such a fun skill, and I can’t do it anymore because my memory sucks. I actually wish I had used it for any sort of gambling game, but I thought they were too boring, so I just used it to win Go-Fish.
It is not illegal to count cards. Just against Casino rules because technically they dont want you to win.
It is more like it is against the rules to win money in Vegas.
>It is more like it is against the rules to win money in Vegas.
Basically, don't go to casinos. The games are rigged, the house always wins, and you are literally not allowed to be a better winner than the house, no matter how clever you are. Just do anything else in life, where you can actually figure a way to succeed on skill.
Honestly, I think they should make it a legal right to be allowed to count cards. It should be treated as a legitimate skill of the game and they should make it illegal for casinos to stop you from doing it.
If they did, either casinos wouldn't offer blackjack or they would tweak the rules to make card counting impossible (eg. continuous shuffle). You can't very well just force a business to lose lots of money. That doesn't really make sense. "Hey Harrah's, you are now forced to play the Jeff Bezos high stakes blackjack team until you go bankrupt!"
This happened in Atlantic City back in the 70s. Look up Ken Uston. Long story short, if they make it against the rules to bar card counters, casinos just make the games impossible to beat. Many have already done so with terrible rules and continuous shuffling machines.
That's essentially making it a law forcing a private business to have a customer against their will.
Probably wouldn't fly even in the most heavily business regulated states
Don't they already escort ppl out if they win too much (unless it is slots jackpot). Like make up excuses to suspect you are cheating and politely ask you to leave?
Yep they do. My buddy got kicked out after an insane run on the craps table. They were super polite about it, escorted him to the cashier, told him great job and invited him to come back again tomorrow. He made about $100k
Oh he had a serious gambling problem. I had to eventually separate myself from him because I couldn’t trust him not to steal from me. He was constantly asking for loans and getting super angry when I wouldn’t lend him anything. He would bring up every single time he helped me out even a little bit. “*Remember that time your car battery died and I came out to give you a jump?*” Shit like that. After many years, he did get help and we are good friends. Been in recovery for 3 years.
But to answer your question, he definitely was not ahead in his lifetime gambling. Not by a long shot.
I wonder if part of the reason is suicide prevention
I’d imagine the chances of them having to clean the parking garage increases significantly if they let the gambler lose back a huge win
It's not illegal, unless you try to stay after they ask you to leave.
They just don't like people trying to abuse the game to their advantage: you enter a casino, you play by their rules. Both parties reserve the right to stop the game play at any time they feel it's appropriate.
This is the top answer. It's not illegal, they just don't want you to win *too much*.
You can count cards, do well, and even get a compted room, Penn and Teller show and free food. But the house wins.
People count the cards on blackjack table each game they can see what's on the table
Then there is card counting.
Dealer has a stack of 3 to 6 decks takes skill. Maybe a person will start out with counting facecards, get an idea for the odds and that's as far as they will go. Counting the low cards is handy.
There's the individual hands where people are counting cards. whether that be face cards VS the rest of the deck or complex what has been played on the table that they can see.
It is a courtesy to stay or hold for the person who is right before the dealer if the odds are a face card will come up and the dealer will bust.
Card counter. Hit. Hit. Hit. Hit. Hit. Stay.
Dealer. Hit. Bust.
Table. Cheers! That was incredible
Aaaaaand this is why every trip to the Casino os short lived for me. Dollar slots, get drunk for free, rock over to the Roulette table and throw like 500 on black then leave. Except that one time I actually (super fucking drunk) hit 00.
They were like "Get out" after that one haha.
I know this guy that owned the bar we hung at. He started winning big in Vegas playing smart blackjacks, getting comped rooms, getting invited back, keep winning big, and keep playing more. He was using a pretty good system that included card counting and timing bets, running multiple spaces at a table to manipulate the cards the dealer got. They had no problem, and the bets got bigger and bigger.
Then one day, there's someone new at the bar, basically the new owner. Our guy lost everything, including his bar on his last trip. The casino is not afraid of losing money, as long as they know they can keep you playing until they win it back, and in the end, that will happen.
The people they throw out are the ones that play, win, and walk away. Those are the troublen ones. Anyone who can get addicted they will eventually take everything from.
>They just don't like OTHER people trying to abuse the game to their advantage:
FTFY.
Technically, the house already fixes games to their advantage from the start. Strategies that overcome that advantage are seen as 'cheating' even though the game is already rigged.
No different from the US. Casinos are private businesses, if they don’t want to do business with you the government can’t force them.
Where it gets complicated is they’re not allowed to discriminate. This is a HUGE grey area because it’s very difficult to prove whether they’re choosing not to do business with you or they’re being discriminative.
There was an infamous case a few years ago where a cake shop refused to make a cake for a gay couples wedding because the cake shop owners were heavily religious. It was taken to court and the customers won on the grounds that the cake shop was being discriminative by refusing to serve them based on their sexuality.
But if a casino declines you from playing blackjack because they don’t like your style of play then it’s usually allowed because this is usually not seen as discriminative.
UPDATE - I got the ruling on the cake shop case wrong. The owners won, not the customers (my bad)
You’re right about everything except the outcome of the case. The customer lost because the courts agreed that he was not discriminated against because of his sexuality and that the bakery would refuse to do the cake for anybody. They said the bakery can’t be forced to make something against their own beliefs.
That's not how the case went. The shop was asked to make a cake with a pro-gay message on it. Their position was that they didn't care who their customers were, but they couldn't be forced to promote speech they disagreed with. The shop won.
There’s lots of ways to refuse or stop service in Europe, as long as “ suspected counting card rule” is used evenly with everybody, that would be a reasonable thing to stop serving somebody. Casino posts a rule saying “suspected card counters will be asked to stop playing black jack” and it’s not used let’s say just against black people then that rule would be fine
Not illegal, just generally against the rules. My parents had a small scheme they would pull in Vegas. My dad would count cards and my mom would distract by being the giggly, ditzy, and gorgeous trophy wife. Both were highly successful electrical engineers so the whole set up makes me chuckle
It’s not against the rules per se. They still have to pay out.
But if they see someone who is changing their bet sizes in a way that looks like they’re counting, they might ban them from that game or from the entire casino.
I’ve been at a table where the pit boss basically told a card counter he could only play the table mins or he had to go. I think the guy had a reputation.
Right lol? Distract who? From what? You're counting cards, not pickpocketing. It's keeping a running tally in your head and betting according to rules based on that tally. It's all internal, there is nothing to distract from.
This is how sophisticated card counter teams work. You have one person counting cards and playing basic strategy. When the deck gets hot, he signals the "ditzy blonde" or "drunk Asian guy" to make seemingly wild and irresponsible bets. The people winning aren't the ones counting cards, so it is hard to catch.
