NEW James Grosjean article

[psyduck]

Seriously, what skill does one need if one already saw the hole card?

 

[zengrifter]

"a part-time folk singer who's nicknamed Pepper and is known as the world's fastest card counter."

"After hearing the dealer's suggestion, Grosjean stews and thinks to himself, Lady, you have no idea. The two people at your table know more about this game than anyone else on the planet."

"So we shut the game down ourselves, rather than waiting for MGM to do it." The team enlisted a Chinese friend to tell the dealer, in her native tongue, that she was exposing cards. "The dealer got a doctor's note, saying that she had carpal tunnel syndrome and couldn't deal pitch games anymore."

When I ask him to compare himself to the typical card counter, he sharply replies, "There are some people who think that the average card counter is the equivalent of a chimpanzee and I am a fully evolved human. But that's not quite accurate. In reality, card counters are more like salamanders just crawling onto land—even though they think they're swinging through the trees."

Really?

Yes, really. IF YOU were THAT good, you'd also be just as full of yourself, right? :laugh:
(see ExCAA/ZG Debate.)

 

[Sonny]

Really?

Sounds about right to me.

-Sonny-

 

[Sonny]

Seriously, what skill does one need if one already saw the hole card?

That's like asking "What skill does one need to fly an airplane that has already been built?"

-Sonny-

 

[psyduck]

That's like asking "What skill does one need to fly an airplane that has already been built?"

-Sonny-

Sorry Sonny, I disagree.

I understand that it is hard to see the hole card, but once you see it, not much skill is needed to beat the game. I don't deny that skill in this case can win more.

 

[johndoe]

Sorry Sonny, I disagree.

I understand that it is hard to see the hole card, but once you see it, not much skill is needed to beat the game. I don't deny that skill in this case can win more.

As the wise one once said, beating the game is trivial. Managing heat is the challenging part, which requires skill and experience.

 

[aslan]

Obviously you continue to be burdened by your need / desire to demean me.

There is NO paradox here. I am imperfectly ethical. Mostly everyone is.

If I plan or conspire to do something unethical that is one thing.
Taking advantage of found money is merely opportunistic.
That is why courts, etc. always consider "motive"
When money falls in my lap I accept it.
I do not take any steps to take what is NOT mine !

What I just posted is completely accurate as to what happened;
but I am, unlike some paragons of virtue, merely human.

Last week a player left a green chip under a napkin at third base.
I found it and kept it - rather than attempting to return it to its rightful owner.

Not to impugn your integrity in any way, your remarks reminded me of the bag of money that fell off a Brinks truck in New Jersey and was recovered and stashed away by a group of kids. The police certainly considered it stealing. At the time, I was imagining all the ways I would have hidden the money if this had happened to me.

I must have grown in virtue since, because I would now be more inclined to return it. Note that I said "more inclined". I know the difference between right and wrong, but I don't necessarily know how I would react if it happened to me.

Living a moral life is not always an easy thing to do. I mean, who does it hurt? It's covered by insurance, right? It's like stealing a peanut from Rockefeller, right? The rationalizations are endless.

Let's say, at this moment in time I would return the money... but please don't tempt me. :laugh::eyepatch::laugh::eyepatch::laugh: :eyepatch::laugh:

 

[Lonesome Gambler]

Psyduck: no disrespect intended, but that is a monumentally uninformed opinion (which you are of course entitled to). Game strategy is the easy part, counting included. The hard part is being able to play. The gap between expert HC players and amateurs is likely much wider than the gap between expert and amateur counters.

Disclaimer: I am not an expert HC player.

 

[aslan]

I don't want to get into a large argument or take either side. But, do you believe this? Do you believe that hole-carders innocently sit there like Poker players and accidentally see the opponents card? How often have you seen this happen and can you translate that into the fact that people make their living in this manner? As for how is hole-carding like spooking, think of the mechanics. The point of spooking is to have eyes where they would not normally be expected to be. Now, if a hole-carder leans back in his chair so far that he is about to tip over, are his eyes where they are expected to be?

