Racino is a portmanteau for a combined race track and casino. In some cases, the gambling is limited to slot machines, but many locations are beginning to include table games such as blackjack, poker, and roulette.In 2003, Joe Bob Briggs described the economic motivation of race track owners to convert into racinos:
Horse racing and dog racing have been in a slow decline for almost 20 years now….the only tracks that have really thrived are the ones that have slot machines. In many cases their live handle (the daily amount bet at the track by live customers) has continued to decline, but their revenues have shot up so fast that they’re able to offer the biggest purses and thereby attract the best horses. Tracks like Delaware Park and West Virginia’s Mountaineer Park, once considered places where local degenerates bet on broken-down nags in claiming races, are now among the wealthiest tracks around, with the best races. Fabled tracks like Churchill Downs and Pimlico, on the other hand, sometimes have trouble making ends meet.
USA Today noted in a June 2003 article that receipts from slot machines are divided about evenly in four ways:
Payment of the operating costs and payouts to lucky gamblers,
State taxes,
Prize money (the purse) offered to jockeys and horse owners, and
Profit for the racino operator.
According to Focus on the Family, as of 2003 racinos are legal in at least eight states: Delaware (since 1995), Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island (since 1992), and West Virginia (since 1990). West Virginia pioneered the concept when MTR Gaming Group was allowed to introduce video lottery terminals (VLTs) to Mountaineer Race Track & Gaming Resort in Chester.
While VLTs were somewhat successful, a November 2003 article from the Global Gaming Insider noted the real financial success story was the introduction of reel spinning slot machines in Iowa:
In 1994, Iowa voters authorized reel spinning slot machines at Iowa racetracks (including Greyhound tracks). Polk County, the owner of a brand new, bankrupt horse track, Prairie Meadows, spent $26 million to convert the clubhouse into a casino and install 1,100 slot machines. The racino opened for business on April 1, 1995. Reel-spinning slots proved to be much more popular than video poker. In the twelve months ended March 31, 1996 machine revenues totaled $119.3 million, enabling Polk County to pay off the $27 million bond issue that paid for the clubhouse casino conversion and retire the track’s initial $38.8 million bond issue 17 years early.
With Prairie Meadows the racino came of age. The rapid transformation of a failed Iowa horse track into a highly profitable horse racing/slot gaming business was the defining moment in the marriage of pari-mutuel betting and machine gaming. For racing returned to Prairie Meadows in reinvigorated form. Purses, subsidized by revenues from slot machines, increased by a factor of six, from about $20,000 per day prior to slots to a planned $126,000 per day over the 1997 racing season. Higher purses attracted higher quality horses. This higher-quality racing was in turn exported by Prairie Meadows to other racetracks and simulcast facilities throughout North America, a high margin, profitable business. Less visibly, slot machines had a positive impact on Iowa horse breeding, a development with long-term consequences for the evolution of Iowa gambling law.
The Global Gaming Insider article also noted that the creation of the racino has lead to onsolidation in the ownership of racetracks, with Magna Entertainment Corporation and Churchill Downs Incorporated the largest.
In November 2004, Florida voters amended their state constitution to allow slot machies at parimutuel facilities.
Spanish 21 is an increasingly popular variant of blackjack owned by Masque Publishing, Inc. “Unlicensed” (but equivalent) versions may be called Spanish blackjack.Spanish 21 uses the following rules:
The game is played with six or eight decks dealt from a shoe. Each deck is a standard poker deck with the tens (but not face cards) removed, hence the name: a traditional Spanish deck consists of four sets of 1 through 9, a Jack, a Knight and a King; there are no tens. All cards have the same values as in blackjack.
Blackjack pays 3:2.
Hitting, standing, and splitting all follow the same rules as in blackjack, except drawing to split aces is allowed. Resplitting is also allowed.
The player may surrender on the first two cards or after doubling down.
The dealer always checks for blackjack with a face card showing before play continues, as in American blackjack games.
The player may double down on any total, even after taking hit cards.
In some casinos, the player may redouble after doubling down.
A total of 21 always wins for the player. It never pushes against the dealer’s 21.
A five-card 21 pays 3:2, a six-card 21 pays 2:1, and a 21 with seven or more cards pays 3:1. However, these bonus payouts do not apply if the 21 was the result of doubling.
6-7-8 of mixed suits pays 3:2, of the same suit pays 2:1, and of spades pays 3:1.
Suited 7-7-7 against a dealer 7 pays a large bonus (for example, $1000 for bets $5-24 and $5000 for bets $25 and over). All other players at the table receive a $50 “envy bonus”. This rule does not apply after splitting.
In most casinos, dealer hits soft 17.
The removal of the tens in each deck favors the dealer, however, the other additional rules all favor the player (except for dealer hitting soft 17), and usually result in a low house edge, often lower than traditional blackjack.
There are no popular card counting methods in Spanish 21, though it would likely generate less scrutiny. Of course, any counting system applied must account for the fewer ten-point cards in the shoe.
A typical selection of games offered at an online casino might include:
Baccarat
Blackjack
Craps
Roulette
Slot Machines
Video Poker
Signup bonuses
Many online casinos offer signup bonuses to new players making their first deposit. These bonuses normally match a percentage of the player’s deposit with a dollar maximum, and almost all online casino signup bonuses require a minimum amount of wagering before allowing a cash out. Gameplay at specific casino games might be excluded from the wagering requirement calculation.
