Is card counting still possible, or have casinos implemented enough countermeasures to defeat its advantage?
1. Placing minimum bets when odds are in the casino's favor. 2. Placing large bets when odds are in the player's favor.
This makes the betting patterns of solo counters very different and easily identifiable from average joes.
Some players do try to add some variance and make intentional non-optimal plays to avoid detection. But every non-optimal play costs money and doing it too frequently eats up any potential profits.
Adding more decks doesn't fully prevent advantage play. More decks aren't harder to count. Adding more decks lowers the variance of the odds distribution through a shoe.
In a one-deck shoe the odds vary in a "spiky" way. It's more likely to be highly favored for the casino or highly favored for the player.
An eight-deck shoe the odds vary in a far smoother way. Most of the time they'll be slightly in favor of the casino or slightly in favor of the player.
A one-deck shoe is better for an advantage player because they can sit out when the odds are unfavorable and make very profitable bets when the odds are highly in their favor. But you can still make money by playing a lot of hands correctly in a eight-deck shoe.
So most people who do this come up with clever ways to continue to do so while being less easy to detect, like having multiple people work together. One person stays at the table, betting at a fairly constant rate, while signaling to a partner when the odds are in the players favor so the partner joins the table and places big bets.
The thing is, this all takes a good amount of work and effort, requires a sufficient bankroll to begin with so you don't just have a small run if bad luck and run out of money, and does have some risk of gambler's ruin or just getting detected by the casino and banned.
At some point, it's just a risky investment combined with a job. And you can probably do better by just starting a company or investing your money and getting a job.
This is true on Fremont Street, where the pit bosses are fossils and you can probably still get a one way free ride to the desert if you piss off the wrong people. Meanwhile, in Paradise, nobody cares unless it's team play. At least not at the tables the public can get to (so max bet around 20k).
I played a few hands in Vegas on a lark while attending a conference. I was resoundingly scolded for taking someone else’s cards because I should have stayed rather than hit.
An individual can also play multiple hands at the same table (or virtually) to gain this knowledge advantage, though it quickly becomes more obvious.
It terms of etiquette, it's fine to be obvious about counting a single deal, it's the long game that gets you the most advantage and kicked out.
Counters can still make a profit but it's harder. But there are some extra tricks they can use: for instance they can come with a group, set a couple of players at tables and have the others walk around. As soon as some table becomes profitable, the playing member will give some sign and his colleagues will sit down and play at his table.
They had single-deck blackjack that had a unique side bet. Basically you could make additional bets that you would get dealt a natural blackjack, with a couple variations like getting an extra payout for suited blackjack.
This side bet was even more amenable to counting than standard BJ. The morning after I saw it, I did a quick simulation and discovered that the odds turned player-friendly if you went a single hand without seeing an ace.
I went down and played it. There was a crowd on Saturday night, and the deck was shuffled basically every hand. No good. Sunday morning I had the table to myself. I bet aggressively, starting with $5 min bets and going to $50 if I went two hands without an ace.
The dealer knew almost immediately that I was counting. He made a few snide remarks, but didn't kick me out. No idea why not. Maybe because the side bets are usually suckers' bets, so that gave me some camouflage.
I had a great run of luck, doing way better than expected. In an hour or so I was up $1500. Along the way I hit a suited BJ for $250. The dealer called over the pit boss, who told him to pay me, and then side eyed me for the rest of the session. I left only because I had to get to my flight.
The cashier's cage gave me a hassle about cashing in brown $500 chips. I guess they rarely got any big winners there.
Overall great experience for me. I'm not at all surprised they closed the casino soon after.
I love the implication when someone is asked to leave but, "the rest of you, you losers can stay."
Note that due to a New Jersey court ruling, casinos in Atlantic City actually can't bar people for counting cards. In general the game conditions there are worse to make up for that.
pit boss was eyeing me a while and i was waiting for them to approach and cap my bets first if anything
Dealer change outs aren't the worst reason to tip them and walk and away a few hands later.