I am just saying that the question is not as obvious as it may seem.

A good point (in boldface). I have not given it much thought and have done some small amount of hole carding myself.

IMO hole carding is still beating the house, not just the dealer, however, through their ineptness in training their dealers.

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.

 

[jerseyshop101]

Not to impugn your integrity in any way, your remarks reminded me of the bag of money that fell off a Brinks truck in New Jersey and was recovered and stashed away by a group of kids. The police certainly considered it stealing. At the time, I was imagining all the ways I would have hidden the money if this had happened to me.

I must have grown in virtue since, because I would now be more inclined to return it. Note that I said "more inclined". I know the difference between right and wrong, but I don't necessarily know how I would react if it happened to me.

Living a moral life is not always an easy thing to do. I mean, who does it hurt? It's covered by insurance, right? It's like stealing a peanut from Rockefeller, right? The rationalizations are endless.

Let's say, at this moment in time I would return the money... but please don't tempt me. :laugh::eyepatch::laugh::eyepatch::laugh: :eyepatch::laugh:

I remember that too from way back in 1981. The movie about it was Money for Nothing (1993) with John Cusack and James Gandolfini in it.

From Wikipedia: Joseph "Joey" Coyle (born 1953 in Philadelphia) was an unemployed longshoreman in Philadelphia who, in February 1981, found $1.2 million in the middle of the street after it had fallen out of the back of an armored car. His story was made into the movie Money for Nothing starring John Cusack and also a book written by Mark Bowden titled Finders Keepers: The Story of a Man Who Found $1 Million.

Joey struggled with a drug addiction for most of his adult life. He committed suicide by hanging himself in his basement on August 15, 1993.

I didn't know Mark Bowden, who wrote Black Hawk Down wrote this book.

Good stuff.

Thanks.

 

[psyduck]

Psyduck: no disrespect intended, but that is a monumentally uninformed opinion (which you are of course entitled to). Game strategy is the easy part, counting included. The hard part is being able to play. The gap between expert HC players and amateurs is likely much wider than the gap between expert and amateur counters.

Disclaimer: I am not an expert HC player.

LG,

I never see disrespect for anyone in your posts. You sound like a gentleman.

Anyway, what I meant was solely beating the game. I am sure there will be a big gap between knowing and not knowing how to play it.

BTW, I always enjoyed your posts.

 

[NightStalker]

If you say so

Sounds about right to me.

-Sonny-

Since you are one of the posters I follow on this site, I buy it.
My question was more about the arrogance reflected in the article and other post(ZG-ExCAA debate).. I am not saying that <> is not knowledgeable but it sounds like a waste of knowledge without basic politeness..

If you have it, do you really need to flaunt it?

 

[Lonesome Gambler]

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.

 

[Lonesome Gambler]

LG,

I never see disrespect for anyone in your posts. You sound like a gentleman.

Anyway, what I meant was solely beating the game. I am sure there will be a big gap between knowing and not knowing how to play it.

BTW, I always enjoyed your posts.

Thank you, I appreciate the kind words. An important thing to remember, by the way, is that although the true skill of the hole card player is in the meta-game aspect of the play, it's by no means technically easy, either. The strategy is potentially more difficult to initially learn than BS, scouting is difficult and time consuming, and many players will have to memorize multiple different strategies for different situations, not to mention having to know what to do in cases where no information or partial information is present. In some cases, the quick thinking aspect is much more difficult than counting a 6D game. I often walk by a blackjack table full of cards, catch the count out of habit and wish I was doing something "easy" like counting cards.

Man, that sounds condescending (although I don't mean it to be)!

 

[QFIT]

I mean, who does it hurt? It's covered by insurance, right? It's like stealing a peanut from Rockefeller, right? The rationalizations are endless.

