Vegas uses computers to nab card counters

As if Vegas casinos don't already rake in enough money from suckers, now they are developing technology to automatically detect people who count cards.

The anti-card-counter system uses cameras to watch players and keep track of the actual "count" of the cards, the same way a player would. It also measures how much each player is betting on each hand, and it syncs up the two data points to look for patterns in the action. If a player is betting big when the count is indeed favorable, and keeping his chips to himself when it's not, he's fingered by the computer... and, in the real world, he'd probably receive a visit from a burly dude in a bad suit, too.

The system reportedly works even if the gambler intentionally attempts to mislead it with high bets at unfavorable times.

Computers to crack down on card counters

• [Rob Beschizza]

  Nasty enough to call good strategy “cheating”, but greedy enough to keep a game where the house has no advantage with competent play.

• [Moriarty]

  Not everyone who gambles is a fool or a compulsive. Some people can gamble in moderation because they find it inherently exciting and enjoyable, knowing full well that the house always comes out ahead eventually, usually sooner rather than later. For myself, I think it would just feel like directly paying someone to insult my intelligence.

• [Anonymous]

  This has to stop. If the game is broken, then fix it. But instead of just fixing the game Casinos throw out good players, ban them for life, and put them in a facial recognition database that other casinos use to bar players from playing.

  Card counting is legal. Casinos should be barred from kicking out card counters. It is false advertising for casinos to claim you can win but kick you out if you can.

• [Sork]

  I recommend the movie “21″ from last year. A “based on a true story” about MIT students who gang up to beat the casinos with card counting. Starring Kevin Spacey and Laurence Fishburne.

  • [Anonymous]

    Or even better – read the book by Ben Mezrich that the movie was based on: Bringing Down the House.

    Or even better – read any book by Stanford Wong.

    Luckily – this kind of software can’t account for multi-person teams. It can’t track the fact that the drunk next to me playing table minimum bets hand after hand just burped after a swig of beer, signalling that the count jumped up enough to say, “well fellows, I’ve got to hit the sack soon, so I’m gonna put it all on the line for one more hand and then call it a night. I hear Penn and Teller are a HOOT.”

• [Dave Parker]

  This isn’t about catching “cheats”, it’s about getting rid of anyone who is a good player and so doesn’t lose enough.

• [vert]

  So let me get this straight… It’s not okay for their customers to count cards, but it’s okay for the casinos to do so.

  Makes perfect sense.

  • [Modusoperandi]

    vert “So let me get this straight… It’s not okay for their customers to count cards, but it’s okay for the casinos to do so.”
    Pah! It’s not nearly as funny now.

• [Shawn Wolfe]

  Having a rule against counting cards is like having a rule against paying attention.

  Personally? I enjoy the excitement of just flushing my money straight down the toilet.

  Wet and wild. That’s how I likes it.

• [Anonymous]

  For the most part, they are no longer trying to claim that card counting is “Cheating.” They’re simply saying that if you’re good, they don’t want to play with you anymore. It’s as if Tiger Woods got kicked off the tour for winning too much money.

• [ChibiR]

  So the game can now basically be summed up as:
  I win -> “OMG U GOTZ BOT HAXXORZ”
  I lose -> “LOLOLOLOL U NOOB”

  Why does this sound familiar…? Oh, right, online games like Counterstrike.

• [Ted8305]

  This is just one more step towards making blackjack more profitable for casinos. First, they started using larger multi-deck shoes. Then came random “reshuffle” cards. Some tables now only pay 6:5 on natural blackjacks instead of the traditional 3:2, and other variations with rules tweaked to favor the house more.

  Despite card-counting being really HARD, people still want to try to pull it off. So why not have a “counting allowed” table with a small maximum bet?

• [zikman]

  of course it would “reportedly” still work in that situation described at the end.

• [Paul]

  Not Vegas.

  This has been developed at the University of Dundee in the UK with the help of Dundee Casino.

  So absolutely nothing to do with Vegas.

• [Paul]

  Oh, and here is the researcher’s home page: http://www.computing.dundee.ac.uk/staff/jessehoey/research/blackjack/index.php

• [takeshi]

  I have no love for casinos, but card counting is cheating, plain and simple. As mentioned, it’s harder to get away with nowadays, but far from impossible.

  • [max_supernova]

    Do you think people who memorize the odds of any particular card coming up in poker or memorizing the odds of any particular hand being beaten are cheating?

    How can actually paying attention to the game and knowing basic statistics be cheating?

    This just shows what most folk already know. Casinos aren’t in the gambling business. They’re in the “taking your money” business.

  • [Brainspore]

    Card counting is cheating if you use a computer to do it. Otherwise it’s a skill.