It was a miserable afternoon. I don't think the dealer cared, but the other players to my left were pissed when I asked for hits on seemingly nonsensical hands. "Hey, you stole my card again" was a typical complaint. I ended up slightly ahead but never played again.
Wouldn't they be on your right?
Also, celebrate their wins, especially in America.
As for why a casino might let a counter stay: many try but not all are good at it so they're still losing money. A counter might not be accurate, or misplay other decisions like splits and doubles, or not bet bigger enough when it's favorable, or tilt after some bad luck and bet bigger when it's not favorable enough.
Counting works in general because the player's advantage is concentrated into a small number of possible hands. Almost all of your profit comes from blackjack hands paying 3:2, with a bit more from some particular cases like splitting aces and doubling on 11. For everything else, you lose more hands than you win (the asymmetry is that if player and dealer both bust, dealer still takes your money), and you're just trying to tread water to get to the good stuff. The good stuff all requires aces and tens, and counting is to identify the cases when there are more of those available.
Besides counting, the other way to play blackjack profitably is shuffle tracking. It's possible to watch as aces go into the discard pile and visually track them through the shuffle. When you know an ace is coming up soon (even within a range of the next 20 cards), bet big since even a 5% extra chance of an ace makes the expected value of that hand profitable in your favor. Casinos also know to foil this and will eject you in the same way, for a pattern of suddenly making big bets even if they don't necessarily know or prove you're doing it.
His whole book is like 'why you probably shouldnt learn how to count cards' and its because its a massive pain in the ass and you can probably make more money doing something like poker instead. It's fun from what I hear though every person I know who has the mental math skills to do this has gone to vegas only to get limited at around 1000$ or so. Sometimes they even catch you within like 3-5 hands haha
Fun fact, Ed Thorpe developed blackjack basic strategy and card counting through computer simulation and is pretty much the guy responsible for casinos having to change all their rules at one point with the game. One thing I thought was funny was how steven bridges was trying the fake beard thing, it seemed like the most obvious tell that he was doing some funny business to me, it looked like shit haha
https://graham-kendall.com/blog/claude-shannon-edward-thorp-...
You also reminded me of a work trip I had in Scottsdale around when poker had first taken off. Within one round of blinds I and a woman across from me had figured out we were the only ones who had a clue and we just stayed out of each others way. I showed up to a work meeting the next day on ~2 hours sleep after taking old business guys money all night (it would be fun to be in my early 20s again lol).
Where they come down hard is team play. So wonging and such is going to get you backed off, if not trespassed, pretty much immediately if they catch you.
If you do want to try your hand at counting, I recommend starting with a simple ace/five count[2]. It's easy enough that you can still have fun bantering without messing it up, even after a few drinks.
And the other trick for being a successful grinding counter is to toke liberally. When all the employees, including the pit bosses, like having you around, it makes you considerably less likely to get backed off.
[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.01427
[2] https://wizardofodds.com/games/blackjack/ace-five-count/
If anyone reading this is intrigued by games of chance with an available skill edge and is considering learning advantage Blackjack, I'd highly recommend learning Poker instead. You're not playing against the house, you're playing against other players, and the house is not incentivized to clamp down on the edges available (though of course they take a cut of everyone's winnings). And it's an endlessly deep strategic game instead of a mechanistic counting game that advantage Blackjack is, which is to say, it's actually fun.
Less and less single and double deck tables, dealers placing the cut card nearer the middle of the shoe, more restrictions on doubling down and they changed blackjack to pay 6 to 5 instead of 3 to 2.
Possible enough that to be elite your life turns into a sort of arbitrage trying to scam casinos in exchange for a mediocre salary.
1. normal count
2. aces seen
3. face cards seen
4. <7 cards seen
Card counting is a meaneal mental task you can train yourself at, regardless of how many decks there are. It's more about how fast the cards move on the table and keeping up.