A fictional signup bonus offer follows as an example:
The online casino offers new players a deposit matching bonus of 100%, up to $100
The player must wager 25 times the total amount of the deposit plus the bonus before withdrawing
Wagers on baccarat, craps, roulette, and sic bo do not count towards meeting wagering requirements
For this particular example, this would mean that a player depositing $100 would start with $200 in his account. The player must make $5000 ($200 × 25) in wagers before being allowed to make a withdrawal.
Advantage play in casino signup bonus situations is mathematically possible. For example, the house edge in blackjack is roughly 0.5%. In the example above, $5000 in wagering with a house edge of 0.5% will result in an expected loss of $25. Since the player received a $100 signup bonus, the player has an expected profit of $75.
Advantage players who use bonus offers for an expected profit are often called “bonus hunters”, “bonus abusers”, “bonus baggers”, “bonus whores” and “casino scalpers”. Some online casinos have restrictions regarding “the spirit of the bonus offer” which they sometimes use as a deterrent to what they consider “bonus abuse”.
A player who wishes to do this at a large number of online casinos must be careful. Some casinos are rogues (see below) and do not pay. Others have terms and conditions that are not favorable to the player, such as most bonuses that are restricted to slots.
Oicho-Kabu (おいちょかぶ) is a traditional Japanese gambling game similar to the Western games blackjack and baccarat. It is typically played with special kabufuda cards. A hanafuda deck can also be used, if the last two months are discarded. (Western playing cards can be used, if the face cards are removed from the deck and aces counted as 1.)The goal of the game is to reach a total closest to 9 without going over. As in baccarat, the last digit of any total over 10 makes your hand: a 15 counts as 5, a 12 as 2, and a 20 as 0.
The word yakuza originates from this game. The worst Oicho-Kabu hand is 8-9-3, or “ya-ku-sa”. This gives a sum total of 20, or 0 points.
Seven Twenty-Seven is a vying game similar in some respects to poker, and often played as a “dealer’s choice” variant at home poker games. It uses the same equipment and betting system, but the value of hands does not use traditional poker hand rankings, either high or low. Rather, only the sum of the cards is used to calculate the worth of a hand. The game is somewhat of a cross between blackjack hands and poker bluffing.The game play proceeds like this:
Each player is dealt a downcard and an upcard.
A betting round begins with the player on the dealer’s left, and proceeds exactly as in poker: all players must either equal the largest bet or drop out.
After the betting, each player may draw a card, face up, in turn from the dealer’s left. If all players pass on their opportunity to draw, there is one more round of betting, followed by a poker-style showdown. Otherwise the game continues with another betting round (often beginning to the left of the player who began the previous round) and another draw, so there can be as few as two betting rounds in the game, but more often three or four.
Numbered cards are scored at face value; face cards count for one-half a point. Aces count for one and eleven, so a hand with a five and two aces scores 7 and 27 at the same time.
On showdown, the pot is split in half, with the hand(s) valued closest to 7 and the hand(s) valued closest to 27 each winning one half of the pot. If there is a tie where two players are off by the same amount, but in different directions (6 to 8), the lower hand wins. If there is an exact tie, that half-pot is split again among the tied players. Ties are common. The same player may contest for both high and low, usually because of aces. A player with a five and two aces can win the whole pot.
There are a few variations in rules that complicate things somewhat: first, the rule about ties in different directions varies; also, some players play with a declaration, while others play cards speak.
MindPlay is a technology designed to monitor blackjack players’ actions while playing in a casino.Monitoring a person’s play traditionally is done visually, by the dealer, floorperson, pitboss, and the eye in the sky (video surveillance). If one of these observers notices something unusual in a person’s play, they will do what they can to either
determine if the person is a cheat or a card-counter, or
change the game to turn the odds back in favor of the casino, through more frequent card-shuffling or other methods, or
casino personnel may bar a player they think is a card counter, even though the practice is legal.
(Cheating by various means is illegal, though, and may result in arrest.)
MindPlay utilizes a specially-designed blackjack tabletop that incorporates many features to monitor players’ actions:
Specially encoded playing cards, using invisible ink and barcodes.
14 tiny cameras built into the dealer’s chip tray (which is now slightly elevated to account for the cameras). These cameras can read every card in play by reading the invisible ink printed on them.
Special chips, so that sensors embedded in the table can automatically calculate each player’s bet more accurately than a dealer or pitboss could visually.
As MindPlay monitors every card that has been played along with players’ betting habits, it is also counting cards just as a card counter would do while sitting at the table. If MindPlay notices that bets are changing dramatically at the same time that a card counter would typically make those bets, MindPlay will notify casino officials that they may want to investigate further.
MindPlay tables cost around 20,000 USD.
Because MindPlay tends to thwart their efforts to beat a blackjack game, card counters generally avoid casinos which use the system and its competitiors, and often circulate news of such installations on various Internet sites. Some card counters have tried to make the general public aware of the use of these systems, in an effort to convince others not to patronize the games. Indeed, MindPlay has been somewhat slow to spread among American casinos, partly because of the cost (which may be more than what might be lost to a card-counter) and partly because of negative reaction by players.
MindPlay was first released in 2003. Since then, several newer-generation systems have been developed for chip tracking and card tracking.
