Without giving too much away I thought I’d write a post addressing the myths or misconceptions about card counting in the movie 21. I identified 2 major ones.
1) You have to be a math genius to count cards.
This film gave a pretty good overview of the high low count, which is simple, but still seemed to stress the fact that counting is extremely difficult and only people with incredible mathematical abilities can do it. To be fare I think this myth was created for dramatic effect but would still like to address it. Personally I believe that anyone with a third grade education can learn to count cards, it’s just basic arithmetic, and that the actual act of counting is the easiest part of advantage gambling.
2) Facial recognition software will make counting impossible.
Now I’ve never had any personal experience with this type of thing but from my understanding facial recognition is something that human beings are incredibly good at and that it is extremely difficult for a computer to come anywhere near as close as a human. In order for a computer to recognize a face it has to compare features on a face to its target image. Besides a computer being fooled by things such as partial obscurities, a change of haircut, or wearing glasses, computers also have problems compensating for very basic things such as a change of camera angle. It’s these basic problems that have prevented anyone from creating software that would sort photos in a digital photo library by person in the photo. Sorting photos by the people in them would be a useful tool for digital photo albums and it is a trivial task for a human being to do, but as of yet I haven’t seen any software that can do it.
Does anyone have any knowledge or personal experience with facial recognition software? Is there some truth there or is it completely false? I’m starting to think that most of these myths like the one that card counting is illegal are created just to prevent people from counting cards.
1) You have to be a math genius to count cards.
This film gave a pretty good overview of the high low count, which is simple, but still seemed to stress the fact that counting is extremely difficult and only people with incredible mathematical abilities can do it. To be fare I think this myth was created for dramatic effect but would still like to address it. Personally I believe that anyone with a third grade education can learn to count cards, it’s just basic arithmetic, and that the actual act of counting is the easiest part of advantage gambling.
2) Facial recognition software will make counting impossible.
Now I’ve never had any personal experience with this type of thing but from my understanding facial recognition is something that human beings are incredibly good at and that it is extremely difficult for a computer to come anywhere near as close as a human. In order for a computer to recognize a face it has to compare features on a face to its target image. Besides a computer being fooled by things such as partial obscurities, a change of haircut, or wearing glasses, computers also have problems compensating for very basic things such as a change of camera angle. It’s these basic problems that have prevented anyone from creating software that would sort photos in a digital photo library by person in the photo. Sorting photos by the people in them would be a useful tool for digital photo albums and it is a trivial task for a human being to do, but as of yet I haven’t seen any software that can do it.
Does anyone have any knowledge or personal experience with facial recognition software? Is there some truth there or is it completely false? I’m starting to think that most of these myths like the one that card counting is illegal are created just to prevent people from counting cards.