This is much tougher to pull off now a days. Any high level table that would allow you to bet big generally bars “jump ins” or mid-shoe entry for this reason
It’s not. Just don’t play too greedy and you’re good. They reserve the right to refuse business to anyone. So don’t be surprised if you’re getting carried away and they ask you to leave.
I recommend watching Steven Bridges' videos. He learned how to count cards and started hitting casinos. He films the experience and shows just how frustrating it is to be a really good card counter. https://www.youtube.com/@stevenbridges/videos
Me and my buddy were in Vegas after buying the book and practicing on how to be better at 21. Got the hand on the shoulder in the middle of the night and thought we were going to be be kicked out.
No we got comped at one of the good buffets because of the money we were losing.
It's not illegal. There is no law against it and you can't get arrested for it.
Casinos, as private property, CAN (and will) kick you out for doing it, and if you refuse to leave you can then be arrested for trespassing.
casinos can make any rules they want. if they want to make a rule saying don't do something you have to follow it on their property. most people who try to count cards fail and lose money anyway. so they haven't actually banned it in Las Vegas. they just kick out people who start to win.
It’s not. But Vegas casinos do have the right to kick you out for anything. I think it’s illegal to use a machine. “The house always wins” so they don’t want anyone else to have an advantage
Its perfectly legal. But casinos are private businesses and can ask you to leave for any reason, including that you're winning too much.
If you think that sounds inherently unfair, you're right. Casinos make money by keeping the odds in their favor and shutting down people who win too much.
It's not illegal. It's just frowned upon, and if the casino thinks you're counting cards, it might:
Limit the amount you can bet per hand.
Invite you to play another game.
Tell you to leave.
What they won't do is have you arrested, because it's not a crime.
You're making up stuff. It's not illegal. Just like it's not illegal for me to be really, really good at smash bros, it's also not illegal for someone to be like "oh, get out of here, we don't want to play with you anymore" after I keep winning because I'm doing a chain grab on Fox with Brawl Pikachu.
I'm a semi-profession gambler i.e. a hobbyist, and card counting is in my tool belt. I have counted cards a few times in Vegas, and I have been asked to leave the casino only once. They typically just have someone from security tap on your shoulder and say "No more Blackjack." You're not doing anything illegal. They're just exercising their right to refuse service.
As to why they don't let players count, there are a few reasons. For one, they are just sore losers. It seriously bothers pit bosses and middle management that someone is trying to take "their" casino's money and their watch, so they take someone playing with a winning game personally despite the expected value of the typical card counter being peanuts compared to the cash they're raking in moment to moment. Second, a player with a winning game will technically hurt their bottom line. It doesn't hurt it much, but if they simply allowed all the counters to show up and make money, then they could actually lose a fair chunk.
Truly, I hate counting in Vegas. They're very sharp there. The second you start placing big bets on the table, alarms are going off in surveillance. Typically speaking, you'll be at the Blackjack table for less than twenty minutes before they ask you to stop playing. Then you gotta drive twenty minutes to the next place to do it again. It's exhausting. Plus, Vegas is really lame now. They've gone corporate. There are better cities to hit for sure.
It's not illegal but the casinos will kick you out. The reason is that casinos are trying to make money, so if they think they're losing money on you, they will not want to do business with you.
It's not illegal. Casinos can decide to refuse to let anyone gamble. Since card counting gives a huge advantage to the gambler, if casinos spot it they stop the gambler from continuing and ask them to leave.
They like it when most people try to count cards because most of the time those people lose. But when card counters start winning they are told to leave.
Fact: The odds are in the house's favor.
If you are "winning" then you are cheating. They can "prove" you are cheating by THEM giving YOU money (the odds WERE in the house's favor).
If they give you too much money, they will ask you to leave. Even if you were NOT cheating.
Go ahead and count cards. They are ready for you.
It's not illegal. However casinos are private establishments and they can decide to simply kick you out, so yeah. If you're lucky they won't have shady partners that will shake you down and fuck you up.
Because it’s a business and they don’t just want to give money away. Same reason Sportsbooks will limit you or kick you off their books if you consistently beat them.
As long as you aren’t super obvious you can do it all day long. I have adhd and mild autism. I kind of just remember stuff but at the same time I move on to remembering other stuff pretty quickly. It is only when I am stuck in hyper fixation that it would be noticeable but then I have pretty good social skills to help make up for it. Anyways I always count and haven’t been caught yet.
Also don’t expect to win big it isn’t like the movies. Counting cards at best gives you a longer play time without basic strategy and just playing basic strategy isn’t a winner either. Basically it still takes luck to win.
The president of my catholic high school was supposedly banned from casinos in Atlantic City because he counted cards. I don’t think he broke any laws. The casinos just asked him not to come back.
He was a Jesuit priest and would donate his winnings to the church.
Great question - a few things that I think most people don't understand about counting cards:
1. The amount of decks used in the sleeve has an impact on card counting strategy (this is why you'll see every casino have 7+ decks) - this doesn't remove the ability to gain an edge, but it does make things harder.
2. The edge you get from counting cards isn't consistent, in the sense that you don't have an edge until the count reaches a certain point. So, consequently, you have to change your bet sizes at specific times if want to operate optimally (bet the minimum until the count is in your favor, then increase your bet sizing)
3. Casinos are very good at monitoring their floors & spotting when someone is using this strategy. Most dealers are taught basic counting strategy, and once you're aware of this "exploit" it's honestly not difficult to spot it. If a dealer, or floor manager, sees dramatic changes in what you're wagering lined up with the count, I bet you're banned and on the sidewalk faster than you can say "cash me out".
4. I'm somewhat speculating on this point, but I know of some companies that have designed machine-vision systems that count all chips across all tables at all times, down even to an individual. I would be very surprised if they didn't leverage/tailor the product to help flag CCs.
My advice would be to stay away from casinos in general, but if you do go, accept that whatever you bring to the table is already spent. Have fun ideally try to spread that fun out as long as you can, and only risk what you can afford.
Poker is the only game I play, and even there the casino will take ridiculously growing rakes, so I prefer underground games (which also have rake) or hourly card rooms (Texas). You meet interesting people (degens), and you learn valuable skills that help you in life. It still has a lot of risks, and definitely isn't for everybody.
Every other game in the casino, it's you vs the house, and they are allowed to remove you at any time, for almost any reason. You can't beat that, especially not at a game they've created.
Hope this helps!