For instance, RFID for chip tracking is gaining ground with casinos. The advantage of RFID seems to be that it can be used for games other than blackjack and also for more comprehensive tracking of chips throughout the casino. In other games, such technology would normally be used to track a player’s action for rating purposes, to more accurately determine the comps a player may be given.
Two other companies offer automated card recognition capability. Tangam Gaming’s solution tracks cards as well as player decisions using hidden overhead cameras, while ShuffleMaster only tracks cards, using a special electronic shoe.
Online casinos, also known as virtual casinos or internet casinos, are online versions of traditional (“brick and mortar”) casinos. Online casinos enable gamblers to play and wager on casino games through the Internet.Online casinos generally offer odds and payback percentages that are comparable to land-based casinos. Some online casinos claim higher payback percentages for slot machine games, and some publish payout percentage audits on their websites. Assuming that the online casino is using an appropriately programmed random number generator, table games like blackjack have an established house edge. The payout percentage for these games are established by the rules of the game.
Reliability and trust issues are commonplace and often questioned. Many online casinos lease or purchase their software from well-known companies like Wager Works, Microgaming, Realtime Gaming, Playtech and Cryptologic in an attempt to “piggyback” their reputation on the software manufacturer’s credibility. These software companies either use or claim to use random number generators to ensure that the numbers, cards or dice appear randomly.
In gambling terminology a crimp is a bend that has been intentionally made on the corner(s) of a playing card to facilitate identification.A card cheat will typically bend some of the important cards during the game. Below are just several of the most popular examples.
In poker, for instance, a cheat may crimp one of the cards to mark off the exact location where he wishes his secret conspirator to cut the deck. Similarly, if the card cheat is not working with a confederate, he may bend one or more cards to force a cut upon an unsuspecting victim. In either case the deck will most likely be cut at the exact predetermined spot in the same way an old book always tends to open at the same page.
Another poker scenario (also popular in numerous other games) is to crimp some of the high-value cards during the early rounds. On subsequent rounds the cheat will be able to identify some of those cards during the deal. This enables the cheat to employ a second deal and deal some of those cards to the desired hand, or simply to identify some of the cards held by other players. In any event, the cheat has a mathematical edge over the other players.
In casino blackjack a crossroader may crimp all the 10-value cards. this will enable the cheat to sometimes identify the dealer’s hole card (the dealer has one card face up, called the up card, and one card face down, called the hole card). In those instances the cheat(s) will know the dealer’s total and play their hand(s) accordingly.
Double Exposure Blackjack is a variant of blackjack in which both the dealer’s cards are revealed to players at the start of the hand. Knowing the dealer’s hand provides significant information, and without rules modifications would be advantageous to the player.The main rules changes to provide the casino with the advantage are even money payouts on blackjack (compared to 3:2 at normal tables) and ties losing (compared to pushing in standard blackjack).
Other rules changes also exist to the detriment of players. Certain tables restrict doubling down and splitting, and do not allow doubles after splits.
The game was invented by Bob Stupak, former owner of Vegas World and Stratosphere casinos.
Double Attack Blackjack has very liberal blackjack rules and the option of increasing one’s wager after seeing the dealer’s up card. This game is dealt from a Spanish shoe, and blackjacks pay only even money.
In poker, players may often use slang terms for particular types of hands. Though most are recent neologisms, others date to poker’s antiquity. All such slang terms typically connect a common concept (from life experience or storytelling) to the hand, in order to more easily characterize its general status relative to other hands. The terms range from whimsical to bawdy, with some being of a racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise controversial nature.
The following lists should not be confused with “official” poker terminology.
Individual card slang
The following table lists slang terms commonly associated with individual cards:
Card
Slang name
A
Bullet, Rocket
K
Cowboy
K♥
Alexander
K♦
Ceasar
K♠
David
K♣
Charles (Charlemagne)
Q
Lady, Bitch, Girl, Cowgirl, Mop Squeezer
Q♥
Judith (may come from Bible)
Q♦
Rachel (may come from Bible)
Q♠
Black Bitch
J
Johnny, Jackal, Knave, Hook (play on shape), Valet (from French)
T
Dime
Snowman (play on shape), Ocho (from Spanish)
Hockey Stick,Walking Stick, Candy Cane (play on shape)
Nickel
Sailboat (play on shape)
Trey (standard usage, not slang), Crab (play on shape)
Deuce (standard usage, not slang), Duck (play on deuce), Quacker (play on duck)
Five-card hand slang
Hand
Slang name
Straight flush, ace to five
Steel wheel
Four of a kind
Book, Quads (e.g., “Quad Kings”)
Four of a kind, aces
Four Pips (Each ace has one pip)
Full house
Full boat, Boat, Full
A full house is commonly referred to as Xs full of Ys where X is the three of a kind and Y is the pair. For example, 555KK would be “fives full of kings”
Flush of hearts or diamonds
Pink, All Pink
Flush of clubs or spades
Blue, All Blue
Flush of clubs
Golf Bag, Puppy Feet, Puppy Toes, Pups
Straight, ten to ace
Broadway
Straight, ace to five
Wheel, Bicycle, Bike
Three of a kind
Trips (or Trip as in Ted has trip kings.), Set
In Hold ‘em the term “set” refers to when a player has a pair in the hole and one matching card on the board, with “trips” referring to a pair on the board and one in the hand or three of a kind on the board.
