What's new
Fantasy Football - Footballguys Forums

Welcome to Our Forums. Once you've registered and logged in, you're primed to talk football, among other topics, with the sharpest and most experienced fantasy players on the internet.

Blackjack Guys (1 Viewer)

Joe Mammy

Footballguy
Just watched a great documentary on Prime: Inside the edge- a professional blackjack adventure.

Advantage player tours the countries' casinos, trespassed out of many. Wins, losses and great stories and footage. This is a new doc that is really interesting on what the casinos are really like. 

I have a buddy that is a pro and I've teamed with him before and cashed his chips when he didn't want the attention. He's been given the same trespass speech many times. This is the real deal.

 
Just watched a great documentary on Prime: Inside the edge- a professional blackjack adventure.

Advantage player tours the countries' casinos, trespassed out of many. Wins, losses and great stories and footage. This is a new doc that is really interesting on what the casinos are really like. 

I have a buddy that is a pro and I've teamed with him before and cashed his chips when he didn't want the attention. He's been given the same trespass speech many times. This is the real deal.
Its been on my Prime watchlist for a while. I'll go ahead and queue it up

 
This was pretty good.  What a life though.  He probably had a huge downturn because he couldn't concentrate there for a while.  

 
At the casino last night, I was playing one of those digital blackjack games. The one that always has an attractive dealer with cleavage hanging out. Didn't do well. I didn't play bad but the consistent 20s she was getting was insane. 

Those machines are rigged, right?

 
At the casino last night, I was playing one of those digital blackjack games. The one that always has an attractive dealer with cleavage hanging out. Didn't do well. I didn't play bad but the consistent 20s she was getting was insane. 

Those machines are rigged, right?
I believe they are.  I play them occasionally because at a quarter a hand you won’t lose much.  At the casino I play at, those machines are located at the bar so I can get “free” cocktails while playing these small stakes games.

 
At the casino last night, I was playing one of those digital blackjack games. The one that always has an attractive dealer with cleavage hanging out. Didn't do well. I didn't play bad but the consistent 20s she was getting was insane. 

Those machines are rigged, right?
I don’t think they are rigged. There’s not need to. They completely eliminate any chance of a player cheating or counting cards, the only ways to beat blackjack. 

 
So whats the process here? Do you argue and act shocked or do you just move along? 
For me there was never an accusation made.  I was sitting at a double deck table when someone grabbed me by the collarbone essentially and stood me up.  I turned around and it was a guy in a suit flanked by a security guard on each side and an older woman with the little librarian like glasses with the chain on them taking notes.  He called me by my name, told me his and said he was the shift supervisor at the casino.  Told me that I was to not play 21 anymore at the casino and that I was free to play any other game in the future if I wished, but never again 21.  He told me further action would be considered tresspass and I'd be removed.  So I wasn't thrown out exactly, but it was made clear that further attempts to play would lead to it.  I got what I'd consider a "brush back" that time.  I had another one years later as well.  But after this first one I've never played for long periods again.  i can play a little in Vegas now when I go for meetings but I never sit more than an hour in one spot and I never have a player card.  I also never gamble where I'm staying.  It doesn't mean they couldn't find me, I'm just not playing for the dollars or hours it would take to likely stand out to even get looked at.

On the original event, I had friends ask me why I didn't argue with them.  But like I said, he never said "you're a counter".  He just told me they didn't want my 21 play and they have that right.  Also, for people who wanted me to argue, I told them, it's a pretty intimidating thing to get that out of nowhere.  The next time I got a brush back I was more prepared, but in that moment it catches you off-guard.  You turn and are confronted by multiple people at once and it's easy to say you could do something different, but the whole encounter likely didn't last over a minute.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Pretty fascinating. Said that they can gain a 1% advantage by doing everything correctly outside getting lucky by getting a dealer hole carding etc. seems crazy to me that small advantage is very lucrative but I guess when you play that many hands it adds up. Casinos were built on small advantages. I’d avoid the Indian reservations though. Seems like a good way to end up buried somewhere. 

 
Last edited by a moderator:
I don’t think they are rigged. There’s not need to. They completely eliminate any chance of a player cheating or counting cards, the only ways to beat blackjack. 
True, when you have a solid profit margin worked in there is no need to cheat. 

