{"id":121728,"date":"2021-08-13T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-13T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/?p=121728"},"modified":"2021-08-13T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2021-08-13T23:00:00","slug":"colin-jones-s1-e8-mail-bag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/blog\/colin-jones-s1-e8-mail-bag\/","title":{"rendered":"Colin Jones (S1 E8): Mail Bag"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>In this episode of my N-part series looking at Colin Jones\u2019s\nbook, <em>The 21<sup>st<\/sup>-Century Card Counter<\/em>, I\u2019m just going to briefly\ncomment on various phrases and sentences that caught my eye. This is like the \u201cMail\nBag\u201d episodes of <em>Gambling with an Edge<\/em>, or the Potpourri category on\nJeopardy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[p. 26] \u201cI\u2019m not going to argue whether people should or\nshould not gamble for entertainment (though it\u2019s my opinion that gambling is a\nvery high-risk low-reward form of it).\u201d From spending so much time in locals\ncasinos, I\u2019d say that the percentage of gamblers who are problem gamblers\u2014by virtually\nany definition of the term\u2014is much, much higher than the industry would admit. As\na resort destination, Vegas is a different animal. But locals casinos are built\non degenerate gambling. That said, I think there is a role for recreational\ngambling, and CJ underestimates how enjoyable it is for some. CJ is a bit\njaded, because blackjack (and baccarat) are not inherently fun games (you\nwouldn\u2019t play them for no money), and because card counting as a living takes\nthe fun out of the game! One of my old friends came to Vegas with me, and afterwards\nsaid, \u201cYou\u2019ve ruined Las Vegas for me,\u201d because he could never again see the\nexperience in the carefree, oblivious way that gamblers do. I turned it into\nwork.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>[p. 27] \u201cSince I went pro, my overall hourly win rate has\nbeen $432.\u201d I think this might explain CJ\u2019s overall optimism for counting cards,\nand the criticism he has received for making it sound like a way to easy riches\n(I don\u2019t think that such criticism is accurate or fair, but whoever said the\nInternet is fair?). I have no knowledge of the games CJ was playing or the\nhours, but $432\/hour sounds above EV to me for a counter in his first few years\nbuilding a bankroll.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[p. 27] \u201cSure, it can be thrilling. But it can also be\nexhausting, monotonous, frustrating, highly stressful, and an emotional\nrollercoaster unlike anything else you\u2019ll ever experience.\u201d That\u2019s more like\nit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[p. 29] \u201cApophenia is the term neurologists use to define the reality that humans are universally looking for patterns in random information.\u201d Good to know. Apophenia is everywhere. I could put a bunch of random digits in a glossary and people would think it means something!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[p. 30] \u201cHere\u2019s a computer simulation \u2026\u201d Thank you for limiting\nthe chart to a single page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[p. 32] \u201cCasinos know this. That\u2019s why they aren\u2019t concerned if a gambler wins on any given night.\u201d This is one of the few points in the book I disagree with. Some casinos don\u2019t sweat it, but many casinos and thousands of bosses expect to win every time, against every player, and take it personally if the player beats the casino. Casinos are babies. Slimy, crap-producing, whiny babies. But I love kids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[p. 33] \u201cYou\u2019d be surprised how many people tell me that they think the casino is cheating them. The casino doesn\u2019t have to!\u201d This is a very, very weak argument against the possibility of cheating. The casinos don\u2019t have to assault players, but they do. The casinos don\u2019t have to rig jackpots, but it has happened (Venetian). Casinos don\u2019t have to ban cell phones or limit you to one hand on carnival games, but most of them do. CJ is making some logical argument, or maybe an ethical one, saying that casinos earn \u201cenough\u201d the legal way that cheating isn\u2019t necessary and they wouldn\u2019t do it. To a casino, there is no \u201cenough\u201d\u2014ever! That said, I am the first to say that some loser whining on the Internet about being cheated did NOT get cheated. No, you didn\u2019t run into a seconds dealer in northern Nevada, or at the Plaza in Vegas, or the Flamingo. Didn\u2019t happen, sorry. The card counter must take accountability for playing a weak game. Losing happens\u2014a lot. If a casino is to cheat these days, by far the most common method is simply stiffing the player or free-rolling against a player. It\u2019s really a variation of the ol\u2019 heads-I-win-tails-you-lose trick that we learned as children, but scaled to the eight-figure level. Casinos are even bolstering legal support for the move.