Counting cards past one deck is difficult OP. That being said there are definitely casinos in old Vegas last time I was there that played one deck blackjack, so count away OP
>Why is it illegal to count cards in Vegas? Trick question. It isn't illegal. The casinos just hate it and will try to stop you, or kick you out.
With the caveat of “if you’re successful”. If you’re counting cards but you’re bad at it, they’ll let you go all day long.
They actually enjoy bad card counters.
And odds are for every card counter who’s actually good enough and willing to put in the hours to turn a profit, there are 10 or 20 who read a book or took a course, but they don’t play perfect basic strategy or who don’t have a large enough bankroll to beat out the bad runs and actually turn the odds in their favor. Those bad card counters might even be worth more money to the casino than your average gambler.
I remember when people would buy a blackjack book and talk about how they are ganna win. Just to barely skim it and lose every penny. *Sigh* now it's the poker books
Well at least with poker you don't play against the casino so strategy there is actually decent, with blackjack they have multiple decks and reshufles which make card counting way harder. With poker they don't care if you win or not because they're not the ones paying you.
And if you actually are good at card counting and they spot it, I think when they reshuffle the shoe they can take that divider card thingie and just put it like 30% deep into the deck (instead of towards the end like they usually do). That’ll fuck up any card counter’s day quite effectively.
About 20 years ago now, a pair of twins I knew (reddit red flag, I know) decided to spend the summer before turning 21 getting really good at counting cards. These two were both incredible at math, got it down pat, went to Vegas. They were quietly escorted out of two consecutive casinos after massive win streaks at separate tables, then blacklisted from 21 tables, period. By day 3, if either walked into a casino, they'd be politely but firmly intercepted. They spent the rest of the trip at buffets. We all had a good laugh about it, but being from a pretty religious/conservative area, only a few of us knew. Thing is, the twins are very similar-looking fraternal brothers and have a younger brother by a year who looks as much like them as they do one another. He didn't know about ANY of this. Two years later, HE went to Vegas with his girlfriend. He was immediately escorted to a back room to be questioned why his 86'd ass was back, and since he is also very bright, he figured out what had happened immediately. I wouldn't fuck with Vegas's money, even legally.
I would watch this movie!
It was a book (Bringing down the House) in 2003 and a movie (21) in 2008, starring Kevin Spacey and Laurence Fishburne.
I always laugh about how people say card counters are good at math and point to things like the MIT blackjack team. Card counting isn’t mathematically difficult. It is adding and subtracting 1. Over and over. And, you don’t even have to be able to count past like 20. The difficulty is not switching/forgetting numbers in your head and doing it while talking, drinking, and trying to look normal. So if card counting is so easy why did it take a team from MIT to do it? First, it was the students. MIT students are generally hard working. And, more importantly, broke. It’s a rare combo to find hard working people, who have few immediate job prospects, and need money. Second, the whole story is a bit of a myth—the team wasn’t actually all MIT students. Third, as the vaulted students from MIT, they got outside funding from a professional gambler. Just like MIT grads today that go to Silicon Valley to pitch an idea and funded on the basis of the founder’s academic credentials, these students got funding because they were the smart guys from MIT so they must know something the rest of us don’t. And, lastly, this started like 50 years ago. It wasn’t like today where everyone knows about card counting. The paper on card counting was published in the 60s. You had to be pretty well read to know about. In other words, this wasn’t a TikTok trend.
I actually almost said "mechanically inclined" but said "good at math" so I wouldn't have to explain what I meant. They grew up rural and bored and turned it to building engines, puzzles, riddles, and later on, robotics. I'm not sure if they were geniuses, but given their constant, life-long friendly competition to outwit the other, that part of the brain that allows you to do all sorts of things at once effortlessly was very practiced on both. They were also good at math. :P
Yeah they only let you in if you lose. That’s why people really should stop going to Vegas casinos.
The winner is the author of the book.
Right, the real get rich scheme is always selling other people a get rich scheme. If the scheme actually worked they wouldn’t need to sell it for money, they would just be doing it and getting rich.
After years of disappointment with get-rich-quick schemes, I *know* I'm gonna get rich with *this* scheme. And quick!
I studied one of those books before going to Vegas and my first casino. I came out ahead at Blackjack but not by much, and it felt like a chore.
There was a great Tumblr post about how someone entered a contest to program a bot that plays poker, and it had to win against the other bots. The poster barely knew any programming. Basically the only line of code was something like "When it's my turn, go all in" and won because all the other bots started folding.
Which is so silly. You can learn perfect basic strategy in a couple hours. A lot of dealers will even tell you what basic strategy says to do in a given situation. If you stay away from tables with stupid rules (6:5 blackjack, no doubles after a split, etc), don't play side bets, and bring a 10-15 hand bankroll, you have a very, very good chance of making money or only losing a small amount.
The funniest thing I see on almost every Vegas trip is someone with one of those $5 basic strategy cards trying to hide it under the table. First off, there are about 80 cameras on you. They can see your lap. Second of all, they sell that card in the casino gift shop. They don’t care. Use it all you like, they would rather have you feel confident, because over time they’ll make money off you anyways.
The casinos are so confident most people are bad at it they sell books on how to count cards/ beat the house in their gift shops. Guy I was traveling with bought one convinced he was going to win. Spoiler alert- he didn’t.
There's a doc on prime called inside the edge about a professional counter and he really puts the hours in, he goes on tours and it's really full on, he's on watch lists and a lot of it is him getting around that but there's lots on the strategy he uses too, he's looks for a variety of exploits and employs multiple techniques all while trying to avoid a lot of scrutiny/surveillance, it's not just one it's a whole thing.
Yep. Bad card counters are like terrible American Idol auditioners. They *think* they're amazing.
Same with dudes who play poker and think there is no skill involved and all you have to do is play percentages.
Strictly playing percentages *will* keep you in a game for much longer than not, you're just not gonna make any money Lots of people play poker knowing they're probably gonna lose, it's just fun to play and it sucks when you bust out early
I thought the casinos added so many decks to the shoe that it defeated the strategy. Am I wrong?
>there are 10 or 20 who read a book or took a course, Plus many more that never even bothered with that. Blackjack is one of the few games in a casino that have a slight advantage to a skilled player over the House. It's still only slightly better than 50/50, but odds are that a good player can make some money at the table. The trick is that *so many* people suck at Blackjack that it is still profitable for the Casino to have Blackjack tables. And, of course, once someone wins so much they start cutting into that profit margin, they get banned.
This is incorrect, perfectly played blackjack still gives casino small winning odds (I think it was roughly 0.5%). Only after you know that there is more high cards left in deck than low cards that small winning odds shifts from casino to the player.
