Blackjack card-counting iPhone app illegal in casinos

Mark Milian of the LA Times reports on an iPhone application called A Blackjack Card Counter that has pit bosses in Vegas looking for people who keep their hands in their pockets.

The $3.99 app has a feature, called stealth mode, that allows the user to easily operate the card counter with the phone concealed in a pocket. Simply press the right half of the screen when a card valued at 10 or higher appears on the table or the left half when a low card is flipped. The phone vibrates when it's time to place a big bet. The program also takes additional factors into account that elude most mental card counters and is therefore more accurate.

Using a device to count cards is a felony in Nevada.

Blackjack card counters

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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semiotix

Actually, my understanding is that mental (unassisted) card counting is cheerfully tolerated in most circumstances, because

1) most people are no good at it, and
2) it’s so easy to make the edge so small as to be worthless, by controlling the number of decks in use or when players can enter the game.

Casinos will always have a chair and a complimentary adult beverage for you and your foolproof system–even if your system really is mathematically foolproof, like card-counting.
daz

The casinos around where I live in Au now have 8 deck shoes that continuously reshuffle. Card counting is now on the wrong side of useless up here.

d
Anonymous

What other have said. Card counting ISN’T illegal. But once the casinos figure out that you’ve been doing it, they tell you to leave and that if you come back, you’ll be trespassing on private property. And since they share their info on “banned people” you’re barred from ALL casinos.
sburnap

@stand Not really. Pit bosses are trained to count cards themselves, and can therefore spot the betting patterns card counters used to make money. This is how most card counters are caught because you obviously aren’t going to detect someone who is keeping a mental count by observation.

Devices just let anyone count, whereas mental counting is difficult, and takes lots of practice. Smaller devices might increase the number of people trying it, but it won’t particularly change the methods used to stop it.
ekricyote

“I had a 1590 on my SAT, I got a 44 on my MCAT, and I have a 4.0 GPA from MIT. I thought I had my life mapped out, but then I remembered what my non linear equations professor once told me, always account for variable change… I let down my good friends, but as it turns out, they weren’t too bad at simple math either. I scored the prettiest girl in school. I got beaten down by an old school Vegas thug who was having trouble accepting his retirement, but I worked out a deal with him that got him a nice pension… And I lied to my mother, but I confessed a lie and well, she still loved me… So my senior year of college I joined this team and I learned this new skill. I went to Vegas 17 times to use it. I made hundreds of thousands of dollars counting cards. And then I had it all stolen from me, twice… How’s that for life experience professor? Did I dazzle you? Did I jump off the page?”

“No. We don’t grant scholarships to card counters powered by iPod.”
rpl

“Cheating” is breaking the rules by controlling the outcome through a method not available to other players.

Interesting. What, then, do you call breaking the rules of a game using a method that is available to everyone? For that matter, what constitutes a method “not available to everyone”? Even your hypothetical card reading machine would be in principle available to anyone who chose to go out and buy one.

Your claim that machine aids to counting are not cheating because “they are an extension of your mind” is also suspect. A motorbike is arguably just an extension of your feet and legs; should you be able to use one in a foot-race?

Why shouldn’t anyone who wants to use any machine they want to manipulate publicly available data? Only because the casinos don’t like it, and they got laws passed banning it.

Well, that and because the rules of the game forbid it. Surely you agree that anyone who offers you a wager has the right to set conditions on that wager, just as you have the right to accept the wager or not, right? If not, then I’d love to hear your reasoning.

Besides, what makes you think that if there were no law against using machine aids to counting at blackjack, then you would be able to do so? The far more likely result would be that the game of blackjack would disappear from casinos, or that it would be modified so as to make counting useless (the latter being somewhat the case already, as others have mentioned). The idea that casinos would continue to offer a game that allows a skilled player an edge over the house seems naÃ¯ve, at best.
HDN

The author of “Bringing Down the House” (movie “21″) said they found it easier to count cards in a shoe (multiple decks) because the shuffle would inadequately randomize the cards. They would recall patterns where they knew what the next couple of card were likely to be and bet big.

