Optical Recognition System To Foil Card Counting? 427
Adair writes "Wired is running this article about a new Optical Recognition System by MindPlay being evaluated by some casinos to keep constant track of table game play in order to identify card counters by their patterns of play. The software, using 14 digital cameras around the table, can keep track of every card played, amounts bet, and even tell the difference between your drink, napkin, cards, chips, and ashtrays."
Card Counters (Score:5, Insightful)
What's wrong with counting anyway...?!?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Marked Deck! (Score:5, Insightful)
So the house is allowed to use a marked deck!! Surely that can't be allowed, and even if it is how long before someone else works out how to read the cards.
This might catch the egregious/greedy... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Card Counters (Score:4, Insightful)
So PAYING attention to the game and being creafull is CHEATING. I hope this idea never makes its way into Chess!!
And since I am playing to win. how am I cheating other players when I do my best to win. If they aren't doing their damn best to beat me then they are morons.
Has anyone else ever tried card counting? (Score:5, Insightful)
It just doesn't make sense to kick an individual out. Any pit boss will see a table running up using card counting, and can (by casino rules) ask them to leave.
Re:They already do this (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Playing well = cheating (Score:4, Insightful)
So... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What's wrong with counting anyway...?!?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullshit. Why are so many people who think they know something about gambling so bad at math? If you're going to play, for example, 100 hands of blackjack, it doesn't improve your odds one damn bit to spread those 100 hands over several days or weeks rather than play them at the same sitting. And if you are in any way keeping track of cards that have been played (even some of them) and you know the remaining deck is in your favor, then the GET UP AND WALK logic is extremely flawed, since when you do come back you will not have important knowledge that you have now and it will cost you some number of bets that favor the house before you can get that information again.
Walking with small gains might keep you from playing as much as someone who does not, and in that sense it would lower your losses over time based on a favorable house percentage, but walking away from a favorable player percentage when you have determined that it is there is extremely bad play, particularly if your intention is as you expressed to come back and fight another day.
In other news (Score:2, Insightful)
"The chances of a gambler actually winning the jackpot on our slot machines is almost nil. They may get some minor wins, but when they strike a jackpot, there's no chance that it's just luck"
Seriously, why do casinos allow games (like blackjack) that can be cheated by counting the cards and knowing some laws of probability? It's like running software that has a known exploit and just hunting down crackers that know how use it instead of fixing the software.
Re:What's wrong with counting anyway...?!?! (Score:4, Insightful)
Simply put, if a casino or gambling house changes the rules of blackjack so card counting is no longer allowed, they shouldn't be allowed to still call the game "blackjack", because its got different rules. Also, if you want to cheat on your customers by changing the odds, you should be bound by law to inform those customers of your intent before you invite them to play your game.
Re:heh (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article:
"We've been telling the casinos not to use the computer to count the cards," says Nevada Gaming Control Board member Scott Scherer. "If players aren't allowed to use a computer to count, then the casino shouldn't be allowed to."
I think the key word there is shouldn't. I don't doubt the casino will use every advantage they can get.
Re:Card Counters (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course it is.
They could essentially make card counting not be an advantage just by playing with a really huge deck (say take 1000 packs and shuffle them together, then start dealing from the top, stop after dealing 52 cards and reshuffle. They don't do this because they are trying to pretend you are playing a card game, and hence there is some skill involved, when you are actually playing a game of chance.
However, they can't actually allow it to degenerate into a game of skill. The only way they can prevent this, while keeping up the pretense, is to throw out anyone who shows any signs of life from the neck up.
Casinos are in the business of selling 10[currency] bills for 100[currency]s, everything else is smoke and mirrors to distract you from this. Think of them as a public service which keeps the terminally stupid off the streets. Obviously anyone not terminally stupid is in the wrong place, and so it is perfectly reasonable that they be kicked out.
Re:Why track the players? (Score:3, Insightful)
The answer is that play is then too slow and they don't make as much money. Also, it's easier to card count - yes, you can apply it to a single hand if there are enough players at the table and you can see their face up cards, or if you are seated so as to go last you can see all the cards played.
So they use mulitple decks and only shuffle when they are getting low.
But card counting in your head shouldn't be illegal, it's part of the game. Even if you're bad at it, you should be able to think to yourself "gee, a lot of face cards have been played already, it's doubtful I'll get another one", or "gee, hardly any face cards have been played, maybe I should split my nines because the dealer's only got an 8 showing".
The only difference between "casual" play like that and counting is how sure you are of how many and which cards have played.
It shouldn't be illegal if you can do it in your head - that's like thought police or something. They shouldn't be able to kick you out, either, but I guess it's a privately owned business. Still, when news gets out that a casino is regularly kicking out winners (who haven't been cheating - just winning) then it can be a huge loss for the casino.
Re:What's wrong with counting anyway...?!?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Every game is always watched at a casino. Looking out for big winners helps them identify the counters that are really costing them. You want to be somewhere below the casino's alert threshold.
Get down from your Ivory Tower for a minute and see how the real world works.