• [ill lich]

  Card counting is NOT cheating, any more than learning your multiplication tables or practicing scales on violin is cheating (“well of course he won the talent contest. . . unlike me he actually practices, the cheater!”) Cheating would be using a machine or having an inside man or spotter. If it’s something in your head, whether counting or knowing the odds, it is fair game. The casino is just being greedy.

• [Anonymous]

  I wish casinos would stop making a big deal about card counters. It has been proven that only 10% of players know basic strategy. Out of those players, less than 1% of them are so-called card counters, while out of those, a much smaller percentage of them are proficient. Also, very few of those are betting hundreds of dollars per hand. The odds of someone being a skilled card counter is less likely than for a murderer getting released with the excuse that they’re mentally ill. In my opinion, it’s better for casinos to increase nostalgia in their games than to protect them against advantage players and cheaters. Don’t believe me? Look at how blackjack became so popular after Beat the Dealer was released! The casinos panicked and used countermeasures, but that only discouraged the suckers from playing.

• [Anonymous]

  Stay away from organized “criminal” casinos and play in your home town. Casinos use modern technology to beat their invited guests. If you enjoy joining a “fair” BJ game for example, where decks are hand shuffled just like they used to be in Vegas and you like craps tables that are not top covered with “super ball” rubber, where the dice take 10 seconds to stop bouncing…find your local games…the ones in basements and dining rooms on private properties in your home town and “screw you” Las Vegas!

• [Wowzers]

  Vegas doesn’t want gambling to be a game, or a sport, where players actually learn and practice and develop strategies.

  They want it to be a lottery, where the winners are predetermined, and all the profits are known ahead of time. This ‘card counting’ thing just throws that all off.

  Screw them. Go to vegas for the buffet, prime rib and crab legs.

• [Thad E Ginataom]

  So being *good* at cards is cheating or wrong?

  Crazy!

• [Anonymous]

  (This is long But well worth reading!!!)

  blackjack’s a game of skill plain and simple. If you want to play a game of luck, go play the slot machines. I began counting cards the first time I ever sat down at a BJ table. It’s just second nature to me now. If I was to not count cards, it would be like playing the game blind folded. How much fun would that be???

  I’ve improved my skill over the years. I used to just keep a main count, then I started keeping a side count of aces. Now I Keep a main count and 2 side counts plus keep my eye on the aces coming out, and this is a 6 deck. Can Very many people do this accurately if at all???

  I would say not, Sometimes I even lose track of the second count. Anyway Is this cheating? I’m using my brain, thinking. How can that be cheating??

  Besides, counting does not give the player a huge advantage like most would think and it’s not even a slow winning grind. It’s not like rain man, and if you think it is then you obviously never tried it before or for very long. No matter what your skill might be there will be big swings where your winning a lot and then times when you can’t do a damn think with the game and in the long run if you do indeed have an edge you will come out ahead.

  Anyway, If a player is winning a lot of money (thousands)and keeps coming back winning more, I can understand the casino baring him, although I think a better approach would be to tell him he can only bet, say 2 or 3 times what the minimum bet is, or if they still feel he’s a threat, tell him he can’t raise his bet.

  The casinos owe blackjack to counting and most of them are so stuped that they don’t even realize it. With out counting which started, I think back in the fifties, BJ woundn’t be nearly as big as it is today. All those sorry to say suckers that thought they could beat the system and win big and sadly most lost their shirts or if lucky just broke even and it’s still happening today. The casinos make more money from counters than they lose. Iv’e gone to Vegas 3 times now and never even make enough money to pay for all the expenses for my trip and I live as cheaply as possible. I’m just to afraid or chicken to play anymore than $20 which is a lot of money to me and knowing how turbulence the game is. I’ve also played a lot of hand held 1 or 2 deck with good rules for a long time. (never again) And guess what? a lot of those damn dealers cheat.(Seconds) You can’t spot them but they do. How do I know this? Once I had a A2 and the dealer said, “go ahead and d-down, I guaranty you’ll get an 8″ I said just give me a card and was amazed when it really was an 8. A few hands later I ask him, So what do you have now? He said very casually, “a 3″ Damn if he wasn’t right! It was indeed a 3. I was shocked and ask how he could have possible known this? He said, “Hey, I’ve been doing this for 7 years”

  Do you think he’s the only dealer that can do this? Do you think most of the other dealers that can do this, do it to help the player? I think not! Is it alright that they the casinos can cheat us and we can’t even use skill with out being spied on???

  You even have to watch it when your cashing in your chips that their paying you accuratly, especially when you’ve been dealt a blackjack. Ever notice that sometimes they’ll take a few nickels off your original bet and give you a quarter. I hate it when they do that!!! Sometimes their cheating you and you can’t figure out what the right amount should be with out losing track of the count and when they do make a mistake it’s usually in their favor. Why do you think that is? because sometimes their trying to cheat, that’s why. Sometimes when you do catch them, they don’t even apologize, Their not sorry, just sorry that they didn’t get by with it.