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[p. 36] \u201cOther players have a huge impact on a card-counter\u2019s\nwin-rate. How? They slow down the game.\u201d Tell him what he\u2019s won! The\nimplications of this are far-reaching. The reason most players don\u2019t like to\nplay heads-up is because they lose too fast. This is the basis for the myth\nthat blackjack is a \u201cteam game.\u201d Gamblers\u2019 personal experience is that when\nthey play alone, they almost always lose. (And they have no scapegoat.) For APs,\nfinding fast conditions is quite valuable, and playing faster is one of the\nbiggest skills of an expert playcaller. In a game where the spotter can grind\nout a modest but worthwhile profit, an exiting BP will sometimes lock his spots\nto prevent civilians from sitting down, thus gifting the spotter a faster game\nduring cleanup. If an AP team intends to take over a deadspread, all team\nmembers must be ready to pounce, because the first player to sit down will\nshill up the game, and civilians will suddenly materialize and sit down, even\nthough the table was deadspread for half an hour before that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[p. 37] \u201c(simulation by Cartwright)\u201d\u2014sniff, sniff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[p. 40] \u201c$500 to the player who won the most over the past three months, $500 to the player who lost the most.\u201d The idea is that getting in hours and betting big according to the team gameplan will generate EV and swings, so swings positive and negative are to be rewarded as a proxy for EV generation. I\u2019ll assume that current team standings are not posted, so that no one is gaming the system by intentionally losing if they are in second-to-lowest position. Nevertheless, I\u2019m not sure how good an idea this is. Rewarding losses is unnerving to me, because I\u2019ve always advocated for improving one\u2019s game in response to any loss. CJ\u2019s policy is probably good for boosting the morale of a player who happens to be losing through no fault of his own (that happens more rarely than people admit). I\u2019ve noticed players get emotionally attached to the results on their own spot, getting irritated by an individual loss, when they should feel happy to show a loss to the pit with an aggregate team win. As a spotter, I love bleeding out while my BP wins! Bloodletting helps me live longer! Rewarding swings wouldn\u2019t be feasible on BP-spotter teams, or teams which target games with wildly different edges. I\u2019m curious how well CJ\u2019s reward structure worked out, since it\u2019s an interesting idea. The MIT teams also expected to see swings from any player correctly executing the gameplan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[p. 48] \u201c[quoting Breaking Bad] I did it for me. I liked it.\nI was good at it, and I was really alive.\u201d That\u2019s the thing about casino\ngambling. It uses, as Max Rubin would call it, \u201c<em>cash<\/em> cash.\u201d Losing\nelectronic cash in the markets or real estate is one thing, but cash cash feels\na lot more real. We once had a billionaire (well, the heir to a billionaire)\nbet the money for us on a brief play. We lost $5000, his share of which was\n$1000, and he seemed a bit shaken by it. Something about laying out those\nBenjamins on the table felt very real in a way that people in most businesses\nnever feel. Winning or losing $5000 in minutes playing a card game is not\nnormal! For most counters, though, feeling \u201calive\u201d implies the possibility of\nfeeling \u201cdead\u201d as well. To emotionally survive the swings of counting cards\ndemands some detachment. The successful counter turns the game into a monotony\nof keeping the count, making the bet, generating the EV. Worshipping at the\naltar of EV might protect a player\u2019s psyche from a loss, but it means that the\nwins become empty as well. Success eradicates the \u201calive\u201d feeling, and the most\nsuccessful counters become drones, putting in the hours, ignoring the\nback-offs, grinding out that EV. For the author, feeling \u201calive\u201d again required\nmoving on to a new challenge, such as building a blackjack teaching program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this episode of my N-part series looking at Colin Jones\u2019s book, The 21st-Century Card Counter, I\u2019m just going to briefly comment on various phrases and sentences that caught my eye. This is like the \u201cMail Bag\u201d episodes of Gambling with an Edge, or the Potpourri category on Jeopardy. [p. 26] \u201cI\u2019m not going to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[558],"tags":[1332,1366,1371],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121728"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121728\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}