Re:What's wrong with counting anyway...?!?! (Score:5, Insightful)
A friend once told me: the casino doesn't make money when they win a bet. They make money when they lose a bet.
And he was right. The casino doesn't make money because they win more often than they lose. They make money because they don't pay you as much as you deserve when you do win. So the 50% chance of winning is moot. It could be 70% or 90%, as long as they pay you something less than the odds say you deserve. Over time your losses will outweigh your gains.
As an aside, I once sat down at a roulette wheel and started playing the same method you described. I was doing so well that at one point I asked the dealer if it was legal. After a while, I started thinking about my chance of winning versus the payoff, and I realized that the casino still had a substantial advantage. At that moment, I started losing, and walked away empty handed.
And by the way, the best bet in the whole house is the "odds" bet on the craps table, because it pays you what the odds say you deserve, as I described above. The house has no advantage on the odds bet. But you can't make that bet without making another type of bet first, so you can't freeload.
Re:heh (Score:4, Insightful)
That being said, suits like that should be thrown out. People need to start taking some responsibility for their own actions rather than blaming others. There is help available for compulsive gamblers should they really want to stop.
Re:What's wrong with counting anyway...?!?! (Score:1, Insightful)
"Sorry sir, it wasn't you're lucky day, you would have lost $300 on the blackjack tables and another $400 on roullette. Ooooh, but it was your lucky day at the craps table, you only lost $30 on the day. Next" Then you're shuffled out the door.
The funny thing about all this is that card counting doesn't even garauntee a win, there's still no way to know what card is coming, what the dealer exactly has (or in some cases what your fellow players at the table are holding). Now if someone were using x-ray glasses or seeing the future, then I could see casinos having a gripe.
Re:What's wrong with counting anyway...?!?! (Score:2, Insightful)
I think that you've completly missed the point - The reason you should walk after 5% is so the casino won't throw you out (as they like to do to anyone who happens to be up at black jack).
Before you start criticising people and saying they are ".. so bad at math..." you should take 5 minutes to actually read what they said.
Re:What's wrong with counting anyway...?!?! (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what I've never understood about Vegas. The whole premise is 'come to vegas and win big!' and yet, when you do, you're barred from Vegas?
That's like being kicked out of Aspen for skiing too well. Why would I want to go to Vegas when I can't improve my chances (without *influencing* the cards, just with math and observation) or I'll be put on some kind of hit list? They rig every damn game to strongly favor the house, but I can't use innate skill? That's just bullshit. I'm sorry, but why does the law support this crap? It's like saying 'you know how to putt, get off my golf course!' It's just stupid. If I just wanted to waste money while being surrounded by loud drunken idiots and half-naked women, I'd just go to New Orleans. At least then I wouldn't have to worry about being banned from the whole damn town.
Looking out for big winners helps them identify the counters that are really costing them.
Costing them? That's a laugh. Any big casino in Las Vegas makes more profit every day than I will likely see in my whole life. I'm sure that the 10k you could win counting is really going to offset the 3mil in cash they took in in a single night. Whatever. I'm all for catching people who are unfairly influencing a game, cause that's what cheating really is. A knowledge of odds/good memory/simple arithmatic skills; these things ARE NOT CHEATING. They'd make merely insane profits with a straight game, not ludicrous. Well, that just gives me less incentive to patronize that city. Fuck Las Vegas. Greedy casino bastards. I'll just practice my system on pogo.com or something.
Re:Marked Deck! (Score:3, Insightful)
The house can do anything they want. They own the building, they own the cards, and they probably own the people enforcing things too.
Gambling in a casino is generally a passtime for people with poor math skills, and poor business sense. Nearly anybody who thinks that in the long term they have any hope of winning more than they lose is deluding themselves.
Now it's true, that maybe one of every million casino visitors does actually have some means of tilting the odds in their favour. Sometimes it's a truly illegal cheat, sometimes it's just some real skills, like the ability to count cards. It's in the casino's best interest to make sure none of these people play.
If you think that this makes a casino unfair, here's a hint, casinos have never been fair. If they were fair they wouldn't make a profit! Don't worry though, in the end, nothing will change. You'll still lose 52% of the time, just like you always have.
Re:I've always been amused... (Score:2, Insightful)
The casino chooses to do business with people who go with the stochastic flow, since they are destined to give money to the casino. They choose to not do business with people who are there to make profit at the casino's expense, so if they can detect someone doing that, they'll ask them to leave. All this story is about, is that the casinos are trying to become more informed about who is who, so they can best exercise what little power they have.
This power is perfectly balanced. A player can choose to go with the random flow, and they will lose money but maybe have an enjoyable time. Or they can choose to try to make money, and either they will make errors and lose anyway, or the casino will stop consenting to do business with them ("please leave, sir"), or maybe, just maybe, they will outsmart the casino, though that's quite unlikely.
That sounds pretty bad and unbalanced, but that's because I left out the one final factor that makes the casino an impotent ant next to the player's awesome, almost God-like power: the player can choose to not visit the casino, and do something productive with their time instead of wasting it at a casino like an idiot. ;-)