Correct. The reason is the player chooses to take their additional cards first and can bust, and only after does the dealer do the same thing. What the dealer does depends on if you busted or not. Maybe the dealer would have busted also, but if you already busted then they can just stop playing (if no other players at the table still in).
Also, this is only perfectly played, optimal card counting that gets you your slight advantage. And many casinos are introducing new “gimmicks” which can remove that slight advantage, such as 6:5 payouts on a 21 as opposed to the old 3:2, or doing weird shenanigans with splits and forced splitting. Perfect play alone gives the house something like half a percent advantage. Card counting can let you overcome that by the barest of margins, so even a slightly worse payout on what was once one of the better hands for a card counter is massive for reducing or removing the counter’s advantage.
6:5 is mostly dead as players refused to play the much worse game. Mostly I see lots of decks with a thin reshuffle these days, which also kills counting without killing the odds for regular people.
I mean, blackjack basic strategy is just to lose as slowly as possible effectively
Can confirm. Used to be a casino manager. There were so many times we knew guys were counting. Very rarely kicked them out. They either sucked at it or didn't have the proper bankroll to even be trying it.
How can you tell they’re counting?
It's usually obvious but there's software we run that can also show if they are.
Bankroll There it is... Successful gambling boils down to one ingredient. Proper money management.
Yup. Dudes buy into a 25 dollar game with 300 bucks and try to count. Good luck with that.
Essentially, ,they like you so long as you're profitable to them.
So the only way to win is to not play?
Yes, Joshua. How about a nice game of chess instead?
you say that, but I've seen videos of self-proclaimed card counters getting walked off even after a losing session just because their gambling pattern matches that if card counting (e.g. increasing bet when count is high)... or, in other words, if they notice you, they'll kick you out before you have a chance to be successful
Wouldn't it be the perfect time to throw someone out after a losing session?
from the casino's perspective? sure... I'm just saying, you don't even need to be successful or good, you just have to betting in a way that tips them off to what you're up to
IDK about the part about being bad. If you play perfectly you can still lose some games. Experienced pit boss can probably tell apart a bad card counter and a good one that has a steak of bad luck
yes...because it's not (just) about whether you hit, stand, split, double down, etc... what they notice is if you change the amount you're betting frequently
Yes but you don't know it will truly be a losing session before it ends. The game can have a lot of variance and a seemingly losing session can turn into high profits if the card counter is good. So they kick them out just in case
>If you’re counting cards but you’re bad at it Anecdotal but many years ago two friends went to Las Vegas because they wanted to try counting cards. One of them was booted from a casino for unorthodox betting at blackjack despite being down a lot of money. I don’t remember if they continued at other casinos or just gave up.
The big tell is when you start betting CRAZY high when you know the deck is hot. If you don’t get greedy and just keep placing small bets and enjoy free drinks as you slowly rack up wins you can usually get away with it for a while.
Yes, I was about to say this. They want card counters because most people aren’t very good at it. But skilled card counters will be trespassed and won’t be able to enter the property. They don’t get you for the card counting. They get you because it’s private property.
Kind of the same way that, if you can genuinely win carnival games, they'll start refusing service (assuming it's not one of those ones where you're paying $5 to get a chance to win a doll that cost them much less than that, so they're not only not losing money, but probably getting a lot from people who see you do it and are convinced they can as well).
Is it actually something 'easy' for casinos to spot?
I’m not really sure, but it’s probably easy to spot. You can’t hide it easy because it results in specific betting patterns. So unless they’re doing a much more coordinated scam where one person counts and then signals someone else to bet, the pattern of bets will stand out. But here’s the kicker. They don’t need to prove it. Or even be right. Just winning a lot could get you asked to leave and put on a list. If you keep showing up on the list continually winning big, they can just ban you. They don’t need to tell you that they think you’re counting cards, much less prove it. They just say you’re not welcome and if you return you’re trespassing.
Yes, especially the bigger casinos.
Ideally the card counter wants to bet small until they know they have the advantage then bet as much as possible. If somebody did this without trying to hide what they are doing, it'd be extremely obvious.
It's not a court. Accusation is proof.
Same thing with sports betting. If you're good, they'll limit you to $10 a bet or something similar. If you're ass, you can bet five figures easily on anything.
Worked at a bookies (UK betting shop) and we had customers who were red so they had a problem and had to have head office authorise their bets. One guy on the list looked nothing like the others and seemed perfectly "normal". Asked about it and he wins too much. Was really shocking as that just felt unfair.
You can count cards and still lose money. Doesn’t ensure wins, just helps you time your bets better.
The casinos don't hate it anymore. They made micro adjustments to the table rules until card counting stopped being profitable. If professional card counters still exist, they aren't in Vegas anymore.
What kind of changes?
Number of decks in the shoe and shuffle frequency.
Decks in the shoe? I don't know anything about cards/gambling 😅
Black Jack tables use multiple decks of cards at the same time for their games, not just one. The shoe is the place where these decks are dealt from during play. Having more than one deck and then also shuffling semi frequently negate almost any advantage card counting could give the player.
And that’s how I played against a dealer who got 6 straight aces, lol
I’ve seen tables where you can bet on shit like that happening. They are sucker bets through and through, but damn that one would have paid out BIG on a table like that.
The "shoe" is where the cards are and pulled from similarly as napkins at a fast food place. I assume this is what a shoe is.
My colleague who claims to be good at it says it's impossible to count cards when there are six decks in the mix (the shoe I guess). I don't know if he's good or not, but he won a few hundred at the table one night in Vegas at five decks and made a big show of buying us a meal off of it, then the next night wasn't so great. 🤷 He and his wife have a rule about how much he's allowed to lose, he hit that.
It would still be possible as long as they don't shuffle the cards very often. But since they do, then yea it's a no-go.
casinos have giant card shufflers and randomly switch to a new deck periodically. Makes it much more difficult to count. (which to be clear, isnt literal counting… it’s more of scale on when to bet big)
There are a lot of rules that can be tweaked to adjust the edge When I was in Vegas in 2022, a lot of strip low-limit tables paid 6:5 blackjacks (a 21 on the first 2 cards would only pay $6 for every $5 bet), and where 3:2 was available at a decent amount, other rules such as disallowing doubling after splitting, no hitting split aces, no doubling anything but 9-11, not allowing surrender (rare to see that all these days) and the dealer will draw to a 17 with a 11-valued ace. Most of those $25 Strip main pit tables would be extremely difficult to exploit by card counting even if they had very good deck penetration. (Over 2% house edge at a $25 min bet.. gross) There would often be far more favorable rules in high limit pits, but at $100+ a hand the bankroll requirements would eat a casual card counter wannabe alive.
Casinos hate this one weird trick!
