''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...
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.
Quote from: Gizmotron on March 31, 2017, 02:46:53 PM
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.
Tin foil hats won't protect you from free thinking.
Quote from: Gizmotron on March 31, 2017, 03:05:02 PM
Tin foil hats won't protect you from free thinking.
Free thinking it's not my problem, maybe you see in others your problems...
Quote from: Blue_Angel on March 31, 2017, 03:08:26 PM
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.
Quote from: Gizmotron on March 31, 2017, 03:30:45 PM
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.
:thumbsup:
QuoteYou 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
It's just a phase.
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.
@ 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??
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
@ 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)
Quote from: Blue_Angel on April 01, 2017, 11:31:50 AMDoes 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
Quote from: Eight Iron on April 01, 2017, 01:11:32 PM
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
And how often is the average for the dealer to get busted?
33.61% is the average probability for the dealer to get busted, or once per 3 hands approximately.
Total BJ Actions: 594768
Hits to 1st 2-Cards: 297153
Total Non-Bust Hands: 97735
Total Dealer Bust Hands (*): 199880
Percentage Dealer Bust: 199880 / 594768 = 33.61%
Natural Blackjacks (10+A): 64 / 1326 = 4.83%
Total Complete BJ Hands: 297615
source: http://saliu.com/blackjackodds.html (http://saliu.com/blackjackodds.html)
An accumulated bust probability for player and dealer when player is using basic strategy is as follows:
1) Player_No-bust AND Dealer_No-bust: 0.665 * 0.665 = 44% of hands (half favorable to Dealer, half favorable to Player)
2) Player_No-bust AND Dealer_Bust: 0.665 * 0.335 = 22% (all favorable to Player)
3) Player_Bust AND Dealer_No-bust: <0.335 * 0.665 => 18% (all favorable to Dealer)
4) Player_Bust AND Dealer_Bust: <0.335 * 0.335 => 8% (all favorable to Dealer).
In situation 1), Dealer and Player have an equal opportunity to win, lose, or tie.
Let's divide the 44 out of 100 hands equally:
22 favorable to Dealer, 22 in favor of Player, thus Player wins 22 + 22 = 44 hands
Dealer wins 22 + 18 + 8 = 48 hands
We notice now only 92 hands out of 100, mystery? NO!
The 8 missing hands are those 8 cases when the Dealer does NOT even play his/her hands out — the simultaneous bust cases.
source: http://saliu.com/blackjackodds.html
For those of you who are interested, here is an interview with the man who started it all..............................."Al Francesa"
http://www.blackjackforumonline.com/content/francescoint.html
1. Yes, you can get at most a 1.5 % advantage counting cards when the deck is positive.......but usually only about 30% of the time is the deck positive.
2. There is tremendous variance in your bankroll when you count....you can "count" on losing 50% of your bankroll at any particular time
3. The best way to play is with a team of counters who play different shoes and signal in a big player to only play positive shoes
4. The casinos are wise to all this stuff so playing 21 is basically a waste of time, especially if you play by yourself and vary your bets in a 6:1 ratio......you will get barred or told you can play any game in the casino except 21
5. Ken Uston who is described in the article unfortunately passed away in 1987 due to a cocaine overdose.
IMO, I think a lot of potential people fall prey to this kind of publicity viewed as 'easy money'. Also, those blackjack players that are dedicated to full time play, once they start to vary there money widely AND prevail, no matter if they are winning by counting or not--put undo pressure on themselves.
After talking with many that know how to count like 'second nature' the highest majority of them tell me the advantage is no difference then when they get on a heater at a one-on-one table and they just pump it up and ride it. Some of them have told me, they have lost more by counting and wagering heavy on the count then if they just would have played without relying on the count.
I used to play blackjack regularly and when I used to constantly win (without any form of counting) I would just pump it up and ride it, then go back to my regular bet. But no, the regular bet was not table minimum. I never ever had anything said to me, not once and I have won some pretty large sums without losing sums equal to what I won at the same casinos.
My conclusion is that it has been a very well elaborated deception.
By whom?
The casinos of course and don't forget that Thorpe earned from stocks and selling books, not by playing BJ...
The clever learn from their mistakes and the wise from others mistakes.
The problem with blackjack is that the 1.5 % advantage ( yes it is a mathematically proven advantage for the customer) holds true for a very large sample size of many shoes.....and you have to deal with tremendous variance in your bankroll curve...............so if you start to play when you get some bad shoes and lose 50 % of your bankroll, well then you can say that counting sucks and is a waste of time.
Also the count is positive only about 30 % of the time which means that you have to bet into a negative count at the table minimum for sometimes hours and hours ( paying rent ).
Counting at 21 for a single player is a waste of time.........you will eventually get barred and the bankroll drawdowns, coupled with the heat from the pit boss cockroaches, will eventually destroy your brain cells.
The only way to play is with a team such as the MIT team or Ken Uston's team in the early 1970's.......but even then the bankroll variance is brutal, even with only betting into a positive count.
Like any other business, whether playing blackjack as a team, betting sports, playing poker, baccarat, roulette, trading stocks/futures or opening a doughnut shop, you must be sufficiently bankrolled to handle the sometimes vicious negative variances and risk a conservative % of bankroll on each bet or trade in order to survive the inevitable bankroll downturns, so that you can enter the promised land of the long run.