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[Blue_Angel]

''Imagine that you were to find someone and fill his head with stories of all the riches and the "wonderful" life of a professional blackjack player.
Now imagine that you were to teach him how to count cards, under the condition that he had to split his profits with you.
Imagine that you are a very bright college student who is attending a major college and you have a very good gift of gab.

Your gift is SO persuasive that you somehow con 200 people into working for you.
Two hundred people making $80 a week comes out to $16,000 a week, half of it is YOURS.

Oh – I almost forgot.
Part of the agreement was that ALL of the comps belong to YOU.
So you open a travel agency and make extra money SELLING room comps.

Put this all together, and that should be strong enough to get you into the "Blackjack Hall of BS".

The movie was 98% hogwash!
In the words of the immortal Paul Harvey; NOW you know the REST of the story.''

Let's face it, counting never provided any advantage, not now not ever!

By counting you could determine the portion of ''high value'' cards among the undealt cards of the deck and those aces and 10's make it easier for a BJ to occur, but as you might know the dealer is getting BJ's too and in some cases dealer's BJ beats your BJ...

1) Dealer uses cards from the same deck and sometimes his/her BJ beats yours

2) By ''knowing'' that there are plenty of high value cards it doesn't determine in which turn those cards are going to be dealt

The whole thing was a fallacy, maybe a convenient and convincing one, but misleading nonetheless.
Besides why counting provides advantage only on BJ?
Aren't any other card games with depleted possibilities, such as baccarat, poker...etc??

Do you understand why those ''experts'' created a whole generation of idiots?
BlackJack is one of the very few table games in which the player can bet only one side of the ''coin''...in the contrary, on Baccarat (player vs banker), Roulette (EC bets), Craps (P,DP bets) you have both of the opposite sides available, thus cheating is irrelevant...

[Gizmotron]

Thank you for showing your intelligence so clearly. It's not often that people are willing to go so far. I'm also fascinated in your outing of the foolishness of MIT students and just how pleased casinos are too. Who knew they had nothing to fear.

[Blue_Angel]

Thank you for showing your intelligence so clearly. It's not often that people are willing to go so far. I'm also fascinated in your outing of the foolishness of MIT students and just how pleased casinos are too. Who knew they had nothing to fear.

Whether you don't understand or you don't want to understand it's not my problem.

[Gizmotron]

Tin foil hats won't protect you from free thinking.

[Blue_Angel]

Tin foil hats won't protect you from free thinking.

Free thinking it's not my problem, maybe you see in others your problems...

[Gizmotron]

Free thinking it's not my problem, maybe you see in others your problems...

Look, you obviously see yourself as in the right. I have done that many times. I used to be a bone headed system chaser too. It's the first phase of gambling experience. I grew out of it. I long ago stopped trying to seek approval from those I once thought important enough to grant me satisfaction and acceptance. It took longer to discern disagreement. It's not a threat to me and I'm not reinforcing a phony self image of myself. I'm not suggesting you are either, but you are in phase one. Just take it to the casino and make your millions. You need to exhaust yourself in system theory. Once you have learned from that you will have a different opinion. You have two choices here. You can learn that systems don't work or you will end up being like Turbo Genius who never gives up. TG is the eternal crash-test-dummy. He is a phenomenon of nature however.

[alrelax]

I'm not suggesting you are either, but you are in phase one. Just take it to the casino and make your millions. You need to exhaust yourself in system theory. Once you have learned from that you will have a different opinion.

[Blue_Angel]

You can learn that systems don't work or you will end up being like Turbo Genius who never gives up. TG is the eternal crash-test-dummy. He is a phenomenon of nature however.

I admire TG's devotion, a never give up attitude is the fundamental element of winners.
Even when individuals like TG fail, their failures surpasses the successes of others...

''The real failure is to stop trying'' Jean Baptiste

''I haven't failed, I've found 1000 ways to light a single lamp'' Thomas Edison

[Gizmotron]

It's just a phase.

[Blue_Angel]

It's just a phase.

Just your opinion.

[Eight Iron]

I never believed that MIT story either.

Counting does provide an advantage, but the results are exceedingly unreliable, and even the most experienced counters see losses in the tens of thousands.

Very few people can succeed at it.

It does not help a player win hands, or improve his win percentage.  The dealer can also receive the high cards, but the advantage of a high count is that it improves the strength of the splits, hits and doubles. The player can split and double. The dealer cannot.

You don't win any more hands than expected, but you can have a better chance of winning those hands at the higher bet levels when the TC is positive.  Which is not often.

If a player could sit out the negative and zero counts, and bet $100, only under favorable conditions where he had the advantage of a true count of +1 or higher, he can only expect to win $34 for every 100 hands that he bet.

https://www.888casino.com/blog/apheat/the-worlds-greatest-blackjack-card-counter/

You can't do that in the real world, and most card counters ignore that fact.

[Blue_Angel]

@ 8 iron, despite I'm not a BJ expert I believe you are right and I'd like to ask if the high cards also help the dealer to be busted, correct?
I've never understood why the casino made the rule for dealer to hit from 16 or soft 17, in my point of view (regardless card counting) you have more chance to busted rather than not.
But the common sense says that casinos would not adapt an unfavorable rule against them (the dealer).
Am I missing something??

[Bally6354]

Blue Angel, the advantage to the casino is that they always draw last and so some players are already out of the game before the dealer takes their final card/s.

I knew several counters in the early 90's. One of them even showed me his diary with his monthly wins/losses. He could go 2/3 months losing befoe turning it around and going into the black. The shortness of the positive true count can lead to high variance because as you rightly say, the dealer can draw the high cards as well.

The real money and big advantage was in the shuffle tracking. An expert could cut into a rich ace deck and lay out some big bets straight away. Playing solo, they could also cut a lot of the crappy cards out as well or speed through them to get to where they wanted to be. These were the ones who I know got banned petty quick. The nickle+dime counters were largely left alone because they seemed to attract a lot of 'wannabe' counters who didn't have the bankroll, patience or skill to make anything from it and invariably ended up losing more.

cheers

[Blue_Angel]

@ Bally, thanks for your reply, however you don't address my question properly.
Let's say that I stand on 15 and the dealer hits from 15 and busted, I could have hit but it wasn't in my best interest to do so, but dealer is obliged by the rules and since 7,8,9,10 and all figures combined are more than aces,2,3,4,5 and 6 the dealer has a better chance to get busted.
Do you know how many times I've won by standing on 12 or 13?
Does it make sense this rule? (from casinos perspective)

[Eight Iron]

Does it make sense this rule? (from casinos perspective)

The house offers favorable rules in order to lure players.  It doesn't matter what the rules are, as long as the house has the edge and the players keep coming.

Player favorable situations don't occur often enough to hurt the house.

Players hope for a blackjack, or a split or double where they are expected to win 65% of the time, but blackjacks only occur once in every twenty-one hands, double situations once in 10.3 hands, and splits only once in forty hands.

http://krigman.casinocitytimes.com/article/how-often-can-you-expect-to-split-or-double-in-blackjack-5449