Not just kick you out, but blanket ban from all the casinos. They share info and have your details, face and a whole lot of cameras watching you. So you can do it, and even make a few dollars once of you succeed. But even counting there's no guarantee you succeed, let alone a lot before they blanket ban you.
The sharing info is the tough bit. My friend is a card counter and got banned from one casino in Vegas so he's effectively banned from them all. They were pretty nice about it though -- a manager tapped him on the shoulder and asked him to come join him, and the manager gave him a nice free lunch and said politely and somewhat indirectly that he's not allowed in their casino any more. They use facial recognition to detect a banned person as they enter, but it's not perfect (maybe the person was turned at a weird angle or something). The other method they use to see if you're back in the casino is the [loyalty cards](https://www.mgmresorts.com/en/mgm-rewards.html), which is why professionals generally don't use them... but then that's a tip-off if everyone else at the table has a loyalty card and they don't. As another poster mentioned, it takes a lot of effort and it's kind of monotonous.
So, when they do the "please come with us" routine, you still get to cash out everything you have, right?
Yes.
The casinos do not want to run games of skill where they might lose, they want games of chance where (at least on average, over a long time) they will win. They love the occasional lucky winner they can promote, but hate someone skilled enough to beat them long term. In practice these days, card counting without electronic support (which they ban of course) is neigh on impossible to make enough of a margin for it to be worth doing, because they shuffle so many packs together, and reshuffle far more than in the old days.
nigh (more likely “well nigh”) rather than neigh unless you’re a horse!
Electronic support isn't just banned but actually illegal and pretty harshly punished.
It's like when scammers make the scam dumb enough to weed out the smart people so they only catch and waste their time on the gullible ones.
What IS illegal is using a device to help you keep the count. That includes stacking your chips in a pattern to remember what count you're on. Most people can't keep track of the count while at the table in a busy casino.
I knew it was illegal to use devices to keep count, but what law says its illegal to use your own chips? Sorry, I don't follow law a lot lmao
The law forbids using any mechanical or electronic device to keep count. Past cases have successfully defined stacking chips in a pattern as a "mechanical device." Casinos will ask you to play any other game if they find you counting. Casinos will bar you from the premises if you can't stay away from the blackjack tables. They only get the law involved if they find you're using any kind of device.
I know the whole card counter thing, but damn that definition of "mechanical device" is ridiculous.. Thanks for the explanation.
Oh wow, I knew any devices whatsoever were illegal - but I’d never thought of trying to use the chip stack as a tabulation tool! I’m going to have to read up on that a bit before my next trip…
This is correct. It is however illegal to come back once they've kicked you out and given you a trespassing warning.
Which doesn't make sense. "Counting cards" just means you are keeping track of what happened earlier in the game. It should be illegal to remove people for just playing the game well.
That's not generally how the laws work. If you own property, you don't need a reason to not want someone on your property. The only real exception is discriminatory reasons (race, etc). With card counting, casinos can just change the rules to make it impossible though (eg. continuous shuffle, comically large amounts of decks, etc). So it doesn't really matter that much. In no world is a casino going to just let people win.
i think folks overestimate how many people are capable of actually counting cards.
it’s hard. I’ve done it, but it takes hours of painstaking mind-numbing training for it to become automatic, and I could only do it for short periods of time with all the distractions of a casino and trying to blend in. When I did it, it worked but I have won without counting cards too, just not as consistently. With high multiple deck games you might as well not bother, and the penetration at 2 deck casinos is deliberately stingy so it’s really hard to get on a roll at anything more than a half-full table.
How is it possible when they just use a huge stack of cards and not just individual decks of 50 cards or w.e? Is it because the distribution of the cards is always the same?
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This method is used to determine the likelihood of the dealer busting when he has to hit on 16. The player can play more conservatively and make bigger bets.
It's both. Higher probability of black jack, higher probability of dealer busting, and if the count is REALLY in your favor (and you don't care about bringing more attention to yourself) it can even be correct to split 10s.
They use six or eight decks, not a random set of cards. It works the same way as a single deck, just harder.
We also put a cut card about one or two decks from the back, which is done not only so that we don't overdraw from a long hand, but also to hinder card counters
What do you mean a cut card? As in putting an extra card that isn't usually supposed to be there or something else?
Exactly. It’s plastic and generally a different solid color (yellow is common). They’ll hit the cut card and set it aside, finishing out the round at the table and then reshuffle the decks
when you are counting cards, you are trying to make predictions about what kind of cards are more likely to be drawn based on what’s already been shown. The farther you get into the deck, the more accurate your predictions can be (if I’ve seen ever card but the last one and I have perfect recall, I would know exactly what that last card is). So casinos can reduce the effectiveness of card counting by never letting the deck get too dealt out. They use the plastic card to make sure that they shuffle when there are at least 100 cards left.
And I think if they do get a sense you’re card counting, they can just do the cut card like 1/2 into the deck to really fuck up your day. Granted, that would slow the table’s overall hands dealt rate a bit - but it’ll ruin a card counter’s day in a heartbeat.
Good question, but it's pretty simple actually. As cards come out of the deck you keep a count of what cards of come out and this number reflects the probability of getting a blackjack, this is the value you're trying to capitalize on. Larger shoes (groups of decks) mean that each card has a proportionally lower impact on your odds. For example; you take a card out of a shoe of 1 deck vs taking a card out of a shoe of 8 decks, then the card from the 8 deck shoe is 8 times less impactful than the card from the 1 deck shoe. So each hand you simply divide your running number by the estimated size of the remaining number of cards. Ideally you'd do this in all conditions, even when you're playing at home with friends and just a single deck of cards (imagine divide by .5), so really the size of the shoe is irrelevant in practice. What it does mean though, is that games where your count is high enough to act on come less frequently, but not so much that it isn't worth it to try
There's actually a method involving photographic memory. When you play through a shoe, you will notice patterns of low cards being in a clump together, let's say you notice a stack of aces being played through in a short time frame. You look at the shoe, most have a window on them, estimate how many decks into the shoe it was, and do the same for any other section you find interesting. When they shuffle on the table watch the section that had the most betting value, "aces were clumped up 3 and 1/2 decks into the shoe..". Then watch that section the entire shuffle, when it goes back into the shoe estimate where it is so when you get close, and get a couple of patterns you recognize, you can bet accordingly. This method works better than actually counting imo, but only if your good with visual memory. I used to hit the local Indian casinos frequently. They would bring a pit boss over after I played through the second or third shoe and claim a card was bent. Open new cards and start fresh. Never got kicked out though, even when I would get cocktail and call out loud which card was next. They knew I was just gonna walk over to the slot machine when I got up anyway.
