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Posted on Sun, Jun. 22, 2008
Sharks-in-training stack the deck by learning how to count cards
BY DANIEL CHANG
Luck won't be the only factor giving some cardplayers an advantage Sunday when the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino near Hollywood becomes the first gambling hall in the state to offer blackjack and other table games.
In anticipation of the thousands of gamblers expected to try their hand at blackjack, baccarat, pai gow, Let It Ride and Three Card Poker -- all new to Florida casinos -- a pair of former students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are teaching a few blackjack players a way they might beat the house.
The former students, whose college-era gambling careers were the basis of the movie 21, are teaching players how to count cards -- a technique that is part math, part memory, and mostly unwelcome at casinos across the country.
In fact, it is precisely because Mike Aponte, 37, of Los Angeles, and David Irvine, 37, of Naples, are no longer welcome at most casinos, particularly in Las Vegas, that they launched a business teaching others how to count cards.
Aponte and Irvine led a card-counting seminar in an undisclosed Miami location on June 14 -- charging $900 a student -- and declined to allow a reporter to attend because, they said, the students must protect their identities if they are to apply their new skills. The casino can ban anyone it suspects is counting cards.
In 2004, Aponte and Irvine launched The Blackjack Institute, offering aids ranging from tutorials that sell for about $135 apiece to private tutoring sessions that cost $7,000. To date, the pair said they have taught about 250 students nationwide.
`MIDDLE SCHOOL MATH'
Aponte said the theory of card counting is ``middle school math: adding, subtracting. The most complicated it gets is dividing, like dividing 14 by 2 ½.''
''It's not a case of where you're memorizing the cards and you have to have a photographic memory,'' he said. ``The main determinant of whether someone becomes a good card counter is just how serious they are about it.''
The underlying principle is that when a deck has a large proportion of high cards (10, jack, queen, king and ace) to low cards, the player has an edge, while the reverse favors the casino.
Depending on the rules that a casino applies to blackjack -- and depending on the cardplayer's method -- the house advantage for non-card counters can range from ½ to 2 ½ percent or more.
The Hard Rock will have an estimated ½ percent advantage over a player who uses perfect basic blackjack strategy -- but not card counting -- said Howard Dreitzer, senior vice president of table games for the Seminole tribe.
With card counting, it's difficult to calculate precisely how much of an advantage the player will gain, Aponte said. ''You're going to have your losing streaks,'' he said. ``There could be times where the dealer gets blackjack, because the dealer is just as likely to hit blackjack as you are.
''The big difference,'' he said, ``is when the dealer wins, he doesn't get paid 150 percent, like you do.''
Still, a card counter who knows what he's doing can expect an advantage of about 1 percent over the house. That may seem like a small percentage -- ''It's not a get-rich-quick scheme,'' Irvine said -- but spread across a month, a year or longer, and coupled with maximum bets when the odds favor the player, that advantage can compound into big returns.
Aponte and Irvine estimate their MIT team raked in about $10 million playing blackjack, mostly in Las Vegas but also elsewhere, from 1992 to 2000. Aponte also won the 2004 World Series of Blackjack, a televised tournament created by the cable TV network GSN.
The top two mistakes among new players, Aponte said, is that they don't play basic strategy -- such as standing when the dealer shows a six, or splitting aces and eights -- and that they bet too much on individual hands relative to their bankroll.
Many players also tend to ignore what they've learned, and fall back on superstitions, habits and hunches -- even when they know the proper techniques, he said.
Beyond that, card counters also have to make an effort to disguise their practice in a casino.
Irvine chuckles at the portrayal of the MIT team in the movie 21. ''We didn't use nearly the sophisticated wigs and fake accents they used in the movie,'' he said. ``But at the same time we definitely used different personas when playing in the casinos.''
HOW THEY DID IT
Part of the reason the MIT team was so successful, Irvine said, is because they played in teams of five or six, and because ''we did it as a career,'' playing often and for long hours.
Individual card counters ''aren't going to go and win millions of dollars like we did,'' he says. But they can improve their play and have more fun as a result.
That is, if the Hard Rock doesn't catch on.
The Seminole tribe, which expanded its casino games under a revenue-sharing agreement signed by Gov. Charlie Crist in November, unveiled 71 new card tables for Sunday's debut, including 55 tables for blackjack. The rest of the tables are divided among the other new table games.
Dreitzer declined to say whether Hard Rock security keeps a list of known card counters. But the casino will rely on a variety of methods to discourage the practice, including dealing the game from an eight-deck shoe, training dealers to spot card counters, and using a variety of electronic surveillance.
''Obviously, card counting or any type of advantage play we don't encourage,'' Dreitzer said. ``But there's nothing illegal about it.''
And if the casino suspects a player of counting cards? ''Unlike the movie, there's no going into the back room. We don't do anything like that,'' he said. Most likely, the casino would ask that player to leave. But perhaps the biggest foil for those who count cards is overconfidence. ''Quite frankly,'' Dreitzer said, ``a lot of people overestimate their skill. We love people who think they have an advantage over us.''