Three of a kind, kings
Klan Rally, Alabama Night Riders, Three Wise Men
Three of a kind, sixes
Devil’s hand, Mark of the Beast (referring to the Number of the Beast in the Book of Revelation)
Two pair, aces and eights
Dead Man’s Hand (hand held by Wild Bill Hickok when he was shot and killed)
Two pair
Two pair is commonly shorthanded as Xs up or Xs over Ys, with the top pair as X and the bottom pair as Y. For example, KK998 would be “kings up” or “kings over nines”.)
One pair, aces
Aces and spaces (a hand with one pair of aces, and nothing else. Used derogatorily, especially in games such as seven-card stud, where two pair is a typical winning hand)
Outside straight draw
Bobtail, Open-ended
An outside straight draw: cards of two different ranks could complete the high or low end of the straight (e.g., _3456_)
Outside straight flush draw
Big Bobtail
Inside straight draw
Gutshot, Belly buster
An inside straight draw: only cards of a single rank could complete the straight (e.g., 34_67)
Double inside straight draw
Double gutshot, Double belly buster
Double inside straight draw: cards of two different ranks could fill gaps in the straight (e.g., 2_456_8)
Texas hold’em slang
The following refer to hole (pocket) cards in Texas hold ‘em:
Starting hand
Slang name
AA
Pocket Rockets, American Airlines, Bullets, Two Pips
AK
Big Slick (originally referred to A♠K♠, but the name has become common for any Ace-King, especially suited), Anna Kournikova (looks good but rarely wins), Machine Gun (AK-47), Walking Back to Houston (“I can see you learned to play in Houston. Those Houston players would come to Dallas and play that ace-king, but they’d always end up against a pair of aces. That’s why we call that hand ‘Walking back to Houston.’” – T.J. Cloutier, quoted by Barry Greenstein)
AQ
Little Slick, Big Chick, Mrs. Slick
AJ
Blackjack, Ajax
A8
Dead Man’s Hand (by analogy with Wild Bill’s aces and eights)
A3
Baskin-Robbins (plays off the number 31: 31 Flavors), Friday The 13th (An ace played low would be considered equivalent to 1)
For example, a starting hand of 8-8 might be called “wired eights” or “eights wired”
In addition, two types of hands are called “blackjack hands”:
Hands which are naturals in blackjack: any ace with any face or ten.
Hands whose numeric total is 11: 9-2, 8-3, 7-4, 6-5. (In blackjack, such hands are very good for players.)
Omaha slang
Omaha slang is not as well developed as Texas Hold’em. The game is not as widely played, and there is a much greater variety of hands, since the pocket is four cards. In the hole in Omaha hold’em:
Hand
Slang name
A-K-4-7
Assault Rifle
Flop slang
The following terms refer to the flop in Omaha hold’em and Texas hold’em:
Flop
Slang name
Three different suits
Rainbow
Three face cards
Paint (can also be used to refer to any picture card. I need to hit paint indicates somebody who is looking for a J,Q,K.)
Three low cards
Rags, Ragged flop (cards unlikely to have helped anyone)
1-point, ban-nag (Cantonese) or ban-luck (Hokkien). It is a gambling game played in South East Asia which bears similarity to conventional Blackjack.The game uses one or two 52-card deck(s), playable by any number of players. One of them is to be a dealer, or they may take turn to be the dealer, e.g. each person deals 3 rounds or 3 winning rounds. In this article, players beside the dealer shall be denoted “players”.
It is to be said that although Chinese Blackjack has some standard rules, there exist several house rules that are played in some games. It will be stated in the rules below if it is a house rule. House rules mean that they are not played in standard Chinese Blackjack games.
Dealing
Players place their bets. The dealer shuffles the cards thoroughly and ask the players to “cut the hand” by which a player take a number of cards off from the shuffled deck, and the dealer deals the cards clockwise or anti-clockwise starting from himself. All cards face down. He deals two cards per person and put back the extra cards to the “cut hand”.
Point counting rules
K, Q, J = 10
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 = respective face value
If your total number of cards is 2, then A = 11 or 10
If your total number of cards is 3, then A = 1 or 10
If your total number of cards is 4 and above, then A = 1
Checking for Blackjack
Each player including the dealer checks his hand for the following special combinations
A + A = ban-ban
A + (10/J/Q/K) = ban-nag
15 points = free hand
Ban-Ban
If a player receives a ban-ban, he is deemed to have won his bet tripled from the dealer immediately, unless the dealer receives a ban-ban (a tie) or a free hand (an escape).
If the dealer receives a ban-ban, he is deemed to have won all player bets tripled immediately, unless the player receives a ban-ban (a tie) or a free hand (an escape)
Ban-Nag
If a player receives a ban-nag, he wins his bet doubled from the dealer immediately, unless the dealer has a ban-ban (player loses), or a ban-nag (a tie), or a free hand (an escape).
If the dealer receives a ban-nag, he wins all player bets doubled immediately, unless the player has a ban-ban (dealer loses), or a ban-nag (a tie), or a free hand (an escape).
15 Points (House Rule)
If the player has a free hand, he may decide to continue or not to continue with the game.
If the dealer has a free hand, he may decide to continue or not to continue with the game. If he chooses not to, then the cards shall be collected back, reshuffled and dealt again.