  Maybe anyone that thinks card counting is cheating should think about that!!! The casinos have made a lot more money cheated the players threw out the years than the players has won from counting cards. Maybe they should have this system watching over the dealers to protect the players? I think that’s a much better approach and when they do make a mistake they should pay us 50% more of what the mistake would have cost us. If so, I think that would put a stop to their cheating (or mistakes) really fast. Oh wait a minute, I almost forgot, They the casinos don’t give a rats ass about us the customer, just are money!

  This is a game of skill, as far as I’m concerned if your not counting cards and just playing basic stratigy at best which anyone can learn in just a few weeks if they tried, What fun would that be? Just a bunch of money going back and forth. If I was to chose not to think, I might as well be playing slots. If the casinos or to afraid to gamble with their money, then maybe they should go into another line of business, say selling groceries?

  Sorry for being so long, could right a book about every thing I know about BJ, and maybe some day I will?

• [nutbastard]

  “I have no love for casinos, but card counting is cheating, plain and simple.”

  oh bullshit. let me define cheating for you:

  “Cheating is an act of lying, deception, fraud, trickery, imposture, or imposition. Cheating characteristically is employed to create an unfair advantage, usually in one’s own interest, and often at the expense of others,”

  tell me, if the player isn’t privy to any information that any other player isn’t privy to, then the player does not have any exclusive advantage. you can argue that because not everyone has the mental capacity to count cards that the players brain gives him an unfair advantage, them you might as well say that a given athletes’ body gives him an ‘unfair advantage’.

  you win at things by having the skill, inherent or acquired, to manifest favorable outcomes for yourself. so long as you are doing so using the same information that is available to all players, then you are not, by definition, even capable of cheating.

  • [cmoney22]

    Lying, deception, Fraud??? being Privy to info others aren’t? This makes card counting cheating? cn 100% cnfrm y wld nvr b bl t cnt crds s y bvsly dn’t hv th brn cpcty bsd n yr mrnc sttmnts. Card counting is not cheating if it was it would be illegal…. which it is not. It is an added skill or talent one has in black Jack. How are you lyimg or deceiving and how are you privy to info others aren’t? Everyone knows what cards are included in a deck… don’t they? The person counting cards just has the ability to keep track of what cards have been thrown downn during the course of play. By doing this they have the ability to understand what cards are remaining and use this to their advantage in betting/ Why is this cheating? Casino’s are the cheaters and the frauds. They punish someone for evening the playing field and maybe winning some money? Ridiculous. They are invsting money in a systems that detects who is counting cards? Arent they privy to information that others aren’t? According to your statement this would make them cheaters not the gambler. When playing texas hold em the actually show the % of the players odds of winning and this is based on the number of cards in deck etc.. the players openly know the odds and what cards could be available. Why is this OK but in Blackjack it is not? Because the house doesnt lose money it is player money vs player with the house getting a piece of the pot. In Blackjack it gives the house lower odds therefore its frowned upon. In the end card counting is a skill and one that is legal. Its ridiculous to call it cheating just because you have the capability to understand what cards have been used and which ones may be remaining.

• [stefan]

  According to the article, the system is still in development and not in use yet, and it was developed at the University of Dundee, in the UK in conjunction with the casino there.

  I can assume that Vegas would be interested in it, but I didn’t notice anything in the article that indicated Vegas was involved or the system is in use there, as this headline indicates.

• [Mazoola]

  On the subject of books to read in all the spare time you’ll have from no longer playing blackjack, I recommend Fortune’s Formula, which manages to touch on everything from 18th-century betting systems to Claude Shannon to early field tests of card-counting schemes to a Mob-run parking lot that eventually became Time Warner.

• [fnc]

  Accountant : “Sir, a small percentage of player aren’t losing quite as much money at the blackjack tables as they could be.”

  Casino Owner : “Those bastards! I won’t stand for this kind of slightly less unfair advantage in MY casino!”

• [Anonymous]

  It probably doesn’t work as well as it’s claimed. It’s part of a scare tactic. Remember this is being developed in the UK, the same country that had the BS television detector vans.

• [Avram / Moderator]

  Cmoney22, please calm down and don’t insult the other commenters. You appear to be arguing with, and insulting, people who agree with you.

• [HereticGestalt]

  This is really not that complicated or objectionable an issue. No, counting cards is not illegal. However, like any business, a casino has the legal right to refuse to serve any customer, for any or no reason, without notice. They do this with card counters because their business model is based in the fact that blackjack, etc. are games of chance which favor the house.

