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?
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This piece of probability theory is probably [sic] best described in it’s form as a bar bet (or proposition wager).
It takes a little preparation but is worth it. You need three cards. Each is marked on both sides - one is red/red, one black/black, the last is red/black.
You ask your victim to choose a card blindly and place it on the table. Let’s suppose the up side is red. You bet your opponent the next round of drinks (for fun) that the other side is also red.
At this stage most people are thinking “It’s either the red/red or red/black card, so I have a 50% chance of being right”. Consequently they will take the bet. As with any bar bet it’s best to add a little theatre - a friend who used to use this would say “I know it’s a coin toss but I have the luck of the Irish” (hence the picture).
In fact the probability of the other side also being red is not 50/50. We are observing not cards but card faces. There are three possibilities:
- This is the red side of the red/black card
- This is the first red side of the red/red card
- This is the second red side of the red/red card
Thus in 2/3 of the cases the other side is also red. By betting on the hidden face being the same as the up face you will win two thirds of the time.
That works out as a fair few free drinks…
Now that we have decided on our strategy it’s time to start coding the bot. We’re going to use the default formulae, so I’d recommend you take a look at this.
We will need to be familiar with some of the symbols openholdem uses. You can find a complete list here but these should suffice for now;
- call tells us the current cost to call.
- bet is the amount of a single bet for the current round.
- pot is the current amount in the pot.
- br is the current bet round (1=preflop,2=flop,3=turn,4=river).
- prwin is our probability of winning the hand (estimated with a monte carlo simulation).
- prtie is the probability of a tie for the win.
- prlos is our probability of losing the hand.
- callshort is the total amount which will be added to the pot if all players call.
- raisshort is the total amount which will be added to the pot if all players still in the hand call one bet. I.e. it is callshort + bet * (number of players still in the hand).
Let’s start with coding the formulae for the expected values of calling and raising; f$evcall and f$evrais. Going with the strategy we decided last time we have;
##f$evcall##
0 // start at 0
- call // my cost to call
+ (pot+call) // the minimum possible pot
* (prwin+prtie/2) // my chances of winning
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As you’ve probably realised from the disruption, we are moving to a new host. I decided to use this as an opportunity to clean up the design of the site too.
I know things here are a bit “work in progress”, so feel free to use the old site at www.smashvegas.wordpress.com until we’ve worked out the kinks.
Thanks for the patience.
Copyright Martin Ouellet 2004
Craps is a game with a bit of a reputation for being complicated. It has a lot of terminology and side bets. There’s also a certain amount of ceremony and ettiquette to scare off the new player.
In fact the core game is quite simple (though that shouldn’t be taken as an endorsement to play). If you want to learn the game then all you really need to focus on are two bets - the Pass and Don’t Pass lines.
Players take turns rolling two dice, with the rolling player known as the shooter. The other players place bets on the shooter’s dice rolls. The game is played in two rounds. The first is known as the come-out roll and establishes a point for the shooter to try to roll. The second round ends with the shooter either hitting their point or rolling a seven.
A player who is made shooter must first place a bet on either the Pass or Don’t Pass line. Essentially these are betting on hitting the point or not. They are sometimes even called Win and Don’t Win bets. He picks two of the five dice presented to him by the stickman and rolls them. If his roll is 2,3 or 12 then it is craps; pass line bets lose while don’t pass bets win on a 2 or 3 with 12 being declared a draw or push. If his come-out roll is 7 or 11 it is called a natural resulting in a win for pass line bets and a loss for don’t pass bets. In either case the shooter continues with the come-out roll until a point is established. Rolling 4,5,6,8,9 or 10 establishes that number as the point and ends the come-out roll.
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