It’s legal to count cards in NJ, they can’t even kick you out for it. However they will slow roll you until you’re bored to tears. Vegas used to have broken hand solutions to counters and other cheats, but it’s pretty corporate now. Instead they changed the blackjack payout from 3/2 to 6/5 making it a ridiculous game to play anymore.

You’ll always get popped on the varying of the bet, because you have to bet small until the count is in your favor then go large. Once you do that often enough, long enough, you’ll be made. It’s still worth doing if you’re going to play blackjack; just be prepared to asked to play something else or leave. That’s their express right under NV state law.

The genius of the MIT crews was the spotters who played until the count was good, and then bringing in the gorillas to be big. Too bad they pretty much ruined blackjack in the process.
Auto Parts for Brains

Guys! Come on. Why post something like this before people can have fun with it. I hope my friends don’t read BoingBoing yet. This is an awesome application, though it could really use some more time on the design aspect. I wouldn’t really use this in a vegas casino, especially if one wants to keep his phone or his face for that matter.

Which brings me to my question. This got through while the South Park app was denied? Something is not right with Apple. Honestly.
Micah

This was on Drudge Report yesterday. I don’t think it’s a secret any more.
zuzu

That said, #16 Semiotix is quite correct. The casinos love system players, including counters. With a few exceptions (which they watch for very carefully), no one loses money like a system player.

“In life, you are either a croupier or a gambler.”

Just look at the banking system and their “power to make them lose”.
HDN

Let me clarify, I didn’t mean to say that counting cards (mentally) was cheating when I said “and other cheats,” though using a device to count is cheating IMO.
locomotivebreath1901

It was inevitable; like calculators in math class.

I can understand why a card counting device is illegal, but I’ve never understood why card counting itself is illegal.

The gambling houses have made a science out of utilizing stats, odds, & percentages to part suckers from their $$$.

Card counting is from the same science, yet the casinos and their big tax dollars have bought the law to ban it.

B.T. Barnum was right.
Teller

Don’t the Vegas casinos have a Ball Peen App for card-counters?
tubgull

Huh. They should try using the accelerometer for input–making it hands-free.
vellon

@3 Card counting itself isn’t illegal. Using a device to count cards is.
Micah

@6 is correct. Card counting itself isn’t illegal in Vegas–only the use of devices to count cards. That said, you still don’t want to get caught counting cards, even if you’re not using a device.
Anonymous

It’s a felony in Nevada, but not in many other jurisdictions.
Jardine

That said, you still don’t want to get caught counting cards, even if you’re not using a device.

Why? It’s not like they’ll beat you senseless and leave you in an alley or somethi…oh.
zorlack

@3 … P.T. Barnum.
biffpow

Card counting isn’t illegal by any state law, but it is banned in most casinos. People suspected of being card counters are typically escorted from the premises. Unless they’re losing, of course.

And I agree with Auto Parts for Brains: Mac sells this app but won’t sell the South Park app? How much more transparent can they be? Message = we won’t allow apps that could infringe on our ability to make $ from other (DRM’d) downloads. But gambling apps that are illegal to use in some states, those are absolutely good by us.

Stop buying into the hype, people.
stand

Isn’t this ultimately a losing battle on the part of the casinos? I mean, the card counting devices are only going to get smaller, faster and easier to hide. How about a sub-cutaneous device activated by contact between your tongue and a wired tooth? The only techniques that are immune from cheating are statistical analysis tools. The kind of thing that flags people as winning more often than expected. But cheaters can crunch those numbers too as long as the games aren’t fixed.
PeaceLove

The whole notion that you can count in your head but not with a machine is pretty ridiculous when you think about it. “Cheating” is breaking the rules by controlling the outcome through a method not available to other players. A counting machine is just an extension of your mind.

A machine that can see through cards? Cheating. A machine that can keep track of the cards that have been openly dealt? Perfectly legitimate (not cheating).

Why shouldn’t anyone who wants to use any machine they want to manipulate publicly available data? Only because the casinos don’t like it, and they got laws passed banning it.

That said, #16 Semiotix is quite correct. The casinos love system players, including counters. With a few exceptions (which they watch for very carefully), no one loses money like a system player.