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Posted on Sun, Jun. 22, 2008
Sharks-in-training stack the deck by learning how to count cards
BY DANIEL CHANG
Luck won't be the only factor giving some cardplayers an advantage Sunday when the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino near Hollywood becomes the first gambling hall in the state to offer blackjack and other table games.
In anticipation of the thousands of gamblers expected to try their hand at blackjack, baccarat, pai gow, Let It Ride and Three Card Poker -- all new to Florida casinos -- a pair of former students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are teaching a few blackjack players a way they might beat the house.
The former students, whose college-era gambling careers were the basis of the movie 21, are teaching players how to count cards -- a technique that is part math, part memory, and mostly unwelcome at casinos across the country.
In fact, it is precisely because Mike Aponte, 37, of Los Angeles, and David Irvine, 37, of Naples, are no longer welcome at most casinos, particularly in Las Vegas, that they launched a business teaching others how to count cards.
Aponte and Irvine led a card-counting seminar in an undisclosed Miami location on June 14 -- charging $900 a student -- and declined to allow a reporter to attend because, they said, the students must protect their identities if they are to apply their new skills. The casino can ban anyone it suspects is counting cards.
In 2004, Aponte and Irvine launched The Blackjack Institute, offering aids ranging from tutorials that sell for about $135 apiece to private tutoring sessions that cost $7,000. To date, the pair said they have taught about 250 students nationwide.
`MIDDLE SCHOOL MATH'
Aponte said the theory of card counting is ``middle school math: adding, subtracting. The most complicated it gets is dividing, like dividing 14 by 2 ½.''
''It's not a case of where you're memorizing the cards and you have to have a photographic memory,'' he said. ``The main determinant of whether someone becomes a good card counter is just how serious they are about it.''
The underlying principle is that when a deck has a large proportion of high cards (10, jack, queen, king and ace) to low cards, the player has an edge, while the reverse favors the casino.
Depending on the rules that a casino applies to blackjack -- and depending on the cardplayer's method -- the house advantage for non-card counters can range from ½ to 2 ½ percent or more.
The Hard Rock will have an estimated ½ percent advantage over a player who uses perfect basic blackjack strategy -- but not card counting -- said Howard Dreitzer, senior vice president of table games for the Seminole tribe.
With card counting, it's difficult to calculate precisely how much of an advantage the player will gain, Aponte said. ''You're going to have your losing streaks,'' he said. ``There could be times where the dealer gets blackjack, because the dealer is just as likely to hit blackjack as you are.
''The big difference,'' he said, ``is when the dealer wins, he doesn't get paid 150 percent, like you do.''
Still, a card counter who knows what he's doing can expect an advantage of about 1 percent over the house. That may seem like a small percentage -- ''It's not a get-rich-quick scheme,'' Irvine said -- but spread across a month, a year or longer, and coupled with maximum bets when the odds favor the player, that advantage can compound into big returns.
Aponte and Irvine estimate their MIT team raked in about $10 million playing blackjack, mostly in Las Vegas but also elsewhere, from 1992 to 2000. Aponte also won the 2004 World Series of Blackjack, a televised tournament created by the cable TV network GSN.
The top two mistakes among new players, Aponte said, is that they don't play basic strategy -- such as standing when the dealer shows a six, or splitting aces and eights -- and that they bet too much on individual hands relative to their bankroll.
Many players also tend to ignore what they've learned, and fall back on superstitions, habits and hunches -- even when they know the proper techniques, he said.
Beyond that, card counters also have to make an effort to disguise their practice in a casino.
Irvine chuckles at the portrayal of the MIT team in the movie 21. ''We didn't use nearly the sophisticated wigs and fake accents they used in the movie,'' he said. ``But at the same time we definitely used different personas when playing in the casinos.''
HOW THEY DID IT
Part of the reason the MIT team was so successful, Irvine said, is because they played in teams of five or six, and because ''we did it as a career,'' playing often and for long hours.
Individual card counters ''aren't going to go and win millions of dollars like we did,'' he says. But they can improve their play and have more fun as a result.
That is, if the Hard Rock doesn't catch on.
The Seminole tribe, which expanded its casino games under a revenue-sharing agreement signed by Gov. Charlie Crist in November, unveiled 71 new card tables for Sunday's debut, including 55 tables for blackjack. The rest of the tables are divided among the other new table games.
Dreitzer declined to say whether Hard Rock security keeps a list of known card counters. But the casino will rely on a variety of methods to discourage the practice, including dealing the game from an eight-deck shoe, training dealers to spot card counters, and using a variety of electronic surveillance.
''Obviously, card counting or any type of advantage play we don't encourage,'' Dreitzer said. ``But there's nothing illegal about it.''
And if the casino suspects a player of counting cards? ''Unlike the movie, there's no going into the back room. We don't do anything like that,'' he said. Most likely, the casino would ask that player to leave. But perhaps the biggest foil for those who count cards is overconfidence. ''Quite frankly,'' Dreitzer said, ``a lot of people overestimate their skill. We love people who think they have an advantage over us.''
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