 
Any legit casino is not going to use a machine that cheats. They win millions with no need to cheat. There’s way too much risk.
Your Occam's razor would seriously be defeating my logical argument if I were arguing that they were rigged to cheat, but I think I'm saying it might act more like a slot than a legit 21 enterprise. That's my hunch, anyway. I probably didn't express it very well. 

 
rockaction said:
Your Occam's razor would seriously be defeating my logical argument if I were arguing that they were rigged to cheat, but I think I'm saying it might act more like a slot than a legit 21 enterprise. That's my hunch, anyway. I probably didn't express it very well. 
What does that mean? Do you think they are programmed to favor the dealer more than regular blackjack? I’m genuinely curious because I would be shocked if there was any special programming going on.

 
What does that mean? Do you think they are programmed to favor the dealer more than regular blackjack? I’m genuinely curious because I would be shocked if there was any special programming going on.
That's why I'm not sure if I'm explaining myself well or if it even makes sense but I think that it goes on runs and ebbs more so than a traditional black jack game. In other words, your fate is predetermined by an algorithm already in place that pays out what it's going to pay out. The card selection never makes any sense at those machines. Like, at a table, you know with a dealer showing fifteen and drawing into your twenty that you have an advantage. Those tables? It doesn't seem quite so. I guess I'm saying the game play result doesn't seem to match the probability of the hands as they develop.

Anyway, I'm not sure how they work and a and I'm going out to dinner but it's an interesting research project. I'll check back in later and maybe bop around the internet for some info.

 
First bit of info I've found says algorithm like a slot, with predetermined payouts. It's not rigged more than any slot so meets gaming commission standards.

 
First bit of info I've found says algorithm like a slot, with predetermined payouts. It's not rigged more than any slot so meets gaming commission standards.
Well post the link, dammit! This is interesting ####!

 
Last edited by a moderator:
That's why I'm not sure if I'm explaining myself well or if it even makes sense but I think that it goes on runs and ebbs more so than a traditional black jack game. In other words, your fate is predetermined by an algorithm already in place that pays out what it's going to pay out. The card selection never makes any sense at those machines. Like, at a table, you know with a dealer showing fifteen and drawing into your twenty that you have an advantage. Those tables? It doesn't seem quite so. I guess I'm saying the game play result doesn't seem to match the probability of the hands as they develop.

Anyway, I'm not sure how they work and a and I'm going out to dinner but it's an interesting research project. I'll check back in later and maybe bop around the internet for some info.
Have you read Taleb's "Fooled By Randomness"?  If not I think it's highly worthwhile treatment of the subject.

Im confident that Nevada law requires that machines simulating physical gambling implements like cards or dice be programmed to perform like them.  Can't speak to whether casinos try to circumvent the law and regulatory machine that provides oversight.  

It's possible that the pseudo random nature of these machines don't perform exactly like the physical implements but, to the extent that's possible, it would be undetectable by a person playing the machine.  It would take computerized statistical tools and sample sizes spanning human lifetimes.  

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Have you read Taleb's "Fooled By Randomness"?  If not I think it's highly worthwhile treatment of the subject.

Im confident that Nevada law requires that machines simulating physical gambling implements like cards or dice be programmed to perform like them.  Can't speak to whether casinos try to circumvent the law and regulatory machine that provides oversight.  

It's possible that the pseudo random nature of these machines don't perform exactly like the physical implements but, to the extent that's possible, it would be undetectable by a person playing the machine.  It would take computerized statistical tools and sample sizes spanning human lifetimes.  
I was all ready to agree with you, but I don't know whether this link helps or hurts the answer we're looking for.

https://www.freep.com/story/entertainment/nightlife/2015/07/07/mark-pilarski-casinos-video-blackjack/29839107/

 
https://www.bestonlinecasino.com/guide/rng/

Which Online Games Use RNGs?

All modern online casino games use RNGs to provide the luck element of their games. Since we moved into digitally rendered, software-based versions of slots, blackjack, roulette and everything else an RNG casino offers, the games have used numbers to determine their outcomes. The way this works is quite simple. The RNG works in in tandem with casino software to produce fair outcomes. If you are playing blackjack, the second you hit deal the RNG will feed the software a unique value. This value is essentially the result of the hand. In our example of blackjack, that means the order of all the cards dealt in that hand are pre-determined and random. In a game of roulette, the RNG value is converted into a winning number on the roulette wheel. And when it comes to slots, the RNG dictates the outcome of every single spin. Below are our favourite slot games where you can try this principle on your own.

