How giving crappy pen saves the casinos money by eliminating counters... Or not

1357111317

Well-Known Member
#1
Well here it is. I was bored today and decided to make a spreadsheet to prove that the casinos are losing a significant chunk of change due to bad pen. This is a 6D game and I gave the ploppies at the casino the benefit of the doubt and say they play at a disadvantage of 1%. Oh and I am also assuming full 7 player tables with an average of 2.8 cards a hand ( 22.4 cards a round). Here are the results:

Cards before the Shuffle card (0-300).... X
Casino Advantage %/100..................... a
rounds/shoe...................................... b
Shuffle time (mins) ..................... .. .... c
Average bet/player .......... ............... d
$/Shoe............................................ e
Minutes/round.................................. f
Minutes/shoe................................... g
Shoe plus shuffles / hour...................... h
% of players who are counters/100 ..... i
Average $EV/hour of counter.............. j


Pen 1 Pen 2
234_300 .............. x

0.010 0.010 ....... a

10.446 13.393 ... b

2.000 2.000....... c

20.000 20.000 ....d

14.625 18.750 .. e

1.000 1.000 ..... f

10.446 13.393... g

4.821 3.898...... h

0.001 0.001....... i

40.000 40.000 ... j

Pen 1 Pen 2

$/hour a table K 70.502 73.086
$/hour -counter L 70.466 72.864


% increase in profits by increasing pen from X1 to X2 3.665%
% increase in profits from Pen X1 to X2 (Including the counters) 3.404%

So there you have it people. A 3.5% increase in profits on a table that is dealing at 48 hands/ hour if you increased the pen to 300/312. Now obviously you can't increase the Pen to 300 but lets say you increased it to 288/312 the results would be :

% increase in profits from Pen X1 to Pen X2 3.107%
% increase in profits from Pen X1 to Pen X2 (Including the counters) 2.956%


By the way I calculated the advantage for a counter like this. I said the counter had an advantage of 1% when the Pen was at 234 cards played. Then I set up a function of counter advatnage as:
Counter advantage = 1%/ (312+10 - (Pen+10)/71)

This is not ideal but I figure it is probably a decent estimate. If the pen is 286 (.5 decks cut off) it gives a counter advtange of 2.7% That is probably close enough for this quick and dirty sim.


Also I just guessed at most of the variables in this so if anyone has more information on them please share and I will post the results with those new variables.


Well I am having trouble attaching the spreadsheet so I can email to anyone if they like or people can just give me the variables I they want to test out and I can run the numbers.
 

1357111317

Well-Known Member
#2
Well I was playing around with my spreadsheet even more and was thinking about this situation. Lets say you are a casino pitboss and you think you spot a counter. You decide to halfshoe that table to stop him to prevent the casino from "losing money" Well lets say this counter continues to play at this table and you continue to halfshoe him, you must be saving the casino money right? WRONG

$/hour a table K 70.502 65.259
$/hour -counter L 67.798 65.259

% increase in profits from pen from X1 to X2 (Ignoring counters) 7.437%
% increase in profits from pen from X1 to X2 (Including the counter)3.745%


Where the number on the left is with 234 cards pen and the tables average bet being 20 dollars. I assumed the counters EV/hour to be 20 dollars as well. The figure on the right is with half a shoe pen or 156/312 cards. With this halfshoe pen I assumed the counter had no advantage.

As you can see the casino is better off letting the counter count than shuffle up halfway through the deck.

One importnat note on this is that I assumed the casinos advantage to be 1% on the other 6 players. In reality it is way higher than that. All the rest of the variables with the exception of the counters EV and the pen are identical to the sims above.
 

shadroch

Well-Known Member
#3
What you are not factoring in is the fewer chances the counter has for putting out his big bets, the better it is for the house. A serious counter doesn't flat bet $20. He'll lo-ball most of the time and put out big bets on a few occasions. Denying him even half of his big occasions is what the casino is trying to do.
 

FLASH1296

Well-Known Member
#4
The casinos shoot themselves in the foot by giving bad penetration.

I refer you to "Casinology" by Bill Zender

Zender uses "time and space studies" to prove that giving bad penetration
is counter-productive to a casino's profit margin.
 

1357111317

Well-Known Member
#5
Shadroch I tried to factor that into my Average counter $EV/hour of counter. As the penetration increases his EV increases. If you are talking about the halfshoeing well I just made things simple and said the counter had 0% while being halfshoed.
 

shadroch

Well-Known Member
#6
In the long run, yes.
But when the casino knows that there are card counters present at the table, deep penetration is suicide. I assume,Zenders studies are on average table compostion. A few pros would skew his findings.
 

1357111317

Well-Known Member
#7
If someone could run off the advantage a counter can get with a 1-16 spread HiLo on your vegas 6D h17 at pens from 234 to 284 for every 10 cards I could run off the numbers and see if the worse pen is actually worse for the casino since it would be making less money from the ploppies compared to the money it would save from the counter.
 

callipygian

Well-Known Member
#8
1357111317 said:
I was bored today and decided to make a spreadsheet to prove that the casinos are losing a significant chunk of change due to bad pen.
If you need to prove it, you shouldn't believe it, and if you believe it, you shouldn't need to prove it. If you set out to prove a result, you'll find a way to tweak it such that your result is achieved.

For example, the percentage of counters at the 6-deck game with 97% penetration is going to be much higher than the percentage of counters at the 6-deck game with 75% penetration. The win rate of the counters with 97% penetration is also going to be huge (the SCORE for the 97% game is going to be roughly 3x that of the 75% penetration game).

Simply doubling the number of counters at your high-penetration table and tripling their win rate gives the low-penetration table a 10% edge in value to the casino.
 