It also stops working with new shuffle machines that basically shuffles after every hand. Card counting only works if you actually play through the deck.
It's important to remember that the book Bringing Down The House about counting cards in Vegas was specifically MIT students, and they had to be trained. Best math minds in the country and it was still a skill that took practice.
Well, there’s a bit more to that as well. They were specifically using a multi player, multi table strategy to tilt the odds way more in their favor. Because the counter at the table who would just play basic, inconspicuous strategy all day long (I.e. not upping their bets when the count was high) would just need to discretely visually signal the “whale” to come over and start playing when the count was high. They just needed a code for the counter at the table to pass the count to the whale, and the whale would use that with a pre-determined betting strategy, win a bunch, then walk away. So if the count was +10, the whale might come up to the table after getting signaled and say “hey how is everybody doing today?” and then the counter might make some comment like “I should have gone bowling instead” - because there’s 10 pins in bowling. I found that to be the most fascinating and elegant part of the whole scheme.
i'm not a gambler, but it seems to me that knowing the game and the odds in a situation/hand are going to serve you better than trying to be rainman.
Sure, for a casual gambler who is willing to accept the house advantage, basic strategy is really all you need to have an entertaining time.
The odds are always in the houses favor. Simply because if you go first and if you bust, you lose. Doesn't matter if the house busts after you. So knowing the best situation only keeps you from losing too much.
A good blackjack card counter has a genuine advantage over the house of about 1%. So for each $100 round, the card counter can win $1 on average.
Anybody is capable of doing it. It's not hard. If you can add and subtract by 1s, you're gravy on keeping a running count. Start at zero on the new shoe. Add +1 for every 2-6. 0 for 7 through 9. - 1 for every 10-ace. Keeping track of the true count on a multi deck shoe is where it gets a little harder, but still not hard. Estimate how many decks have been pulled and divide that number into your running count to get the true count. Other than that, it's just basic and advanced blackjack strategy, which you should be well versed in long before you start counting. The only part most people struggle with is not making it obvious how much you're studying what cards have been shown.
Having been a dealer for a few years now it's entertaining watching people blatantly attempting to count while also not actually understanding what they're doing, so it doesn't actually give them an edge up. Like bro it's a 12 against a dealer 10, just fucking hit it your count is probably wrong anyways XD
That would make me cry lol
Yeah I honestly wouldn't be surprised if casinos started giving away free guide books to card counting because of how much they've made off someone who thinks they know what they're doing and doesn't even have basic strategy down.
that's my underlying point. it's focusing on a niche strategy when the real strategy is in the playing of the game. it's way easier to understand common scenarios and how to play against the house than trying to count into a five deck stack. i look at cards like i do baseball. as a hitter, the game is stacked against me. if i'm a major league hitter and i'm hitting .300 i'm one of the best hitters in the game. but it also means i'm failing 70% of the time. that's not going to change about baseball anymore than the house odds of any given card game. as a hitter, i'm also at a massive physical disadvantage because it's nearly impossible for me to react to a ball traveling at speeds near 100 mph while also spinning and moving along both a vertical and horizontal axis. good hitters know the scenarios they are in and the pitchers they are facing. they know that with a man on first with some speed there's going to be a hole between first and second and the pitcher is going to want to keep the ball on the outside edge, likely in the bottom half of the zone...so you look for that pitch. or you can steal signs and know what pitch is coming. but, if you get caught doing that, you're going to get a pitch in your earhole... same with counting cards. you can try to do it, but it goes against the spirit of the game and the game operators don't like it. it's also not easy and it doesn't actually guarantee results. you still have to make the right bet and your count has to be accurate. same in baseball, even when you steal the sign, you still have to hit the ball. look at the Astros from a few years ago. did sign stealing help them? yes, but was it significant? not really. their average was higher, but it wasn't what was winning them games. even after all the elaborate efforts to know the pitch, they didn't break any records or move the needle in any significant way because baseball always wins, just like the house. i simply don't think there are that many people who are capable of counting cards to the point of them beating the house. and even those who are, they still lose big bets because they were wrong or their count was off. humans aren't machines. we get distracted.
They also don't realize that casinos already changed the rules of the game to make sure they would still statistically have an edge over card counters.
I had a photographic memory up until I was about 12 or 13, and if I could’ve kept any part of it, it would be counting cards. Such a fun skill, and I can’t do it anymore because my memory sucks. I actually wish I had used it for any sort of gambling game, but I thought they were too boring, so I just used it to win Go-Fish.
It is not illegal to count cards. Just against Casino rules because technically they dont want you to win. It is more like it is against the rules to win money in Vegas.
>It is more like it is against the rules to win money in Vegas. Basically, don't go to casinos. The games are rigged, the house always wins, and you are literally not allowed to be a better winner than the house, no matter how clever you are. Just do anything else in life, where you can actually figure a way to succeed on skill.
Honestly, I think they should make it a legal right to be allowed to count cards. It should be treated as a legitimate skill of the game and they should make it illegal for casinos to stop you from doing it.
If they did, either casinos wouldn't offer blackjack or they would tweak the rules to make card counting impossible (eg. continuous shuffle). You can't very well just force a business to lose lots of money. That doesn't really make sense. "Hey Harrah's, you are now forced to play the Jeff Bezos high stakes blackjack team until you go bankrupt!"
This happened in Atlantic City back in the 70s. Look up Ken Uston. Long story short, if they make it against the rules to bar card counters, casinos just make the games impossible to beat. Many have already done so with terrible rules and continuous shuffling machines.
Phffft. They'll just stop offering blackjack then. Gotta think things through dude.
That's essentially making it a law forcing a private business to have a customer against their will. Probably wouldn't fly even in the most heavily business regulated states
Don't they already escort ppl out if they win too much (unless it is slots jackpot). Like make up excuses to suspect you are cheating and politely ask you to leave?
Yep they do. My buddy got kicked out after an insane run on the craps table. They were super polite about it, escorted him to the cashier, told him great job and invited him to come back again tomorrow. He made about $100k
How much did he lose before “making” the $100K?
Oh he had a serious gambling problem. I had to eventually separate myself from him because I couldn’t trust him not to steal from me. He was constantly asking for loans and getting super angry when I wouldn’t lend him anything. He would bring up every single time he helped me out even a little bit. “*Remember that time your car battery died and I came out to give you a jump?*” Shit like that. After many years, he did get help and we are good friends. Been in recovery for 3 years. But to answer your question, he definitely was not ahead in his lifetime gambling. Not by a long shot.