And that's why insurance is expensive.

 

[Sonny]

Since you are one of the posters I follow on this site, I buy it.
My question was more about the arrogance reflected in the article and other post(ZG-ExCAA debate).. I am not saying that <> is not knowledgeable but it sounds like a waste of knowledge without basic politeness..

I didn't get an arrogant vibe from the article, but I can understand how it might come across differently to other people. Maybe an explanation will shed some light on the subject. As far as the ZG debate, that's another story. ZG has been trolling him for years and I think he finally just lost his $h!t. ZG has a knack (should I say talent?) for pushing people's buttons.

"a part-time folk singer who's nicknamed Pepper and is known as the world's fastest card counter."

I don't remember which book it was, but Uston talks about little get-togethers that some of the teams would have back in the days. Inevitably there would be a few friendly competitions between the players. That's where Pepper got his title. I believe his record was 8 seconds for one deck. Any challengers?

"After hearing the dealer's suggestion, Grosjean stews and thinks to himself, Lady, you have no idea. The two people at your table know more about this game than anyone else on the planet."

It was a lone carny game/side bet in a far away riverboat casino. Of the APs that actually knew about it, they were the two that had done the most research. It would be like me saying "I know more about Super Pan 9 than anyone else on the planet." (Which, I assume, is not true)

"So we shut the game down ourselves, rather than waiting for MGM to do it." The team enlisted a Chinese friend to tell the dealer, in her native tongue, that she was exposing cards. "The dealer got a doctor's note, saying that she had carpal tunnel syndrome and couldn't deal pitch games anymore."

That was a move to protect their BP and the game. I can't say that I would have handled it the same way, but I see what he was doing. The other teams would have burned the game, poisoned the dealer and everyone who played against her, and educated the casino about a few things.

When I ask him to compare himself to the typical card counter, he sharply replies, "There are some people who think that the average card counter is the equivalent of a chimpanzee and I am a fully evolved human. But that's not quite accurate. In reality, card counters are more like salamanders just crawling onto land—even though they think they're swinging through the trees."

I actually liked that analogy. Card counters have had the first glimpse that a casino can be beaten. They can see it but they are still tightly squinting. Once they open their eyes and look around they will see some incredibly marvelous and unbelievably stupid casino weaknesses. Suddenly a 1% advantage from such an obvious system seems archaic. I don't think of that as arrogance but it sure does come across that way to most people.

-Sonny-

 

[Lonesome Gambler]

A damn eloquent post from Sonny, and I've got 11 seconds on SD. Back to the drawing board...

 

[bronco60]

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.

I too might be "fine with that" if casinos did, in fact, actively acknowledge that they offered, or only intended to offer, negative expectation games. Instead they actively promote such pathological mental concepts as "luck", "hot streaks", maturity of chances, and so on. That, along with the often slimey techniques they use to procure licences, means they forfeit such "rights". Or should.

 

[Sucker]

"So we shut the game down ourselves, rather than waiting for MGM to do it." The team enlisted a Chinese friend to tell the dealer, in her native tongue, that she was exposing cards. "The dealer got a doctor's note, saying that she had carpal tunnel syndrome and couldn't deal pitch games anymore."

That was a move to protect their BP and the game. I can't say that I would have handled it the same way, but I see what he was doing. The other teams would have burned the game, poisoned the dealer and everyone who played against her, and educated the casino about a few things.

Sonny, you MAY have been seriously misinformed here. You have only heard ONE side of the story.

I will state that to my knowledge, I have never PERSONALLY had ANY negative interaction with this person, so I really can't be 100% sure of WHO to believe. Perhaps HE'S right and the WORLD is wrong. All I can say is; in the blackjack world, I trust NOBODY with my darkest secrets.

 

[psyduck]

All I can say is; in the blackjack world, I trust NOBODY with my darkest secrets.

You sir seem to have all the dark matter I've been looking for!