The players’ turns
After checking for Blackjack, each player takes turn to make the following decisions, depending on the conditions. The player may add more than one card.
total < 16, hit (add one card).
total >= 16 and < 21, hit or stand.
total = 21, stand.
total > 21, busts.
number of cards = 5 (
-Dragon), collect win from dealer immediately, double the bet.
number of cards = 5 and total = 21, collect win from dealer immediately, triple the bet. (House Rule)
The dealer’s turn
After all players are done, the dealer has to make the following decisions, depending on the conditions. The dealer may hit more than one card.
total < 16, hit (add one card).
total >= 16 and < 21, hit or reveal some players’ hands then hit.
total = 21, reveal all players’ cards.
total > 21, dealer busts.
number of cards = 5 (
-Dragon), collect win from players immediately, double all bets.
number of cards = 5 and total = 21, collect win from players immediately, triple all bets. (House Rule)
If the dealer chooses to reveal a player’s hand,
player busts or total of dealer > total of player, dealer wins the bet (double if dealer has 21 points (House Rule) )
total of dealer = total of player, tie.
total of dealer < total of player, player wins, (double if player has 21 points (House Rule) )
If dealer busts, dealer pay all players their bets (double if player has 21 points (House Rule) ) unless the player also busts.
After the dealer has settled with all players, the cards are collected back and a new round begins.
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Counting cards in blackjack has become substantially more difficult as a result of casino countermeasures. The most common is the use of more decks, which decreases the player’s advantage, but even in the few remaining single- and double-deck games, dealers will often shuffle prematurely or unusually frequently to defeat a suspected card-counter. However, for the casinos there is a downside to frequent shuffling: It reduces the amount of time that the noncounting players are playing and consequently losing money to the house. It has become common for casinos to use automatic shuffling machines to compensate for this. Some models of shuffling machines shuffle one set of cards while another is in play. Others, known as Continuous Shuffle Machines (CSMs) allow the dealer to simply return used cards to a single shoe to allow playing with no interruption. Because CSMs essentially force minimal penetration, they remove almost all possible advantage of traditional counting techniques. As a result, some blackjack players call for a boycott of tables using CSMs. In the case of online casinos, the deck is shuffled at the start of each new round, ensuring the house always has the advantage. However, some online casinos periodically animate the dealer shuffling the cards to give the illusion that the cards are shuffled infrequently.
Unfavorable rules can cut into a player’s advantage, such as no double down after splitting, and having the dealer hit a soft 17 (ace, six which can play as 7 or 17.) Starting around 2004 a number of casinos began offering a 6:5 payoff on player blackjacks instead of the more traditional 3:2 payoff. These games are generally single-deck, inviting unwary card-counters and other players who believe they have an advantage. The inferior payoff substantially increases the house edge and makes the game unbeatable, even by a card-counter who is practicing the most sophisticated system perfectly.
A pitboss who determines that a player is a card-counter might either “back off” the player by inviting him/her to play any game other than blackjack, or will ban him/her from the casino itself. In jurisdictions where this is not legal, such as Atlantic City, a pitboss can require the player to flat-bet and disallow players from entering in the middle of a shoe. Such countermeasures effectively remove any chance of gaining an advantage from card counting in multi-deck games. The player’s name and photo (from surveillance cameras) may also be shared with other casinos and added to a database of card-counters and cheaters run for the benefit of casino operators. One such blacklist was known as the Griffin Book, and was maintained by a company called Griffin Investigations. However, the Griffin Agency was forced into bankruptcy in 2005 after losing a libel lawsuit filed by professional gamblers.
Many casual card counters make small mistakes that cost the advantage they gain by counting. Two or three mistakes per hour may give back all of the counter’s advantage. Even if one can count perfectly when practicing at home, it is much more difficult in an actual casino. The loud, distracting environments of most casinos, and even the availability of complimentary alcoholic beverages, play roles as casino counter-measures.
Casinos look out for known card counters, who may be banned from play depending on regulatory commission rules. They also look for suspicious actions such as a long series of small bets followed by large one. Monitoring player behavior to assist in this identification falls to on-floor casino personnel (“pit bosses”) and casino surveillance personnel who may use video surveillance (“the eye in the sky”) as well as computer analysis to try to spot playing behavior indicative of card counting; early counter-strategies featured the dealer learning to count the cards themselves to recognise the patterns in the players. In addition, many casinos employ the services of various agencies, such as Biometrica, who claim to have a catalog of advantage players. If a player is found to be in such a database, he will almost certainly be stopped from play and asked to leave regardless of his table play. For successful card counters, therefore, skill at “cover” behavior to hide counting and avoid “drawing heat” and possibly being barred, may be just as important as playing skill.
Casinos may alter the game’s dynamic against card counters by raising the minimum or lowering the limit on a table with a suspected counter, or by reshuffling sooner than the normal end of the shoe if they think that the player is offering a large bet on a positive count.
There have been some high-profile lawsuits involving whether the casino is allowed to bar card-counters. Essentially, card-counting, if done in your head and with no outside assistance from devices such as blackjack computers, is not illegal, as making calculations within one’s own mind is not an arrestable offence. Using an outside device or aid, however, was found illegal in a court case in Nevada involving Keith Taft, a professional gambler known for his innovations in blackjack computers and other gambling technology. In this case, two members of Keith Taft’s team were convicted of cheating for using a video device to gain knowledge of a blackjack dealer’s hole card. At the time of the Taft team trial, however, there was no anti-device law in Nevada, and the law that was written after this case is considered by many attorneys to be unconstitutionally vague. Still, the law has been adopted by most other states with casinos, and no player has yet tried the constitutionality of the law.
