I hate traffic. I will do almost anything to avoid driving in traffic. If I HAVE to drive during rush hour, I try to bring my infant son with me so I can use the HOV (high occupancy vehicle) lane bypass getting stuck in the slow lanes. I just can’t understand spending an hour getting somewhere when I can be strategic about what time I drive, or finding a legal way to use the HOV lane, so I can get to the same place in half an hour. It’s just a way to get double the return on my time. It’s the same thing as picking a checkout line with no one in it at the grocery store, or looking for the gas station pump with the fewest cars lined up for it.  I view everything this way. And I believe what has made me obsessed with this idea is card counting. I see advantage card counters pay no attention to the choices they make concerning playing conditions, and it drives me nuts. When I walk into a casino, I’m not there for social interaction; I’m there to make money. Every decision I make is based on that concept. If I walk into a casino and have an option between a table with 4 people playing at it and another table that has no one playing at it, I know I can play twice as many hands in an hour with just me and the dealer. If there’s two identical tables, one with a fast dealer and the other with a slow dealer, I’ll pick the fast dealer (because odds are I’m waiting on the dealer much more than they are waiting on me). If I have the option between a game with 8 decks and average rules, or 6 decks with better rules, it’s a no-brainer. I’m not going to work twice as hard to make the same amount of money. I’m going to be strategic about the conditions I chose.  A lot of newbie card counters think the best way to make more money at it is to learn an incredibly complex card counting system. But consider this: if you can play a complex system that generates an extra 20% higher $/hr, but I can play a simpler system for 50% more hands/hr, I’m going to make much more money than you. But I better go. I have to run some errands before the afternoon rush hour.

Ben reviews the book, “Burning The Tables in Las Vegas–Keys to Success in Blackjack and in Life.”

This ad for the movie has Jim Sturgess talk about card counting as the cardinal sin of vegas because you are beating the house. It is comical how casinos suggest that you should come and beat them at their game to lure you in the doors but if they find that you are actually doing it they kick you out.

I just got done watching an old episode of numb3rs from season 2 called, “Double Down.” You can download it on i-tunes if you haven’t seen it.

The episode features a card counting team that ends up getting shot down one by one (literally) and the police department investigates. If you know anything about this show it always involves some sort of high level math problems that end up solving the case. In this case, the math featured on the show is the math behind card counting.

The show does a pretty good job of showing what card counting really is and what team play looks like. The thing the show does that is ridiculous is it portrays card counting as really dangerous.

They show also investigates whether card counting is legal. The show accurately portrays how casinos will often lump card counters into the cheater category, where mathematicians understand that it is just using a mathematical system to beat a game fair and square.

Spoiler alert: it turns out that the team of card counters were not just card counting but also laundering money. Apparently, they also knew how to shuffle track the automatic shuffler through an algorithm leaked from the consultant who help make the Automatic Shuffling Machines (which is cheating…or stealing atleast). If they knew how to do this I have no idea why they were still counting cards. Anyways, you piss off some money launderers and steal secret algorithms then I guess that might get you shot. But counting cards is not as dangerous as the show portrays. In fact, I feel less safe getting a physical then counting cards.

There will be a lot of interest in card counting after the movie “21″ comes out on March 28th. How will this affect you if you if you count cards professionally. Here are a couple thoughts:

Positives:

1. As far as casinos should be concerned, the popularity of card counting is the best thing that ever happened for the game of blackjack. Since people know blackjack can be beaten there are more people who are drawn to play it with an unfounded confidence that they can beat it too, while there are very few people who actually learn what it really takes to beat the game. So the casinos get more people playing at their tables and more people handing them money.

2. Some casinos have really good rules and single deck or double deck games to seduce those type of players. If there is a jump in interest in beating blackjack more casinos may create better rules to compete for these kind of players. Real card counters will benefit from these better rules t00.

3. If there are more people playing blackjack at the tables who think they can beat the game this will add cover for those who are actually doing it. More cover means you will last longer. (I think the best cover any card counter could ask for is for the general blackjack player to spread there bet without a systematic counting system but on whether or not they just saw a string of high or low cards.)

