I must be doing something wrong . . . .

Thank you Daily Mail....

"COUNTING CARDS: HOW TO 'CHEAT' AT BLACKJACK"
"Mr Johnson refused to divulge his winning strategy, but denied he was employing any illegal methods such as card counting."

Wonder if we'll ever find out how he did it...
 
A perfect basic strategy player who has obtained a 20% loss rebate agreement is playing at a MUCH higher +EV than ANY card counter; unless the required minimum hours played is very large. I PERSONALLY know someone who beat a certain casino in this exact way, although for much less than this guy did.

It may very well be that these casinos did NOT think it out correctly, and just got outsmarted. If, as I suspect; this IS what happened, then these casino managers absolutely SHOULD be fired.
 
1) Looks like in the picture of the BJ table they are betting roulette chips.

2) Why would you kick out a huge whale like that? I guess if you were really scared of the variance then you would (Like the Golden Nugget did to a huge Craps Whale in the 90s) but it doesn't make sense to try to attract big players and then kick them out.

3) Next person that refers to card counting as illegal gets a smack in the mouth.
 
Sucker said:
A perfect basic strategy player who has obtained a 20% loss rebate agreement is playing at a MUCH higher +EV than ANY card counter; unless the required minimum hours played is very large.
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Is this common for high rollers? Are you saying that if you are a high enough roller you'll have an edge off the top with some casinos?
 
Correct me if I'm wrong but unless the high roller is an AP the 20% rebate doesn't give him an edge, but it does reduce the HE to .4% on an off the top HE of .5%. The house is simply giving him a "volume discount" on his play. :)
 
ohbehave said:
Correct me if I'm wrong but unless the high roller is an AP the 20% rebate doesn't give him an edge, but it does reduce the HE to .4% on an off the top HE of .5%. The house is simply giving him a "volume discount" on his play. :)
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Yes - IF the house calculates it CORRECTLY they will be simply giving him a "volume discount". If they do NOT, and require too little hours of play for the rebate to kick in; the player has a HUGE advantage.

If he has a winning trip, he gets to keep 100% of his winnings; on a losing trip he gets a 20% rebate. Obviously, the whole thing depends upon how many hours of play constitutes a "trip".

For the sake of argument, suppose the house were stupid enough to not declare what they call a "trip". He could play ONE HAND at $100,000 and call it a "trip"; come back the next day, play one hand & call THAT a "trip"; etc.;etc. After 100 such trips, he will on the average lose slightly more than 50 times and win slightly less than 50 times. He will have won about 5 million dollars and have lost about 5 million, BUT - he gets a REBATE on the 5 million he lost, resulting in a net profit of $1 million.

Now obviously, no casino is going to be THAT stupid; but there IS an amount of play at which the 20% agreement becomes "break-even". An astute person who knows this break-even point could conceivably negotiate a better than break-even deal, if he can find a foolish enough casino manager (and believe me when I tell you, there is NO shortage of dumb casino managers out there). :laugh:
 
Sucker said:
For the sake of argument, suppose the house were stupid enough to not declare what they call a "trip". He could play ONE HAND at $100,000 and call it a "trip"; come back the next day, play one hand & call THAT a "trip"; etc.;etc. After 100 such trips, he will on the average lose slightly more than 50 times and win slightly less than 50 times. He will have won about 5 million dollars and have lost about 5 million, BUT - he gets a REBATE on the 5 million he lost, resulting in a net profit of $1 million.
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Hey there sucker. I don't think I'm following your logic. On average he will lose .5% * $100k = $500 per hand, so -$50k after 100 trips. Are you saying that would on average be either 50 $100k wins and 50 $100k losses (resulting in +$5million profit), or with slightly higher probability, 49 wins and 51 losses (resulting +$4.9 million - 80% * $5.1 million = +$820k)? But what about all the other resulting outcomes (e.g. 48 wins and 52 losses, 52 wins and 48 losses) and their given probabilities! Doesn't it all end up being -.4% on average?

That somehow, given a loss rebate, within the first few hands the house edge isn't necessarily -.4%?

Won't, given the rebate, it all average to -$40k (if a .5% house edge) after all the permutations?
 
assume_R said:
Hey there sucker. I don't think I'm following your logic. On average he will lose .5% * $100k = $500 per hand, so -$50k after 100 trips. Are you saying that would on average be either 50 $100k wins and 50 $100k losses (resulting in +$5million profit), or with slightly higher probability, 49 wins and 51 losses (resulting +$4.9 million - 80% * $5.1 million = +$820k)? But what about all the other resulting outcomes (e.g. 48 wins and 52 losses, 52 wins and 48 losses) and their given probabilities! Doesn't it all end up being -.4% on average?