Casinos don’t tolerate card counters or practitioners of other legal professional gambling techniques willingly and, if permitted by their jurisdiction, may ban counters from their casinos; in Nevada, where the casinos are ruled to be private places, the only prerequisite to a ban is the full reading of the Trespass Act to ban a player for a year. Some skilled counters try to disguise their identities and playing habits; however, some casinos have claimed that facial recognition software can often match a camouflaged face with a banned one. In the experience of most professional gamblers, this is untrue, and a 2004 book by a Las Vegas casino surveillance director, The Card Counter’s Guide to Casino Surveillance, also declares this assertion to be an overstatement. Approximately 100 casinos in the United States used the Griffin Investigations consulting firm to help them track down and monitor card counters, before the firm’s bankruptcy as a result of a lawsuit for libel filed by professional gamblers.
Other modern technology that has been marketed as an aid in catching card counters includes the MindPlay system and Blackjack Survey Voice software.
American mathematician Dr. Edward O. Thorp is considered the father of card counting. His 1962 book Beat the Dealer (ISBN 0394703103) outlined various betting and playing strategies for optimal blackjack play. Although mathematically sound, some of the techniques described no longer apply as casinos took counter-measures (such as no longer dealing to the very last card). Also, the counting system described (10-count) is harder to use and less profitable than the point-count systems that have been developed since. A history of how counting developed can be seen in David Layton’s documentary film, “The Hot Shoe.”
Even before the publication of Beat the Dealer, however, a small number of professional card counters were beating blackjack in Las Vegas and casinos elsewhere. One of these early card counters was Jess Marcum, who is described in documents and interviews with professional gamblers of the time as having developed the first full-fledged point count system. Another documented pre-Thorp card counter was a professional gambler named Joe Bernstein, who is described in the 1961 book I Want To Quit Winners, by Reno casino owner Harold Smith, as an ace counter feared throughout the casinos of Nevada. And in the 1957 book, Playing Blackjack to Win, Roger Baldwin, Wilbert Cantey, Herbert Maisel, and James McDermott (known among card counters as “The Four Horsemen”) published the first accurate blackjack basic strategy and a rudimentary card counting system, devised solely with the aid of crude mechanical calculators — what used to be called “adding machines”.
From the early days of card-counting, some players have been hugely successful, including Al Francesco, the inventor of blackjack team play and the man who taught Ken Uston how to count cards, and Tommy Hyland, manager of the longest-running blackjack team in history. Ken Uston, though perhaps the most famous card counter through his 60 Minutes television appearance and his books, tended to overstate his winnings, as documented by players who worked with him, including Al Francesco and team member Darryl Purpose.
In the 1970s and 1980s, as computing power grew, more advanced (and more difficult) card counting systems came into favor. Many card counters agree, however, that a simpler and less advantageous system that can be played flawlessly for hours earns an overall higher return than a more complex system prone to user error.
In the 1970s Ken Uston was the first to write about a tactic of card counting he called the Big Player Team. The book was based on his experiences working as a “big player” (BP) on Al Francesco’s teams. In big player blackjack teams a number of card counters, called “spotters”, are dispatched to tables around a casino, where their responsibility is to keep track of the count and signal to the big player when the count indicates a player advantage. The big player then joins the game at that table, placing maximum bets at a player advantage. When the spotter indicates that the count has dropped, he again signals the BP to leave the table. By jumping from table to table as called in by spotters, the BP avoids all play at a disadvantage. In addition, since the BP’s play appears random and irrational, he avoids detection by the casinos.
With this style of play a number of blackjack teams have cleared millions of dollars through the years. Well-known blackjack teams with documented earnings in the millions include those run by Al Francesco, Ken Uston, Tommy Hyland, various groups from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and, most recently, a team called “The Greeks”. Ken Uston wrote entertainingly about blackjack team play in Million Dollar Blackjack (ISBN 0897460685), although many of the experiences he represents as his own in his books actually happened to other players, especially Bill Erb, a BP Uston worked with on Al Francesco’s team. Ben Mezrich also covers team play in his recent book Bringing Down The House (ISBN 0743249992), which describes how MIT students used it with great success. See also the Canadian movie The Last Casino.
The publication of Ken Uston’s books both stimulated the growth of blackjack teams (Hyland’s team and the first MIT team were formed in Atlantic City shortly after the publication of Million Dollar Blackjack) and increased casino awareness of the methods of blackjack teams, making it more difficult for such teams to operate. Hyland and Francesco soon switched to a form of shuffle tracking called “ace sequencing”. This made it more difficult for casinos to detect when team members were playing with an advantage. In 1994, members of the Hyland team were arrested for ace sequencing and blackjack team play at Casino Windsor in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. It was documented in court that Nevada casinos with ownership stakes in the Windsor casino were instrumental in the decision to prosecute team members on cheating charges. However, the judge ruled that the players’ conduct was not cheating, but merely the use of intelligent strategy.
The MIT Blackjack Team, as the name suggests, was a group of students and ex-students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who attempted to beat casinos at blackjack worldwide. The team and its successors operated from 1979 through the beginning of the 21st century.
