(From\u00a0Blackjack Forum<\/em>\u00a0Volume XXII #4, Winter 2002\/03)
\u00a9 2002 Blackjack Forum<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am a conspiracy theory nut. I admit it. In fact, I\u2019m proud to admit it. The history of man is littered with hare-brained conspiracies, but people just never see the lunacy that pervades their society. There is a known reason for this mass myopia: Humans, as a species, are slow learners.
Here\u2019s how the Witch Hunt Conspiracy Theory goes:
If we want to soak the masses for bundles of money, we convince them that they have a mortal enemy that we must eliminate. Essentially, we scare the crap out of the rubes. We then begin to hunt down this evil entity mercilessly, knowing that a witch hunt inevitably creates more witches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is the central theorem of the Witch Hunt Conspiracy Theory. We do not need a real enemy, we simply start hunting down any minority group of the population that we insist is a mortal threat to us all. Those foolish enough to sympathize with the victims publicly are simply setting themselves up to be hunted. This increase in the witch population keeps us in business, and the rubes more scared than ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since time began, this has been the way that every power freak has operated. From Attila the Hun to Saddam Hussein, from Prince Machiavelli to Hitler, from Nero to Stalin, the program is always the same.
Starting in the 1600s and continuing for a century or so sporadically, alleged \u201cwitches\u201d were persecuted by the Church throughout Europe and America. They were hunted, captured, imprisoned, tortured and murdered, all in the name of saving mankind from their evil ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is ironic about this era of history is that the witch hunters were the so-called \u201cChristians,\u201d a group whose existence came about as a result of the Romans trying to eliminate them some centuries before by feeding them to lions and otherwise slaughtering them in public. This Roman witch hunt, as expected, simply created more Christians. In fact, this Christian persecution went on so long and so viciously that Christians inevitably became the dominant group wherever they had once been hunted, with their worldwide headquarters located in\u2026 let me guess\u2026 Rome?
These days, nobody tortures Christians or witches, but the damage has been done. Christians today are infesting every corner of the world, and witches have their own web sites. Although we may still want to feed the Christians to wild animals, we don\u2019t. We know they won\u2019t go away, so we just turn the channel, ignore them, and let them live out their folly. Likewise, we allow the witches to set up their magical herb shops, sell each other crystal amulets, display \u201cMy Other Car is a Broom\u201d bumper stickers, and dance under the full moon to their hearts\u2019 content. Just leave us out of it.
In more recent times, we can look at the Communist witch hunt of the McCarthy era. Artists and intellectuals were hunted down simply for having contrary political opinions and exercising their right to free speech. What did these shameful inquisitions in the 50s lead to? Welcome to the 60s, the nationwide explosion of contrary political opinions and free speech, with lunatic fringe artists and writers the most prominent and revered members of society.
Then there\u2019s the so-called \u201cwar on drugs.\u201d This has been going on for what\u2026 forty years? Don\u2019t get me started. As Bishop of the First Church of Blackjack, it\u2019s not my job to cure the world of its ills, only to explain to you, my followers, how everything that happens in the universe relates to the simple card game that we regard as a Sacrament. Which leads us to the \u201ccard counter problem.\u201d
We might wonder if the casinos will ever realize that their barring experiment has failed? Won\u2019t it ever dawn on them that they cannot get rid of professional players simply by barring them from the tables? Are there actually intelligent life forms within the casino industry who do not realize that their witch hunt for professional players only leads to more professional players?
Don\u2019t kid yourselves, my people. As in every witch hunt throughout history, those at the top know that the witch hunt itself creates more witches. The Romans were trying to fill a Coliseum, for Christ\u2019s sake (pun intended). They had a lot of tickets to sell, and they needed a never-ending supply of lion food.
It is the persecution of the professional players that is directly responsible for the gambling craze that has swept the nation, and the world. The casinos have a lot of seats to fill and they know they can only draw the big crowds if they persecute the \u201cwitches\u201d that are infiltrating their gaming pits. The minuscule handful of actual pros, who are labeled a threat to the industry\u2019s very existence, are in fact the reason the industry exists at all. Because of the forty-year witch hunt for card counters, there are more pro gamblers today than ever before in the history of gambling. Witch hunts NEVER eliminate witches; they ALWAYS multiply the witch population.
For example:
Let\u2019s say I\u2019m a professional keno player. I know this sounds crazy but at one time the term \u201cprofessional blackjack player\u201d sounded just as crazy. So let\u2019s just presume I\u2019ve come up with the secret of chaos theory that makes the keno numbers predictable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a normally greedy person in this society, I\u2019m content to win what I consider a livable wage for my efforts, say half-a-million a year. I\u2019m smart and I don\u2019t want anyone else to think my keno wins are based on anything other than luck. So, I spread my keno wins around to different casinos and I keep my secret to myself, just trying to stay under the radar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m going on this way for a few years, pleased with my easy life, until some casino surveillance agents get together and compare notes, and realize I\u2019m beating them all. Now, if the casinos wanted to keep the keno status quo, what\u2019s the smartest action they could take to keep their losses at this game minimized?
If they acted with intelligence, they would keep it under their hats, tell no one, and just keep watching me to see if they could figure out what I was doing. Perhaps they could figure out a way to change the game so I couldn\u2019t beat it anymore.
What is absolutely the worst action they could take?
Bar me.
Why is that a stupid reaction?