1357111317

Well-Known Member
#9
That is true if you are talking about a single table where you know there is a counter. But even if a casino was offering a game cutting of .5 decks on a 6D, what precentage of players would be counters? I guessed a number around .1% or 1 out of 1000. Does that seem right to you guys or should it be more like 1 out of 100?
 

FLASH1296

Well-Known Member
#10
No way !


In the U S A - knowledgeable estimates of how many actual pro BJ players
there are at any given time - tend to cluster between 200 and 300.

As far as how many half-baked amateur Card Counters there are, who are at least playing skillfully
and with a sufficient bankroll, who play more than a few hours a week, is probably between 2,000 and 4,000.

As there are ubiquitous multitudes of ploppy players, the % of players who are capable of taking
any minimally significant amounts from the casinos, approximates zero.

I note that I leave myself open to attack as I cannot justify the figures that I have given.
 

callipygian

Well-Known Member
#11
FLASH1296 said:
As there are ubiquitous multitudes of ploppy players, the % of players who are capable of taking any minimally significant amounts from the casinos, approximates zero.
But almost zero doesn't equal zero, and that's important because card counters can take a lot more than the average ploppy gives.

Remember that any ploppy that doesn't give their full 2% to the blackjack table hold is already an irritant to the casino; if 1% of their patrons played with 1% disadvantage, that's a 0.5% drop in revenue, and roughly a 3% drop in net income (based on MGM's 2007 gross revenues and net income reported). Assuming constant P/E, that's a 3% drop in stock price, which for Tracinda Corporation (149 million shares, 53% of MGM-Mirage) means a loss of $5.5 million.

I don't think you can blame the management types for being a little paranoid about those 200-300 counters in the world who can really hit them. Sure, it might be a drop in the bucket when you consider revenue, but it ends up being significant when you consider income.
 

shadroch

Well-Known Member
#12
1357111317 said:
That is true if you are talking about a single table where you know there is a counter. But even if a casino was offering a game cutting of .5 decks on a 6D, what precentage of players would be counters? I guessed a number around .1% or 1 out of 1000. Does that seem right to you guys or should it be more like 1 out of 100?
The better the penetration, the more counters there will be. Thats my opinion. Many would be counters get discouraged because getting 75% penetration in a shoe is not all that helpful. Dealing out 5 1/2 decks instead of 4 would present many more chances and I believe create many more counters.
 

moo321

Well-Known Member
#13
If you KNOW there is a counter at the table, assuming he's spreading table min to 16 units, youre STILL better off cutting 1 deck off at a full table, because you make so much more off of the ploppies.

If I ran a casino, I'd cut 1 deck off the shoes, and back off any well bankrolled, skilled counters that come in. Ignore the red-chippers, because even if you back off a counter every day, it's not worth paying someone minimum wage to watch the tables for counters.
 

UK-21

Well-Known Member
#14
FLASH1296 said:
. . . As far as how many half-baked amateur Card Counters there are, who are at least playing skillfully
and with a sufficient bankroll, who play more than a few hours a week, is probably between 2,000 and 4,000.
Not meaning to be confrontational, but what do you mean by a "half-baked" amateur? Someone who does it well enough to walk away with more than they started with (on average) but for a hobby? Seems a somewhat derisory remark considering most of the contributors to this forum don't AP as their main source of income?
 
#15
FLASH1296 said:
The casinos shoot themselves in the foot by giving bad penetration.

I refer you to "Casinology" by Bill Zender

Zender uses "time and space studies" to prove that giving bad penetration
is counter-productive to a casino's profit margin.
Time - MOTION

Time SPACE studies is what I use LSD for. zg
 

FLASH1296

Well-Known Member
#16
newb99,

I meant no insult.
There are tens of thousands of people
who have read a little about Card Counting,
but do not apply the principles correctly.
The most egregious ( chronic) errors generally
have to do with radically over-betting their True Counts
and being inadequately
bankrolled to handle the flux of our game.
This is a prescription for disaster.​
 

johndoe

Well-Known Member
#17
Flash: That's true, but your definition of "half-baked" above includes those "who are at least playing skillfully and with a sufficient bankroll". What's wrong with that?

I can see non-pro, but skilled and correctly playing "hobby" players (like myself) taking offense at being called "half-baked". For some of us, we make lots more money working good jobs, so the EV of blackjack is decidedly lower than just working. That's hardly "half-baked".

I know the remark wasn't intended as an insult, but it's easy to construe it this way.
 

FLASH1296

Well-Known Member
#18
Re-read my post.

I said " ... inadequately bankrolled ... "

Being inadequately bankrolled negates your comment re:

"correctly playing "hobby" players"

In my experience persons identifying themselves as skillful have varying levels of skill;
but very often self-identified hobbyists think that they can spread $10 to $120
at a shoe game with $1,000 in their pocket.
 

johndoe

Well-Known Member
#19
Re-read your own post. I was referring to your original "half-baked" post, where you said:

"As far as how many half-baked amateur Card Counters there are, who are at least playing skillfully and with a sufficient bankroll..."

You clearly stated that someone who was an "amateur", while "playing skillfully" and with a "sufficient" bankroll was "half-baked".

Thus the offense.

If you didn't mean that, or mistyped, then that's fine, but don't deny that's what you said, and at least own up to it.

(Obviously someone inadequately bankrolled is being foolish.)
 
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1357111317

Well-Known Member
#20
But how many counters out there actually play a game with an EV higher than 50$ an hour? I would guess that less than 5% of counters have an EV that high. And just a pure guess here but I am guessing that less than .5% of the plalyers in Vegas use some kind of counting to aid their play. With precentages as small as that Vegas and all other casinos would be better off if they shuffled less.
 
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