aslan said:
The rules do say that the dealer's hole card should be hidden from sight, so to design a strategy around seeing it is not playing by the rules, but really is about taking advantage of the house's inadvertent violation of its own rules (showing the hole card). But it's the casino's rules, not mine, and it is their right to violate their own rules in favor of the players if they so choose, or even if they inadvertently do so, e.g., no one would demand a misdeal every time the dealer dealt his hole card face up, whether he did so intentionally or unintentionally.
The rationalization that the casino (Evil Empire) deserves to be beaten does not resonate with me. Doing wrong is doing wrong no matter who you do it to. So the whole thing really boils down to whether you are gaining an "unfair" (hence, unethical) advantage.
In the game of casino blackjack, the HA is a fair advantage allowed by the state to allow the business to make a profit, and card counting is a fair advantage, since using one's mind to win at cards is the entire purpose of card playing and the courts have rightly ruled it to be so. Banning card counters and half-shoeing suspected card counters, on the other hand, seem to me to be unfair advantages accorded to the casino (legalities aside).
Whether hole carding is an unfair advantage to players is not an easy distinction to make. While your point carries weight with me, I am still grappling with it.
These are all valid points, but I think that you may be overcomplicating matters (or I'm oversimplifying them!). All advantage play is about acquiring additional information that the casino would prefer you not have. Blackjack can generally be beaten by card counting, but not because the rules dictate that to be the case; in fact, casinos would quite certainly prefer that the game be unbeatable, but alas, this is the primary reason for blackjack's rise to popularity in the 1950's and its sustaining popularity today.
The would-be moralist card counter will tell you that hole card players are somehow less ethical because of their opportunistic nature and willingness to take advantage of flaws in a game. But the same card counter will not just sit at any blackjack table—they'll specifically choose ones that offer them an additional edge over other games, including tables where they know a particular dealer gives better penetration than a particular house may allow.
Acquiring additional information: A card counter keeps track of the cards dealt in order to evaluate the changing odds of a game of dependent trials. A shuffle tracker evaluates deck composition or card location based on the effect of non-random shuffles. A hole card player obtains information about the dealer's hole card (often accomplished by physically seeing the card). A video poker player or comp hustler weighs the value of expected comps verus expected loss at their game and bets when they have an edge. A poker player uses tells and analyzes player tendencies to exploit their weaknesses. You get the point.
All advantage techniques also exploit loopholes in procedure and weak games, to some extent. Counters compile lists of games across the country with the best penetration, lowest house edge, and even include notes about the attitudes of the pit. Shuffle trackers look for weak shuffles or dealers that expose cards before, during or after the shuffle. Hole card players look for dealers with incorrect dealing technique. Then there's roulette clocking, controlled dice shooting in a casino that doesn't require contact with the alligator foam, progressive slot banking, and so on.
This hand-wringing about how unfair it is to obtain information about a dealer's hole card while simultaneously having a deep interest in other AP techniques is misguided. As Steve Forte notes in
Casino Game Protection (to paraphrase): the only thing separating advantage players and cheats is the issue of legality. All legitimate advantage techniques involve deception (dishonesty?), misdirection, and other hallmarks of the professional cheat. You can split hairs on the fine line between the two all day, but the law is clear: card counting, shuffle tracking, and hole carding are all legal.
As to your other point about backing off or barring players that are simply using their brain in a casino, I actually disagree. A casino is in most cases private property, and they are in the business of making money with people willing to gamble with a negative expectation. If a particular customer is able to reverse that outcome, they should absolutely be able to refuse service to that particular person. They don't need or want our business, and I'm perfectly fine with that.