Negatives:

1. Occasionally I have had dealers and pits spot me as a card counter because of my betting patterns, but generally (outside of Vegas) most people don’t know what to look for. After every pit boss, dealer, and security monitor in the country watches the movie will have card counting on the brain and they will understand better what to look for. This might mean less playing time.

You hear every single type of superstition at the blackjack table. Lots of people like to think they understand the “flow of the cards”. I’ve sat next to a guy who was trying to teach me how to think the value of the dealer’s undercard into existence, stating quantum theories and abstract philosophies as proof that such powers do exist. Fellow gamblers don’t want you jumping in and out of shoes or changing the number of hands your playing because you will somehow screw up the cards. “Third base” often feels the pressure to stand on hands he or she should hit so to not steal the dealer’s bust card. Some people get mad at the dealer thinking he or she is somehow responsible for the cards that come out.

In order to be a successful blackjack player you have to realize that this is all nonsense. The cards are shuffled and everything is completely random. The cards have no mind of their own. I can’t think cards into existence, and just because you’ve noticed some sort of pattern or “flow of the cards” does not mean that the same pattern or flow will continue on the next hand. It is all random.

There is an near infinite sequence of cards that can come out of a six deck shoe and the only thing that you can be sure of is that mathematically the more you play blackjack the more you are going to loose because the casino has the edge. The only weapon a blackjack player has at his or her disposal is to use a system of counting to know which cards have come out of the shoe, and thus, which cards have a higher probabiliy of coming out next. If the shoe is saturated with high cards the advantage shifts to the player. So if you play basic strategy blackjack when there is a disproportionate amount of high cards left then you will win in the end.

Don’t try and pretend like you have a read on the cards, or a system, or an eye for patterns. These are just excuses to justify gambling. Learn a simple counting system like Hi-Lo and know when you have the advantage.

I personally have learned “The Halves Count” at one point.  My team has recently considered switching to a count called the “Hi-Lo Lite”.  Basically there’s two types of counts that differ from what we are using: ones that are more complicated and generate more EV and ones that are simpler and generate less. This may sound obvious to some of you, but it is what always lies at the root of this issue: the ones that are more complicated are generally much more complicated. The problem is that we have generally found that the increase in EV is so small that it is not worth the difficulty or complication. One thing that needs to be considered is that as the complexity goes up so do the mistakes. Especially in the actual counting systems, where often times people are pushed to the max in certain situations that require extreme multi-tasking. We have also considered counts that are simpler as far as deviations but the cost in EV was not worth it.

If certain players are looking to increase EV, the absolute easiest thing is to add deviations. In the immediate sense they are not worth that much. To learn more about EV and about Deviations go to our video course.

I was sitting next to a guy at a double deck table last week who was on a streak. He was payed out 1000 dollars for his recent win doubling down on an 11 and drawing a 10. He grabbed the chips and held them up, “Thanks for the temporary money,” he said to the dealer.”Temporary money?” I asked.”Well, when I win big I just keep playing until I give it all back.”This guy understood that playing blackjack in a casino is a losing proposition. He knew that if he bet money at the table, it would be smart to think of it as ‘temporary money.’ It helps take the edge off the losing streaks.You know as well as anyone else that blackjack, in the long run, is a negative valuation game. The casino will beat you in the long run because they have the advantage (that is how they can afford those nice buildings). Even if you just went on a streak plan on giving that money back later or stop playing all together.A lot of people come up with a whole bunch of psychological mind tricks to ignore this fact. One of those mind tricks is “I know how to count cards.” But you don’t really know how to do it. You just know enough to think you know how to do it. Maybe you read a book or watched a video online showing you the plus-minus system.Most of the time, when I’m talking to someone who uses this mind trick to help them justify playing a game they can’t win, I find out they don’t even use basic strategy. They are playing with the odds against them and just hoping to get lucky and stay lucky. This is just mindless gambling.I urge you, if you find yourself playing blackjack consistently, learn how to beat the game. We have all of the training you will need at our site for free. You can learn the skills and take the edge away from the house. Don’t learn halfway. Don’t pretend like you know enough. Make this happen for yourself right now.

In this episode of our Blackjack Apprenticeship Podcast, we discuss the four most common myths that surround card counting.