The plan and operation
Blackjack gives the house a low statistical advantage compared to other casino games. Beyond the basic strategy of when to hit and when to stand, individual players can use a combination of betting strategy, card tracking, and card counting to improve their odds. Accurate card counting is a fairly difficult skill, but since the early 1960s a large number of schemes have been published — and casinos have adjusted the rules of play to counter the most popular methods.
The chance to make large amounts of money card counting appealed to some mathematically minded students at MIT. The university had card playing clubs, but some students decided to develop their hobby. The group combined the individual player advantages with a team approach of counters and players to maximise any opportunities and disguise the betting patterns card counting produces. In a 2002 interview in Blackjack Forum magazine, MIT team manager Johnny Chang reported that, in addition to classic card counting and blackjack team techniques, the group at various times made use of advanced shuffle tracking and ace tracking techniques. While the card counting techniques used by the MIT team can give players an overall edge of up to about 2%, some of the MIT team’s methods have been established as gaining players an overall edge of up to about 4%. However, in his interview Chang reported that the MIT team had difficulty attaining such edges in actual play, and their overall results had been best with straight card counting.
The original team recruited students through flyers posted around campus. The team tested interested students to find out if they were suitable candidates, and if they were, the team thoroughly trained the new members. A corporate called Strategic Investments bankrolled the team. With the backing of the corporation, they were able to play with a bankroll of hundreds of thousands of dollars, far larger than would normally be available to college students. Eventually, with team morale suffering after a series of large losses, the corporation closed shop, and the original team disbanded, to be replaced by several new teams founded by alumni of the first group.
The team approach used by the MIT groups was originally developed by Al Francesco, elected by professional gamblers as one of the original 7 inductees into the Blackjack Hall of Fame. Blackjack team play was first written about by Ken Uston, an early member of Al Francesco’s teams. Uston’s book on blackjack team play, Million Dollar Blackjack, was published shortly before the founding of the first MIT team. The team methods devised by Al Francesco, and later used by the MIT team, at first made it more difficult for casinos to detect card counting at their tables. Unfortunately, Uston’s books alerted casinos to the methods of blackjack team play, and several MIT team members were identified and barred. These members were replaced by fresh MIT students, and play continued. Investigators hired by casinos eventually realized that many of those they had banned had addresses in or near Boston, and the connection with MIT became clear. The detectives obtained copies of recent MIT yearbooks and added photographs from it to their image database.
With most of the original team barred, most members retired, having made an amount variously reported as $1 million to $10 million. Some members have used reports of their successes to start public-speaking careers or businesses selling blackjack card counting systems or running blackjack seminars.
In the media
The story of the MIT Blackjack Team was told in the documentary Breaking Vegas, in the book Bringing Down the House, and on an episode of the Game Show Network documentary series, Anything to Win. The private investigation firm referred to as Plymouth in Bringing Down the House was Griffin Investigations.
Card counting is a card game strategy used to determine when a player has a probability advantage. The term is used almost exclusively to refer to the tracking of the ratio of high cards to low cards in blackjack, although theoretically card counting can be used in some other card games.
How card counting works in blackjack
Card counting is based on the fact that high cards, and especially aces, are good for the player while low cards are good for the dealer. High cards are good for the player because they increase the chance of a player getting a “blackjack”, which usually pays 3 to 2. High cards also increase the player’s chance of success on his pair splits and double downs. Low cards are good for the dealer because they decrease the chance that the dealer will bust.
Card counters raise their bets when the ratio of high cards to low cards in the deck is skewed in their favor. They also make strategy adjustments based on the ratio of high cards to low cards. These two adjustments to their betting and playing strategy can give players a small mathematical advantage over the house.
Contrary to the popular myth, card counters do not need savant qualities in order to count cards, because they are not tracking and memorizing specific cards. Instead, card counters assign a heuristic point score to each card they see and then track only the total score. (This score is called the “count”.)
Different card counting systems assign different point values to various cards, but one of the most common systems, the Hi-Lo Count, is illustrative. In this system, the cards numbered 2 through 6 are counted as +1 and all tens (which include 10s, jacks, queens and kings) and aces are counted as -1. The cards 7, 8, and 9 are given a count of 0. The Hi-Lo system exemplifies a “level one” counting system; other counting systems also assign +2 and -2 counts to certain cards and are called “level two” systems. Many card counting experts agree that the additional accuracy derived from a “level two” system is offset by the increased difficulty of keeping count and the greater likelihood of making a mistake.
Another commonly used card counting system is the “K-O”, an unbalanced card counting system derived from Arnold Snyder’s unbalanced Red 7 count, published in 1981. The first blackjack researcher to publish an unbalanced card counting system was Jacques Noir, in his 1968 book Casino Holiday. Unbalanced card counting systems eliminate the need to estimate remaining decks to be dealt, a common source of player error in card counting.
The Fremont Hotel & Casino is a hotel and casino located in downtown Las Vegas, Nevada on the Fremont Street Experience. It is one of the casinos owned by Boyd Gaming Corporation. The hotel provides 447 rooms and the casino offers 32,000ft² of space.
History
The Fremont hotel opened on May 18, 1956 as the tallest building in the state of Nevada.
Wayne Newton made his start in Las Vegas at the Fremont.
Film history
Many scenes from the Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn movie Swingers were filmed inside the Fremont, including their games of blackjack, and breakfast in the casino’s Paradise Buffet.
