Smash Vegas

While card counting is not illegal, casinos are not very keen on you practicing it in their establishment - for obvious reasons.  The ethics of this are debatable but unfortunately it does not change the fact that casinos look out for counters.  In most countries casinos are private property and so they are free to kick out whoever they please.  Even if they can’t / don’t want to do this they are usually able and willing to “back off” a counter - either telling them to play another game, requiring them to flat bet or changing the shuffling frequency to reduce deck penetration.  Of course there are tales of more physical “backing off” episodes but this is rare these days.

Whatever the result, casino attention is bad news and card counters need to do whatever they can to stay below radar.

How can they identify you?  Simple - you’re varying your bet size and strategy according to the count.  If they can identify a hot/cold deck and correlate it to your actions then they’re there.  What methods can they use?

• Informed dealers - if the dealer can count then he can track the deck just like you.  Tricky method as it’s pretty skill intensive on the dealers.  However it’s fairly common for pit bosses to have at least a rudimentary knowledge of card counting and they will call for surveillance on suspected counters.
• Eye in the sky - obviously CCTV can’t watch and keep a count on every table, but if you’re a suspected counter then security can watch your play using the CCTV system.
• Automated card tracking - there are a number of high tech methods which have been tested or proposed.  RFID tags in each card, cameras watching each card as it exits the shoe, etc.  Ideally (for the casino) a computer would track how hot the deck is and also be fed betting information from a chip tracking system and automatically spot card counters.
• Facial recognition - not exactly in the same category but a database of known card counters can be kept to compare identities with.  Famously over 100 casinos used Griffin Investigations to monitor and identify card counters until the firm was forced into bankrupcy in 2005 by a libel lawsuit filed by professional gamblers.  Casinos claim that facial recognition software can now be used to identify card counters, even if heavily disguised.  Many believe this to be a gross overstatement.

So what can be done to counter these methods?  Well the real key is to change the way you play while still counting.

The famous Stanford Wong had the simple but brilliant realisation that you don’t need to be playing to count.  Back-counting or wonging consists of standing behind the players at the blackjack table, keeping a count and entering the game only when the deck is hot.  As soon as the deck cools off the player leaves the table.  This method has led to many casinos prohibiting mid-shoe entry to their blackjack games, at least in the games with fewer decks.

A similar idea is teaming using a big player.  Again the concept is simple.  Most of the team work as spotters at various tables - they play basic strategy and don’t vary their bet sizes.  They keep a count and when the deck becomes hot they signal to the big player who sits down and bets large amounts until the deck cools.  At this stage the big player leaves the table repeats the process with another spotter.

The use of a big player team was made famous in the book Bringing Down the House and the film 21.  They also illustrate the problem with teaming - the casino can identify the signals used to communicate with the big player.  There are obvious ways to mitigate this (vary signals, play in different casinos, change the big player) but it is still a problem.  Both back-counting and teaming are still vulnerable to correlation with the deck, though teaming in particular makes it harder to identify.

If you want a downloadable guide then here’s my PDF.