Consider\u2026 as long as I am making a good living at this occupation, it is in my best interest to keep my secret to myself. If everybody starts beating keno, the game will cease to be profitable for the casinos and they will eliminate it, or change it, possibly in some fundamental way that negates my edge. There goes my free lunch. It\u2019s also in my best interest to keep my own wins controlled to what I actually want for myself, so as to keep suspicions down and the game profitable for the casinos for years to come.
But what happens when I\u2019m barred?
Here I have the secret to beating keno, and I have just been told I can no longer play keno. My name and photo have been posted in every casino in the world that offers keno. I get trespassed every time I try to enter a joint. Soon, my disguises and fake IDs wear thin. I am hunted, persecuted; I have become a keno witch.
Do you think I will just go back to pushing a pencil at the bank for chicken feed? Or is there some possibility that I might decide to train others to play keno for me? Of course, this team of keno players I put together will have to paid, and they will have to be paid very well so that they don\u2019t decide to strike out on their own, or sell my secret to others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They will also have to start taking enough money out of the casinos that I can still make my half-mill per year, as a percentage over and above what they take. As they are also picked off by the casinos and barred, which is inevitable, like me they also will not want to go back to their dead-end jobs when they are no longer allowed in the keno lounges. What was at one time a half-million-dollar per year cost for the entire casino industry worldwide, becomes a multi-multi-million-dollar problem that every casino must now cope with by hiring chaos theory experts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These experts will be designing expensive computer analysis programs to recognize the signs of a professional player\u2019s keno card. Keno runners will be studying mug books before they make their rounds. And Olaf Vancura will be simultaneously hawking his Keno KO book and furiously trying to invent a ping-pong ball for Mikohn Gaming that violates the laws of physics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If only the casinos would have just let me alone with my system, just watched me, never spread the word that keno was vulnerable to intelligent strategic attack, the cost to the industry would have been minimized to my play, and controlled to a known quantity. So, why wouldn\u2019t they do this? What Happens When You Bar a Card Counter? by Arnold Snyder(From\u00a0Blackjack Forum\u00a0Volume XXII #4, Winter 2002\/03)\u00a9 2002 Blackjack Forum I am a conspiracy theory nut. I admit it. In fact, I\u2019m proud to admit it. The history of man is littered with hare-brained conspiracies, but people just never see the lunacy that pervades their society. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Are you forgetting a crucial element of the central witch hunt theorem? Those at the top know. Your average surveillance or pit critter may think he\u2019s \u201cprotecting\u201d the game by chasing out a counter. This is what he\u2019s hired to do. He\u2019s not hired to think about the effects of a witch hunt; he\u2019s simply hired to hunt witches. But the actual purpose of his job is to create more witches.
Before the card counter hunts began forty years ago, professional gamblers were a more discreet bunch than they are today. None of them told their secrets. Occasionally, a gambler would take some neophyte under his wing to act as a partner, and he\u2019d show him the ropes, a few of the moves, perhaps introduce him to a few other players, but this was a small circle of friends who had a common interest in keeping their methods to themselves.
In the old days, pros did play against each other on occasion\u2014may the best con win. After the game, the loser would bow to the winner as a professional courtesy, and they would each go their respective ways. Often, this was how a lesser pro would learn new tricks. Pros often carried guns and knives to defend themselves, but this was not so much a defense against other pros as against the robbers who hung around the big games looking for an easy score, or the rubes who might turn into sore losers and try to take some drastic action.
But every big gambling team in the modern (post Thorp) history of blackjack\u2014from the old Uston teams, to the Hyland group, to MIT, to CORE, to the Greeks, et al.\u2014was started by pros who had been personally hounded away from the tables, and had to train groups of players to do what they had been doing so they wouldn\u2019t have to go back to the nine-to-five gig.
By employing the witch hunt mechanism, casinos turned professional gambling into big business. They built their games around many of the same cons that gamblers have always depended upon, and their theory of beating their opponents is virtually identical. They build in an \u201cedge\u201d that makes the games appear fair in any short run, but always delivers the money to them in the long run.
As businesses, casinos compete against each other for customers (marks), but they don\u2019t actually play against each other at their tables. There are tales about how some of the early legends (real gamblers) of the Nevada casino industry\u2014Benny Binion, Bill Harrah, Harold Smith, etc.\u2014would occasionally wander into a competing casino and try to take a bundle out at the crap table or blackjack table, but this was never the normal way for casinos to compete, and it\u2019s not happening at all today. Kirk Kerkorian does not try to beat Donald Trump by showing up at the Taj Mahal to play high stakes baccarat. (Okay, so there\u2019s Kerry Packer\u2014but he\u2019s so rich he can afford to be the exception that proves the rule.)
Casinos are not, in fact, professional gamblers. They do not gamble. They are in the business of taking money from those who want to be gamblers. They know they can\u2019t beat the real pros, but by persecuting the pros, they create more pros, and a huge population of wannabe pros and pro sympathizers.
Of course, those at the top must always remember what happened in Rome. The persecution went on so long and so hard that the Christian population reached critical mass; there came a time when there were more Christians than Romans. Once a witch population exceeds the population of the dominant group, the witch population takes over, and they begin to create, and hunt, witches of their own.
What will happen when the professional gambler population reaches critical mass? When the First Church of Blackjack is the ruling body of this industry? Hang in there, gang. Our day will come. We\u2019ll all live to see the Trumps and the Icahns and the Kerkorians on their knees. Gaming Control will answer to us for their sins. And despite being a Bishop, I\u2019m just not feeling very merciful. \u2660<\/p>\n![\"Facebook\"](\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/wp-content\/plugins\/social-media-feather\/synved-social\/image\/social\/regular\/96x96\/facebook.png\" "\\"Follow")
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