Mr. B, a highly successful AP who doesn’t play casino table games, said to me over lunch in a casino coffee shop, “Why don’t they fix everything? If I ran the casino, I would just make it so that no game is beatable!” I’m sure you would try, B! It’s a fair question, but the full answer goes beyond game protection.
Let’s start with the idea of complete game protection. It’s a unicorn. First of all, it’s not even an appropriate objective. Though some casinos actually do have a pathological drive to thwart all APs, that’s just biting off your nose to spite your face. The real goal is profit maximization. The most random shuffle, which would thwart many AP moves, is not as profitable as a much faster shuffle that may occasionally be beaten by a highly skilled AP. Thorough background checks on every person walking into the casino would shut down some APs, but would create a major discouragement to the thousands of degenerates who want to gamble right now! London’s style of casino management is stupid. A zero tolerance policy is not optimal.
Even if a casino wanted to stop every AP, they couldn’t. Casinos have to play the hand they’ve been dealt. Their employee pool consists of people who are less educated and under-incentivized relative to the top APs who are trying to beat the games. Think about it. Casino employees universally believe that the idiot at third base is killing the table by taking the dealer’s bust card. These are people who believe that simply by virtue of a big bankroll and proper money management, a player can beat the games. Ackkk!
If a new casino opens up in Pennsylvania, there are no local employees who have the experience of the long-time Vegas pros who are about to walk in to whack the games. These employees will not know every AP method to beat the games, and it’s not their job to know. Even a Table Games Manager is not a game-protection specialist. A Table Games Manager has to do many things, while APs specialize. There are always new casinos, new employees, new games, new equipment, and new circumstances that make it impossible for a casino to anticipate and thwart every new method of beating a game.
My crew recently found a new game in a casino. The game gave the basic-strategy player an edge of 10.6%, and this was the stingier incarnation (the first gave an edge over 15%). Since the game was new and unique, the casino had no one to turn to for answers or to check the inventor’s math, and the game died a horrible death. Next!
But the real reason that it is difficult to thwart all AP activity is not related to game protection, but rather game design. Suppose that the casinos actually want to provide some entertainment value while they suck every penny from a gambler’s life savings (I said “suppose”!) In that case, they probably want the game to involve some playing decisions. (Obviously, the success of three-reel slots and baccarat shows that playing decisions are not necessarily critical to provide entertainment value. Addictive drugs are entertaining.)
Furthermore, they probably want the game to give the players an edge in the ballpark of -4% (fast games, such as blackjack and Casino War, can make money for the casino even with edges in the -0.5% to -2.5% range). Here’s the key question: Given that there are playing decisions to make within the game, what is the gap between the typical gambler’s edge and the expert player’s edge?
If the game involves tricky consequential decisions, then the expert player’s edge might be 20% higher than the gambler’s edge. But if the casino wants the masses to be playing at -4%, then it means the expert is now at +16%. If we were to make the payouts stingier, to put an expert at breakeven, then the gambler would be at -20%. At that level, the gambler probably gets gutted too quickly, and the game won’t be popular. The zero-tolerance policy to thwart the expert makes the game unpalatable to the thousands of regular gamblers.
You’ve got to give the fish some play for their money. Fantasy sports websites started to see this problem. The pros were gutting the fish so efficiently that the fish lost interest, and the regulators started questioning the equity of it all.
So the key in game design is to offer a set of decisions where the range from the smart to the stupid is not too extreme, or to offer decisions that provide entertainment, but which are completely inconsequential in the game, and which are meaningless in terms of EV. For instance, in Rock, Paper, Scissors, the player has a choice, but a meaningless one if measured by EV. Likewise, choosing Banker vs. Player in baccarat is a relatively inconsequential decision, but one which receives more human scrutiny each day than the debate over climate change.