That somehow, given a loss rebate, within the first few hands the house edge isn't necessarily -.4%?

Won't, given the rebate, it all average to -$40k (if a .5% house edge) after all the permutations?
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I think your math is wrong. It's more like if I offered to let you play at my roulette table without 0 and 00 and the odds of red coming up are 49.75% and the odds of black coming up is 50.25%. Your'e only allowed to put money on red, but I'll pay you $100 when red comes up and you only have to pay me $80 when black comes up. Isn't that a very +EV game from the outset?
 
The Suburbs said:
I think your math is wrong. It's more like if I offered to let you play at my roulette table without 0 and 00 and the odds of red coming up are 49.75% and the odds of black coming up is 50.25%. Your'e only allowed to put money on red, but I'll pay you $100 when red comes up and you only have to pay me $80 when black comes up. Isn't that a very +EV game from the outset?
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Of course we all know a casino would never offer that deal. They would say give us 1000 bets (or more likely so many hours) at 10000 average bet and we'll rebate 20% of any loss. Thats 10 mil in action and if the ev is -.25 per hand the whale would expect a loss of 25000 for a rebate of 5000. At the end he could come out ahead but the rebate doesn't make it +ev off the top.
 
ohbehave said:
Of course we all know a casino would never offer that deal. They would say give us 1000 bets (or more likely so many hours) at 10000 average bet and we'll rebate 20% of any loss. Thats 10 mil in action and if the ev is -.25 per hand the whale would expect a loss of 25000 for a rebate of 5000. At the end he could come out ahead but the rebate doesn't make it +ev off the top.
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Right. Of course they're not THAT stupid and they would absolutely institute a minimum amount of action to keep their advantage. I was just pointing out how a loss rebate COULD theoretically turn a -EV game into a substantial +EV game.
 
Another way to think of a loss rebate is basically an increased payout. The thought experiment only really works for a single bet rather than a trip, but it's easy to see why a loss rebate can easily produce a house edge.

Let's consider a simple weighted coin flip game, like baccarat -- pushes can be dropped from the return table since no money changes hands. Say you're putting $100 on the player bet. The return (that is, probability * payoff) of a win is $44.6247, and the return of a loss is -$45.8597. This gives an EV of -$1.23. However, let's say you have a 20% loss rebate. Then the return for a loss is 80% of what it would normally be, or .8 * -$45.8597 = -$36.6878. The EV of the game is now *positive* $7.93/hand!

Put another way -- you're only risking $80, but you're getting payed 5 to 4 on wins!

Obviously no casino ever would give you this deal (at least, not for a large number of hands... match play coupons do this very thing). But it's easy to extrapolate this idea to loss rebates for a trip. The math is much more complicated (and I don't know it), but hopefully this little thought experiment has provided some insight into why loss rebates can easily give positive expectation.
 
The Suburbs said:
Right. Of course they're not THAT stupid and they would absolutely institute a minimum amount of action to keep their advantage.
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Yes, they DO institute a minimum amount of action; but SOMETIMES they miscalculate the correct figure, and require too little action to keep their edge. As I've stated earlier, I personally know someone who HAS burned a casino in this way. When the casino finally figured it out, the casino manager DID get fired (and rightfully so).

I'm not saying that this IS how the man who is the subject of this thread beat these casinos, but I WILL say that it's a VERY strong possibility. I will even go so far as to say that it's a strong LIKELIHOOD. The fact that the manager of the Trop got fired over this somewhat strengthens this theory.
 
This brings to mind a rather sinister thought:
Suppose I were a casino manager, nearing retirement age. I conspire with a high roller & offer him a lucrative +EV rebate, with the idea of splitting the money afterward. I wouldn't mind getting fired for $2.9 million!

I doubt that I'm the first one who's ever thought of THIS..... :cool:
 
Sucker said:
This brings to mind a rather sinister thought:
Suppose I were a casino manager, nearing retirement age. I conspire with a high roller & offer him a lucrative +EV rebate, with the idea of splitting the money afterward. I wouldn't mind getting fired for $2.9 million!

I doubt that I'm the first one who's ever thought of THIS..... :cool:
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Probably happens quite often. Know a hostess who just started giving away bigger than normal comps because she knew she was about to work somewhere else :laugh:
 
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