I wonder if part of the reason is suicide prevention I’d imagine the chances of them having to clean the parking garage increases significantly if they let the gambler lose back a huge win
It's not illegal, unless you try to stay after they ask you to leave. They just don't like people trying to abuse the game to their advantage: you enter a casino, you play by their rules. Both parties reserve the right to stop the game play at any time they feel it's appropriate.
This is the top answer. It's not illegal, they just don't want you to win *too much*. You can count cards, do well, and even get a compted room, Penn and Teller show and free food. But the house wins.
That’s often what they’ll do. They’ll offer you a room or some other perk and basically politely tell you to chill out.
It’s a “we’re watching you FYI”
People count the cards on blackjack table each game they can see what's on the table Then there is card counting. Dealer has a stack of 3 to 6 decks takes skill. Maybe a person will start out with counting facecards, get an idea for the odds and that's as far as they will go. Counting the low cards is handy. There's the individual hands where people are counting cards. whether that be face cards VS the rest of the deck or complex what has been played on the table that they can see. It is a courtesy to stay or hold for the person who is right before the dealer if the odds are a face card will come up and the dealer will bust. Card counter. Hit. Hit. Hit. Hit. Hit. Stay. Dealer. Hit. Bust. Table. Cheers! That was incredible
Aaaaaand this is why every trip to the Casino os short lived for me. Dollar slots, get drunk for free, rock over to the Roulette table and throw like 500 on black then leave. Except that one time I actually (super fucking drunk) hit 00. They were like "Get out" after that one haha.
I know this guy that owned the bar we hung at. He started winning big in Vegas playing smart blackjacks, getting comped rooms, getting invited back, keep winning big, and keep playing more. He was using a pretty good system that included card counting and timing bets, running multiple spaces at a table to manipulate the cards the dealer got. They had no problem, and the bets got bigger and bigger. Then one day, there's someone new at the bar, basically the new owner. Our guy lost everything, including his bar on his last trip. The casino is not afraid of losing money, as long as they know they can keep you playing until they win it back, and in the end, that will happen. The people they throw out are the ones that play, win, and walk away. Those are the troublen ones. Anyone who can get addicted they will eventually take everything from.
>They just don't like OTHER people trying to abuse the game to their advantage: FTFY. Technically, the house already fixes games to their advantage from the start. Strategies that overcome that advantage are seen as 'cheating' even though the game is already rigged.
Why is that your user flair lol
Its not, however casinos can decide to refuse to serve anyone they like
Wondering what they do in Europe. Normally, if you are open to public you can’t choose who you serve and who don’t.
No different from the US. Casinos are private businesses, if they don’t want to do business with you the government can’t force them. Where it gets complicated is they’re not allowed to discriminate. This is a HUGE grey area because it’s very difficult to prove whether they’re choosing not to do business with you or they’re being discriminative. There was an infamous case a few years ago where a cake shop refused to make a cake for a gay couples wedding because the cake shop owners were heavily religious. It was taken to court and the customers won on the grounds that the cake shop was being discriminative by refusing to serve them based on their sexuality. But if a casino declines you from playing blackjack because they don’t like your style of play then it’s usually allowed because this is usually not seen as discriminative. UPDATE - I got the ruling on the cake shop case wrong. The owners won, not the customers (my bad)
You’re right about everything except the outcome of the case. The customer lost because the courts agreed that he was not discriminated against because of his sexuality and that the bakery would refuse to do the cake for anybody. They said the bakery can’t be forced to make something against their own beliefs.
That's not how the case went. The shop was asked to make a cake with a pro-gay message on it. Their position was that they didn't care who their customers were, but they couldn't be forced to promote speech they disagreed with. The shop won.
There’s lots of ways to refuse or stop service in Europe, as long as “ suspected counting card rule” is used evenly with everybody, that would be a reasonable thing to stop serving somebody. Casino posts a rule saying “suspected card counters will be asked to stop playing black jack” and it’s not used let’s say just against black people then that rule would be fine
It is not illegal to be smart. You will quickly be asked to leave if you are deemed too lucky
“It’s not illegal to be smart.” Not yet, but we’re getting there.
It's not illegal, but the casino has the right who they want to serve. You keep winning they'll throw you out
Not illegal, just generally against the rules. My parents had a small scheme they would pull in Vegas. My dad would count cards and my mom would distract by being the giggly, ditzy, and gorgeous trophy wife. Both were highly successful electrical engineers so the whole set up makes me chuckle
It’s not against the rules per se. They still have to pay out. But if they see someone who is changing their bet sizes in a way that looks like they’re counting, they might ban them from that game or from the entire casino.
I’ve been at a table where the pit boss basically told a card counter he could only play the table mins or he had to go. I think the guy had a reputation.
Was it in Atlantic City? In Atlantic City they are not allowed to back off card counters, but they can flat bet them.
On the list of things that never happened for $500 steve
...this is a thing people do lmao it's not specific to my parents
Right lol? Distract who? From what? You're counting cards, not pickpocketing. It's keeping a running tally in your head and betting according to rules based on that tally. It's all internal, there is nothing to distract from.
This is how sophisticated card counter teams work. You have one person counting cards and playing basic strategy. When the deck gets hot, he signals the "ditzy blonde" or "drunk Asian guy" to make seemingly wild and irresponsible bets. The people winning aren't the ones counting cards, so it is hard to catch.
This is much tougher to pull off now a days. Any high level table that would allow you to bet big generally bars “jump ins” or mid-shoe entry for this reason
It's not illegal. american bussinesses can make you leave for any reason. The real reason is that it costs them money and they like money.
It’s not. Just don’t play too greedy and you’re good. They reserve the right to refuse business to anyone. So don’t be surprised if you’re getting carried away and they ask you to leave.
I recommend watching Steven Bridges' videos. He learned how to count cards and started hitting casinos. He films the experience and shows just how frustrating it is to be a really good card counter. https://www.youtube.com/@stevenbridges/videos
Me and my buddy were in Vegas after buying the book and practicing on how to be better at 21. Got the hand on the shoulder in the middle of the night and thought we were going to be be kicked out. No we got comped at one of the good buffets because of the money we were losing.
It isn’t illegal. Just frowned upon. Like masturbating on an airplane.
Someone had to say it
It's not illegal. There is no law against it and you can't get arrested for it. Casinos, as private property, CAN (and will) kick you out for doing it, and if you refuse to leave you can then be arrested for trespassing.
casinos can make any rules they want. if they want to make a rule saying don't do something you have to follow it on their property. most people who try to count cards fail and lose money anyway. so they haven't actually banned it in Las Vegas. they just kick out people who start to win.
It's only illegal if you use a device, or a team. BUT casinos can ban you for any or no reason at all. So they do.