After playing a few rounds for free, you’ll see that all games can be boiled down the RNG – and the rest is just decoration. The software creates the cards or paylines, provides us with gameplay actions and decision, and, of course, it’s the RNG that ultimately decides if we win or lose

 
In other words, it's a preterdermined result and the cards dealt only give you the feel of gameplay. That's much different than a declining deck and its values and probability rates therefrom. 

 
If you're comparing six deck physical to one deck computer sure it could feel different.  You could see the As up to six times in the same hand. 

But that's because they're literally different games, not because the alg is rigged.  

 
Shula-holic said:
For me there was never an accusation made.  I was sitting at a double deck table when someone grabbed me by the collarbone essentially and stood me up.  I turned around and it was a guy in a suit flanked by a security guard on each side and an older woman with the little librarian like glasses with the chain on them taking notes.  He called me by my name, told me his and said he was the shift supervisor at the casino.  Told me that I was to not play 21 anymore at the casino and that I was free to play any other game in the future if I wished, but never again 21.  He told me further action would be considered tresspass and I'd be removed.  So I wasn't thrown out exactly, but it was made clear that further attempts to play would lead to it.  I got what I'd consider a "brush back" that time.  I had another one years later as well.  But after this first one I've never played for long periods again.  i can play a little in Vegas now when I go for meetings but I never sit more than an hour in one spot and I never have a player card.  I also never gamble where I'm staying.  It doesn't mean they couldn't find me, I'm just not playing for the dollars or hours it would take to likely stand out to even get looked at.

On the original event, I had friends ask me why I didn't argue with them.  But like I said, he never said "you're a counter".  He just told me they didn't want my 21 play and they have that right.  Also, for people who wanted me to argue, I told them, it's a pretty intimidating thing to get that out of nowhere.  The next time I got a brush back I was more prepared, but in that moment it catches you off-guard.  You turn and are confronted by multiple people at once and it's easy to say you could do something different, but the whole encounter likely didn't last over a minute.
Wow......that is riveting! 

 
In other words, it's a preterdermined result and the cards dealt only give you the feel of gameplay. That's much different than a declining deck and its values and probability rates therefrom. 
It’s no different from playing at the table with a deck that is continuously shuffled. The order of the cards is predetermined, and there’s no way to count cards, etc.

 
It’s no different from playing at the table with a deck that is continuously shuffled. The order of the cards is predetermined, and there’s no way to count cards, etc.
Oh, I see. You're talking continuous shuffle vs. a shoe of any sort. I think that's where we're missing the mark. I'm still thinking of single, double, and six shoe deck mode of playing. 

 
Oh, I see. You're talking continuous shuffle vs. a shoe of any sort. I think that's where we're missing the mark. I'm still thinking of single, double, and six shoe deck mode of playing. 
There are tables where they immediately feed the used cards back into the shuffle machine, so there’s no chance to count or use previous cards as some kind of indicator of future cards. I’m pretty sure the electronic machines are pretty much like that. 

 
There are tables where they immediately feed the used cards back into the shuffle machine, so there’s no chance to count or use previous cards as some kind of indicator of future cards. I’m pretty sure the electronic machines are pretty much like that. 
Why doesn’t every casino do that? Wouldn’t that completely do away with card counting? Unless they have no problem with counters in general, just those really good at it. 

 
Why doesn’t every casino do that? Wouldn’t that completely do away with card counting? Unless they have no problem with counters in general, just those really good at it. 
It would, but most blackjack players hate it. Most people think they can count cards to some extent, and the casino is more than happy to let them think they can. So I think your guess is probably correct.

 
It would, but most blackjack players hate it. Most people think they can count cards to some extent, and the casino is more than happy to let them think they can. So I think your guess is probably correct.
That is the right strategy - encourage counting until someone proves too good at it. I've known plenty of people who felt they could beat the house. None of them ever did - I'd hear "yea, I was up a few thousand... should have stopped" and I'd smile and think "and that's exactly how it's supposed to work".  

 
That is the right strategy - encourage counting until someone proves too good at it. I've known plenty of people who felt they could beat the house. None of them ever did - I'd hear "yea, I was up a few thousand... should have stopped" and I'd smile and think "and that's exactly how it's supposed to work".  
Yeah, doesn’t seem easy at all. Not only do you have to count cards with everything going on around you, but you also have to memorize the correct percentage play in every situation. On top of that, have the right personality and discipline to continue doing what’s not working at times cause you’re looking at only a 1% advantage so there will be losing streaks (dude in the video was down 300 grand from the top at one point). All of this while acting like you don’t know what you’re doing so as not to attract attention. 

 

Users who are viewing this thread

Top