As in all casino games, the house has a statistical advantage over the players that will play itself out in the long run. But because blackjack, unlike other games, has an element of player choice, players can actually reduce the casino advantage to a small percentage by playing what is known as basic strategy. This strategy determines when to hit and when to stand, and also determines when doubling down or splitting is the correct action. Basic strategy is based on the player’s point total and the dealer’s visible card. There are slight variations in basic strategy depending on the exact house rules and the number of decks used. Under the most favorable conditions (single deck, downtown Las Vegas rules), the house advantage over a basic strategy player can be as low as 0.16%. Indeed, casinos offering special rules like surrender and double-after-split may actually be offering a positive expectation to basic strategy players; they are counting on players making mistakes to make money.
The following rules are beneficial to the player:
Doubles are permitted on any two-card hand except a blackjack.
Doubles are permitted after splitting.
Early surrender; the ability to forfeit half your wager against a face or ace before the dealer checks for blackjack.
Normal (aka “late”) surrender.
Resplitting Aces.
Drawing more than one card against a split Ace.
Five or more cards with the total still no more than 21 as an automatic win (a “Charlie”)
The following rules are detrimental to the player:
Less than 3:2 payout on blackjacks (6:5 and even 1:1 payouts have become common, especially in single-deck games, in Las Vegas since about 2003)
Dealer hits on soft seventeen (ace, six)
Splitting a maximum of once (to two hands)
Double down restricted to certain totals, such as 9-11 or 10,11
Aces may not be resplit
No-Peek (European) blackjack—player loses splits and doubles to a dealer blackjack
Player losing ties
Basic strategy tables
Your hand
Dealer’s face-up card
0
A
Hard totals
18-21
S
S
S
S
S
S
S
S
S
S
17
S
S
S
S
S
S
S
S
S
Rs
16
S
S
S
S
S
H
H
Rh
Rh
Rh
15
S
S
S
S
S
H
H
H
Rh
Rh
13-14
S
S
S
S
S
H
H
H
H
H
12
H
H
S
S
S
H
H
H
H
H
11
D
D
D
D
D
D
D
D
D
H
10
D
D
D
D
D
D
D
D
H
H
9
H
D
D
D
D
H
H
H
H
H
5-8
H
H
H
H
H
H
H
H
H
H
Soft totals
A,9
S
S
S
S
S
S
S
S
S
S
A,8
S
S
S
S
D
S
S
S
S
S
A,7
D
D
D
D
D
S
S
H
H
H
A,6
H
D
D
D
D
H
H
H
H
H
A,4-5
H
H
D
D
D
H
H
H
H
H
A,2-3
H
H
H
D
D
H
H
H
H
H
Pairs
A,A
SP
SP
SP
SP
SP
SP
SP
SP
SP
SP
10,10
S
S
S
S
S
S
S
S
S
S
9,9
SP
SP
SP
SP
SP
S
SP
SP
S
S
8,8
SP
SP
SP
SP
SP
SP
SP
SP
SP
Rsp
7,7
SP
SP
SP
SP
SP
SP
H
H
H
H
6,6
SP
SP
SP
SP
SP
H
H
H
H
H
5,5
D
D
D
D
D
D
D
D
H
H
4,4
H
H
H
SP
SP
H
H
H
H
H
2,2 3,3
SP
SP
SP
SP
SP
SP
H
H
H
H
The above is a basic strategy table for the most common 6- to 8-deck, Las Vegas Strip rules. Specifically: dealer hits on soft 17, double after split allowed, multiple split aces, one card to split aces, blackjack pays 3:2, and (optionally) late surrender. Key:
S = Stand
H = Hit
D = Double
SP = SPlit
Rh = suRrender if allowed, otherwise Hit
Rs = suRrender if allowed, otherwise Stand
Rsp = suRrender if allowed, otherwise SPlit
In some LV Strip casinos you may still be able to find the older version of the multi-deck shoe game, where dealer stands on soft 17; those are usually high minimum ($50 or more) tables. This version is much more advantageous to the player, but requires a slightly modified basic strategy table. Basic strategy for other decks. Interactive strategy tables for each possible card-distribution in the shoe can be generated using a JavaScript based blackjack calculator.
Shuffle tracking
There are well-established techniques other than card counting that can swing the advantage of casino 21 towards the player. All such techniques are based on the value of the cards to the player and the casino, as originally conceived by Edward O. Thorp. One such technique, mainly applicable in multi-deck games (aka shoes), involves tracking groups of cards (aka slugs, clumps, packs) during the play of the shoe, following them through the shuffle and then playing and betting accordingly when those cards come into play from the new shoe. This technique, which is admittedly much more difficult than straight card counting and requires excellent eyesight and powers of visual estimation, has the additional benefit of fooling the casino people who are monitoring the player’s actions and the count, since the shuffle tracker could be, at times, betting and/or playing opposite to how a straightforward card counter would.
Arnold Snyder’s articles in Blackjack Forum magazine were the first to bring shuffle tracking to the general public. His book, The Shuffle Tracker’s Cookbook, was the first to mathematically analyze the player edge available from shuffle tracking based on the actual size of the tracked slug.
Other legal methods of gaining a player advantage at blackjack include a wide variety of techniques for gaining information about the dealer hole-card or the next card to be dealt.
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