I understand why casinos kick out card counters, the casino wants to make money and card counting is “cheating”. But if you are able to do it all in your head, is that not the same as being really good at poker? Knowing whats left in the deck and estimating your opponents cards based of that info and by reading your opponent. How do you prove counting vs skill? Is it just a way for casinos to weed out people who would take a lot of money?
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I never understood this either.
If it’s all done in someone’s head isn’t that just their skill level ? Can’t really see it as cheating in my opinion.
Good question
Counting cards is, indeed, just being very good at a game. It is not “cheating” in the sense of violating the rules.
Casinos kick out card counter not because they are cheating or doing something illegal, but because the casino is losing money on them as so has decided to decline their custom. Think “we reserve the right to refuse service.” The casinos, which are private businesses, are using that right.
Card counting is indeed a skill and is just being really good at the game. The reason card counting is made illegal by the casinos is indeed just because they are losing money on it. All the casino games are designed so that the casino is on average making a small profit from every bet. The best example is roulette where betting on red or black would give you double your bet if you win. However the casino have added one or two green numbers where the casino always wins no matter if you bet on black or red. Blackjack is also designed to give the casino a slight advantage although it is less obvious. However it turns out that there was an error in their calculations and they did not consider that players could count the cards and know the distribution of the cards remaining in the deck to get a slight advantage of their own. This is just players being good at the game. There were some attempts at fixing the game but to no avail. But since casinos are private property they can just throw out anyone who is good at blackjack. In places with legislation that does not allow them to throw out people without any reasonable cause they will not have blackjack at all.
They kick them out because the casino is a private business trying to make money. Though in practice, kicking people out for card counting is rare. A lot of casinos now just changed the rules slightly for games like blackjack that increase the house edge to the point that card counting doesn’t help much. And at ones that haven’t, they really don’t care if you’re just betting $50 in every hand.
Casinos very rarely kick out card counters.Card counting is not considered cheating if you can do it in your head and don’t use an outside device. Even with card counting, you are very likely to lose money, albeit less than the average joe. Casinos rely on reputation, so they don’t wanna be kicking people out left and right.
In Blackjack, there’s a standard technique where like if you have a 4 and a 10 and the dealer is showing a five, you stay. If you have 14 and the dealer is showing a ten, you hit. Your loss rate with standard technique is like. 2%. A 2% loss rate on casino games means if you bet $1, 100 times, you’d end up with $98 dollars. *And that’s really good for a casino game*
If you add in card counting you could profit maybe 2% (so, $1 x 100 instances of betting = $102, $2 profit). (It should be noted most people aren’t savants and don’t actually memorize every single card that comes out). Blackjack is the game where you are least likely to lose money. Craps is second and I believe the loss rate is like 12%.
But, 2% is really not a huge deal. If you had a pot of 100,000, you would make 2,000 a day *if* you played perfectly, never had bad luck, and played for hours and hours and hours. And you aren’t getting comped drinks or food. Pros who are making a slim profit on the casino make suckers think they can do it too.
By counting cards casino lose their house edge meaning they become beatable and every casino game is unbeatable except for blackjack.
Counting cards is not cheating its actually the only way you can win in a blackjack game, and all casino games are scams and they don’t like that you can win therefore they can kick you out if you count.
But the thing is counting cards is so easy to counter there’s no point in kicking you out at all, all they got to do is shuffle the deck after every 10 hands and the game becomes impossible to count, therefore impossible to beat like every other table game.
Casino’s only run games if the expected return of the game favors the casino. “The House Always Wins” means in the long run, every game makes the casino money.
For a game like blackjack, you can actually develop a betting strategy where the expected return favors the gambler. But the strategy requires you to track whether or not cards have been used by “counting cards.”
But since it’s private property, casinos can remove you for any reason whatsoever. So if they suspect you using this strategy, they will usually kick you off the casino floor because they only care about money.
A better comparison game for card counting is Hearts. You absolutely have to count cards to be good at Hearts. That also applies to Spades, Bridge, Whist, and no doubt many other card games.
Poker is not a good analog because being good at poker involves many skills besides understanding the odds of a particular card coming out. In BJ, the dealer is playing by a fixed set of rules and does not make decisions, whereas in poker, it is all about understanding what your individual opponents may or may not do.
With poker, the casinos have a system which guarantees a profit. With blackjack, the same thing is true with the exception of card counters. Blackjack with card counting is a game that the casino isn’t willing to play.
Nobody is “really good” at guessing, its all luck.
You can although, be good at counting cards.
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