  The chance to win that a casino promises is the chance to win based on good fortune, or some degree of skill in a game still fundamentally based on luck. Counting cards minimizes the element of chance and allows the player to consistently, quasi-deterministically win, which ceteris paribus poses a substantive threat to a casino’s ability to make a profit. So, they refuse service to people suspected of counting cards, and implement various measures to reduce the practice’s effectiveness.

  What about that is so ridiculous or difficult to understand? Gambling isn’t about demonstrating your skill in some rational game – it’s about the thrill of losing control, of risking everything and triumphing.

• [Anonymous]

  Counting cards is not cheating. The casinos simply won’t let you play. What’s worse is that they get extremely obnoxious about it too.

  What most people are not aware of is that if the dealer is holding the deck then it is highly likely, probably over 90% probability, that the dealer is peeking and dealing seconds. Anyone can learn to deal good quality seconds in about 20 minutes. The dealers typically have a cohort at the table who they repeatedly deal blackjacks to while busting the other players. They accomplish this by card peeking and seconds dealing. In one single deck pit at a now defunct strip hotel the dealers were blatantly cheating. One dealer was wise-cracking right in front of a floor boss about this inside joke. He was telling me whether i should hit or not because i was bet-tipping him. The 22 year old girl rookie dealer on several occasions dealt two cards while attempting to deal one. She kept catching the top card while attempting to deal the second. This was probably due to her long fingernails.

  Online poker is an absolute scam too. They funnel winning cards to you when you’re just starting out so that you get the impression that you’re good enough to win. In order to do this though they are cheating other players.

  So if you’re a gambler and you don’t want to be cheated and you want to have a chance to win you need to go to vegas, find a casino where the dealer is not holding the cards, there is no endless shuffle, and they deal at least 2/3 of a 6 deck shoe. If you don’t live in vegas though you just won’t get enough opportunities to play under favourable conditions to warrant the time investment that it takes to learn to count cards effectively……………………………………………………………………… Former card counter.

• [apoxia]

  I know someone who for a mathematics honours project banded together with a few other classmates, honed their card-counting and communication skills, visited the casino, won $30,000 each, and were all banned and had their photos taken. I think they deserved the cash, I can’t remember what grade they got for the honours project. I’m guessing they didn’t care too much by that point.

• [pspinrad]

  Bad and unnecessary move by Vegas in publicizing this. My friend Peter counted cards for years, and he says card counting is already dead thanks to the multiple-deck endless shuffle machines that are standard now in big casinos.

  But meanwhile, Vegas *does* make money off of people who believe they can still win counting cards, try it, and usually lose. How many of them will now give up on their schemes and stay away thanks to learning about this intimidating new technology?

• [lumpi]

  So what’s the point if you have betting games in which good bets are rewarded with being kicked out of the casino? Why not just replace all tables with Roulette?

  I know the maths behind this, but the whole “card counting is illegal” thing for me is just another way of pointing out that the whole business is built upon people being irresponsible gambling addicts. What an unsympathetic place.

• [Maddy]

  Wasn’t there a company that gave out free flights for yogurt bar boxes? And some guy figured out how to maximize the system. Legally. Did they take him into a back room, did they beat him up? Did they allow everyone else to play yogurt bars bingo but him? No — they changed the freakin’ game to make it harder. I get it Herr Gestalt — Vegas is a business, not a charity. And they have the right to tailor their business for maximum profit. But excluding people who are good at your game isn’t very cricket. And I don’t know that it’s a fundemental right — you can’t exlcude people who are black, people who are handicapped. You said that a business can exclude anyone, for any reason. Not sure that’s the case. If someone gets too good at your game, then you have every right to shut the game down and retool. It’s not like the State forces you to keep open a losing game. I always wonder if someone like the ACLU could make a run at casinos banning people who are simply good players. Can a Buffet bar a fat man from coming in?

  Thank you for your pretty-streamlined definition of Gambling — “the thrill of losing control of risking everything and triumphing.” So true gambling can’t involve any skill, only luck? It can’t involve people making rational decisions based on skill sets, psychology? So we should tell all those poker players they’re not really gambling with their use of math, pysch, etc.? And all those folks who “gamble” on the stock market, despite using their degrees — they’re not really gambling either. What a convenient definition of gambling.

• [Anonymous]

  They are just pushing their luck, like any corporate entity.

  Card counting is NOT illegal, and they’re going to end up like Atlantic City at this rate…

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_counting#Legal_status

• [piratescandance]

  This feels like cheating… We’ve created a card machine that counts cards to deter people who count cards. The one time I went to Vegas I left feeling cheap, oily and used – but I liked it. Let the card counters count their cards!