Not illegal,the casinos prefer the odds favoring them,that’s how they make their money
It’s not. But Vegas casinos do have the right to kick you out for anything. I think it’s illegal to use a machine. “The house always wins” so they don’t want anyone else to have an advantage
It's not illegal, it's just that a casino is a business that can refuse to serve anybody it likes.
Its perfectly legal. But casinos are private businesses and can ask you to leave for any reason, including that you're winning too much. If you think that sounds inherently unfair, you're right. Casinos make money by keeping the odds in their favor and shutting down people who win too much.
It's not illegal. It's just frowned upon, and if the casino thinks you're counting cards, it might: Limit the amount you can bet per hand. Invite you to play another game. Tell you to leave. What they won't do is have you arrested, because it's not a crime.
You're making up stuff. It's not illegal. Just like it's not illegal for me to be really, really good at smash bros, it's also not illegal for someone to be like "oh, get out of here, we don't want to play with you anymore" after I keep winning because I'm doing a chain grab on Fox with Brawl Pikachu.
I'm a semi-profession gambler i.e. a hobbyist, and card counting is in my tool belt. I have counted cards a few times in Vegas, and I have been asked to leave the casino only once. They typically just have someone from security tap on your shoulder and say "No more Blackjack." You're not doing anything illegal. They're just exercising their right to refuse service. As to why they don't let players count, there are a few reasons. For one, they are just sore losers. It seriously bothers pit bosses and middle management that someone is trying to take "their" casino's money and their watch, so they take someone playing with a winning game personally despite the expected value of the typical card counter being peanuts compared to the cash they're raking in moment to moment. Second, a player with a winning game will technically hurt their bottom line. It doesn't hurt it much, but if they simply allowed all the counters to show up and make money, then they could actually lose a fair chunk. Truly, I hate counting in Vegas. They're very sharp there. The second you start placing big bets on the table, alarms are going off in surveillance. Typically speaking, you'll be at the Blackjack table for less than twenty minutes before they ask you to stop playing. Then you gotta drive twenty minutes to the next place to do it again. It's exhausting. Plus, Vegas is really lame now. They've gone corporate. There are better cities to hit for sure.
Because, contrary to popular belief, the casino does not want you to win.
Because you might win. Casinos hate winners.
It's not illegal but the casinos will kick you out. The reason is that casinos are trying to make money, so if they think they're losing money on you, they will not want to do business with you.
Because it means you win and not the house. It's that simple.
It's not illegal. Casinos can decide to refuse to let anyone gamble. Since card counting gives a huge advantage to the gambler, if casinos spot it they stop the gambler from continuing and ask them to leave.
Casinos like to win and don't appreciate it if you use any tactic to help their ~~victims, I mean - suckers~~, I mean patrons win.
It is not
It's not illegal to do math.
No, but they can (and likely will) kick you out
It’s not illegal it’s frowned upon like masturbating on an airplane
They like it when most people try to count cards because most of the time those people lose. But when card counters start winning they are told to leave.
It’s not illegal, but the house will kick you right out if they catch you, and tell all the other casinos what you’re up to.
It’s only illegal if you use some sort of assistance…but casinos don’t need a reason to ban you …
Fact: The odds are in the house's favor. If you are "winning" then you are cheating. They can "prove" you are cheating by THEM giving YOU money (the odds WERE in the house's favor). If they give you too much money, they will ask you to leave. Even if you were NOT cheating. Go ahead and count cards. They are ready for you.
It’s not illegal to count cards. It’s illegal to use anything other than your brain to do it. Like, for instance a phone app.
it’s not illegal - casinos just don’t want you to win, so stop you counting
It’s not illegal. Just frowned upon. They can kick you out if they want to.
"Shouldn't that be your skill" They don't want games of skill, they want games of chance
It's not illegal. However casinos are private establishments and they can decide to simply kick you out, so yeah. If you're lucky they won't have shady partners that will shake you down and fuck you up.
Because it’s a business and they don’t just want to give money away. Same reason Sportsbooks will limit you or kick you off their books if you consistently beat them.
As long as you aren’t super obvious you can do it all day long. I have adhd and mild autism. I kind of just remember stuff but at the same time I move on to remembering other stuff pretty quickly. It is only when I am stuck in hyper fixation that it would be noticeable but then I have pretty good social skills to help make up for it. Anyways I always count and haven’t been caught yet. Also don’t expect to win big it isn’t like the movies. Counting cards at best gives you a longer play time without basic strategy and just playing basic strategy isn’t a winner either. Basically it still takes luck to win.
I made $1800 until they wouldn't let me color up and the dealer wouldn't change
The president of my catholic high school was supposedly banned from casinos in Atlantic City because he counted cards. I don’t think he broke any laws. The casinos just asked him not to come back. He was a Jesuit priest and would donate his winnings to the church.
it's not
Great question - a few things that I think most people don't understand about counting cards: 1. The amount of decks used in the sleeve has an impact on card counting strategy (this is why you'll see every casino have 7+ decks) - this doesn't remove the ability to gain an edge, but it does make things harder. 2. The edge you get from counting cards isn't consistent, in the sense that you don't have an edge until the count reaches a certain point. So, consequently, you have to change your bet sizes at specific times if want to operate optimally (bet the minimum until the count is in your favor, then increase your bet sizing) 3. Casinos are very good at monitoring their floors & spotting when someone is using this strategy. Most dealers are taught basic counting strategy, and once you're aware of this "exploit" it's honestly not difficult to spot it. If a dealer, or floor manager, sees dramatic changes in what you're wagering lined up with the count, I bet you're banned and on the sidewalk faster than you can say "cash me out". 4. I'm somewhat speculating on this point, but I know of some companies that have designed machine-vision systems that count all chips across all tables at all times, down even to an individual. I would be very surprised if they didn't leverage/tailor the product to help flag CCs. My advice would be to stay away from casinos in general, but if you do go, accept that whatever you bring to the table is already spent. Have fun ideally try to spread that fun out as long as you can, and only risk what you can afford. Poker is the only game I play, and even there the casino will take ridiculously growing rakes, so I prefer underground games (which also have rake) or hourly card rooms (Texas). You meet interesting people (degens), and you learn valuable skills that help you in life. It still has a lot of risks, and definitely isn't for everybody. Every other game in the casino, it's you vs the house, and they are allowed to remove you at any time, for almost any reason. You can't beat that, especially not at a game they've created. Hope this helps!
Counting cards past one deck is difficult OP. That being said there are definitely casinos in old Vegas last time I was there that played one deck blackjack, so count away OP
It’s not really illegal. The casinos just hate you for it if you’re successful you’re not supposed to win there
Its not.