Backed-off for Counting (Blackjack) (1 Viewer)

[Mental Nomad]

This is what I was alluding to in my "grab from the till" metaphor.

I think the problem with using "grabbing from the till" as an analogy is that the till example is outright theft. It violates both rules and laws.

Card counting does not violate laws and is not theft.

Good analogies help people understand related issues; bad analogies can lead to confusion.

In my experience "the dealer wants the player to win" is an old wives tale. With some exceptions (pretty girls, people I was genuinely having fun with or people who tipped REALLY well) I wanted everyone to lose.

I was the opposite. With some exceptions (people really being assholes), I wanted everyone to win. And I was always glad to drop tokes, even small ones, knowing that they add up and that I'm pulling my weight.

For my personal edification, at what point does a business ask a known card counter to leave? After they've won $10,000? $50,000? $100,000?

They shouldn't be allowed to ask a card counter to leave - and that's exactly what the courts ruled in Atlantic City (circa 1982). If you're going to offer the game, that's the risk you take on - that some folks understand how to play it better than others.

Well, whether they should or shouldn't be "allowed" to ask a counter to leave is irrelevant... in NJ, the law says they can't. Elsewhere, the law may say otherwise - it's perfectly possible for somewhere to rule that a casino is allowed to ask a counter to leave, or deny them the game. Private business sometimes have discretion about whom to serve, as long as they don't violate any laws.

But still, the casino can take easy countermeasures against a counter. Those countermeasures can be annoying to the other players, though, so they'd rather not. They'd rather the counters just go away, because, honestly, the game's not being dealt for them.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not against card counters. I know card counting very well, and not because of having worked in the casinos - it's because I knew counting well that I ended up working in the casinos! I've interacted with prominent card-counting authors, and I did work in computational card counting analysis for new games back in the early 90's. So I get it, I even considered a career as a counter.

But I also understand what business the casino is in... the service they provide is entertainment in the form of gambling. Rather than charge fees for entrance, or take a commission on winnings, they take their profit in the form of average expectation. The risk they're willing to take is variance in that expectation. But they are NOT there to be in the business of offering a game with a negative expectation for the house - and that's what card counting achieves. And that's not a risk they're willing to take.