The on table abacus

[Preston]

Just want some feedback on something my wife and I came up with on the way to the casino last night. It worked really well for us.

She created an on table abacus, basically. With one green chip, a stack of red chips and white chips she would play with her chips according to the count. If the count was -5 she'd stack 5 red chips and thow the green chip on the top to signal to me the count was neg 5. If it became positive she'd staack the reds accordingly But without the green chip. And if the count was above 10, she'd use the white chip on hte bottom to signal this to me.

Do you think casino employees could catch this? And so do you think it would help the card counter/a team signal their plays a little better?

[NDN21]

Originally Posted by Preston

Just want some feedback on something my wife and I came up with on the way to the casino last night. It worked really well for us.

She created an on table abacus, basically. With one green chip, a stack of red chips and white chips she would play with her chips according to the count. If the count was -5 she'd stack 5 red chips and thow the green chip on the top to signal to me the count was neg 5. If it became positive she'd staack the reds accordingly But without the green chip. And if the count was above 10, she'd use the white chip on hte bottom to signal this to me.

Do you think casino employees could catch this? And so do you think it would help the card counter/a team signal their plays a little better?

Exploitation of blackjack by chip manipulation is nothing new and the casino is already aware of this tactic. Add to or taking away from a stack of chips every hand/every four? hands and to have you look at that stack every hand is one sure way to signal to the casino that something is up (that one of you is a counter).

There are other ways to signal to each other with the chips without having to stack/unstack the chips on the table at all.

The most obvious is when she bets big, you bet big, when she bets small, you bet small. Absolutely no chip manipulation required. One unit bet could mean the count is zero or negative and to just play BS, two units bet could mean the count is +1 and to adjust your play according ot the index, etc.. You could then just learn the index and not mess with the actual counting. Let her do it.

Another thing that could be done is to talk about certain subjects at certain counts and have more than one subject ready for a certain count (you don't want to be always bringing up certain subjects all night long). Other things to do are hold chips in her left hand at certain count, in her right at other count, no chips at all for another count, a certain color chips in her hand could indicate positive or negative count (red for +, white for -), etc.. Playing with chips could be written off as being fidgety (harder to catch). Use your imagination.

At least that's what I would do, rather than try to keep count with my chips right in front of me. You might get away with the abacus for a bit but I would think that sooner or later they would catch on and when you start to win or bet big the casino would know why and could do something to shorten/take away your edge. Not letting the casino know you are a counter is one of the basics of counting.

[Preston]

Good Points.

The stacks she used weren't exactly stacks. She's a poker player and can shuffle chips in one hand. She continually shuffled with the stack that represented the count and also practiced other chip tricks. It looked more fidgety than anything else, except to me. It worked pretty well.

I wasn't doing a big spread the night we tried this. Our other method worked well too where she would scratch the count into the back of my neck.... I have long hair so the camera won't pick it up.

[Sonny]

NDN21 had some great suggestions. Another idea is to use audible cues instead of visual ones. You might try "clacking" your chips a certain number of times for different signals. The eye in the sky would never catch it and you could even be talking while you're passing the signals. You wouldn’t even need to look at each other at all. Since chip clacking is a common background noise in a casino it might take a pit boss a while to catch on.

Ideally I think you should use a combination of these methods. Passing signals can become very obvious if you always use the same ones over and over. My team has several variations of each signal so that they look different each time we do them. Sometimes each player will have his own “style” to make it difficult for the bosses to connect us. If you can learn a few different signals for each situation (like “Negative count will be a chip in the left hand, a ‘single-clack’ or talking about our vacation in Saskatewan) I think you will last much longer. The only way the casino will catch on is if they see a repetition of signal-then-action.

-Sonny-

[Kaiser]

I'm laughing as I read this, because when I did my chip stack thing at the casino recently I would pick the stack up, hold it horizontally, and look at it for 5-6 seconds while I counted them. This was because the count was up around 29 so there were 9 chips there. Took me a while to count them in my drunken state.

Of course next time I'll just lay off the booze so much and go back to my "use a famous hockey player's jersey number" memory method instead.

[Bojack1]

Using signals is mandatory if you want to play successfully using team play. What you don't have to do is go over the top and try to think of overly clever ways of fooling the casino. What I have found to be extremely successful is be obvious before trying to be too covert. If you were to look around the casino and just observed people for a while you would see so many of the same physical movements and characteristics, that if you were to mimic some of them for signaling purposes, it would be damn hard to tell you out of a crowd, let alone as an advantage player. Signaling with chips is not really the best method. Not only has it been done so much that its one of the first things scrutinized if any suspicion arises on someones play, it can have a high error rate due to miscounting of chips on quick glances, or just the time it takes to count them. Its also so much easier to signal the bet required instead of the count. Of course you need to put the proper people in the correct roles to due such a thing, but when done, it takes very little effort to communicate without words. For example, say your left arm is resting on the table, that could be a signal for a bet of 2 units. You only have to do it a second before the bet is made and can move it immediately after, or you can leave it up there for as long as you want until the next bet needs to be signaled. Its up to you, whatever feels and looks natural. The advice I offer to those that try this type of play is, keep it simple. The rocket science math has been done for you already, just copy the results of it and try to apply it flawlessly. Keep your game simple and as near to perfect as possible, and you will end up with a positive outcome. There's nothing wrong with thinking, its overthinking that kills most players E.V.