by Arnold Snyder<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n (From The Intelligent Gambler <\/em>, April 1997) If you\u2019re the type of person who lets the word out among your friends and acquaintances that you are a serious blackjack player \u2014 one of those notorious \u201ccard counters\u201d \u2014 you may have noticed that quite a number of people, upon discovering this character flaw of yours, will cock their heads and say, with a disapproving grimace, \u201cOh . . . Is that legal?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the twenty years that I\u2019ve been a professional gambler \u2014 writing about the game of blackjack for seventeen of them \u2014 I have been asked this question at least a hundred times. It still flusters me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My immediate response, which is always something on the line of, \u201cOf course, it\u2019s legal! Card counting is just thinking while you\u2019re playing. How can it be illegal to think?\u201d is usually met with something on the line of, \u201cOh . . . The casinos let you do that?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This always steams me, the suggestion that I must first get \u201cpermission\u201d from the casinos to think while I play. But I usually say something like, \u201cWell, if they know you\u2019re counting the cards while you play, they\u2019ll throw you out . . . But it\u2019s not illegal to count cards.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI see . . . \u201d they say, obviously seeing nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With most people, this is the end of the conversation. But a handful of intrepid souls will want to probe deeper into this curious avocation of mine. At this point, I\u2019ll find myself knowledgeably discussing the innkeepers\u2019 right to refuse service to anyone. I\u2019ll expound upon how the trespassing laws are utilized in Nevada to eliminate card counters from the blackjack tables, as opposed to New Jersey \u2014 where innkeepers\u2019 rights don\u2019t extend to the blackjack tables. The Atlantic City casinos generally use more frequent shuffling, and various methods of restricting bets, to foil card counters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve also received disturbing reports that truly persistent card counters are sometimes arrested for \u201ccreating disturbances,\u201d so that the local trespassing laws may then be applied. Some blackjack players have gone to court over these issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From here, the conversation inevitably turns to the extraordinary surveillance methods the casinos typically use to identify players as card counters, and the extraordinary methods card counters resort to in order to hide their identities, and their level of skill, from the casinos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Recently, an hour or so into such a conversation, the woman I was talking with said in an exasperated voice, \u201cWhy didn\u2019t you just admit it in the first place: Card counting is illegal!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s not illegal,\u201d I insisted. \u201cThis is America! They can\u2019t make it illegal to think!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWho are you kidding?\u201d she asked in all seriousness. \u201cYou admit that you have to hide it from the casinos, and that once they know you can do it, they put your picture in a \u2018mug book\u2019 that gets circulated to the other casinos, so that you have to wear a disguise and get fake I.D. if you want to keep playing. But, if they see through your disguise, they can have you arrested for trespassing. So, obviously, the police are on the casinos\u2019 side, as are the courts. And you\u2019re saying it\u2019s not illegal? You\u2019re like a cat burglar trying to convince someone it\u2019s not illegal to break-and-enter, provided you don\u2019t get caught.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s not the same thing at all!\u201d I protested. \u201cA burglar is stealing someone\u2019s property. A card counter is following all the rules of the game, as set by the casino, just like any other player at the table. He\u2019s just thinking, that\u2019s all. He\u2019s not stealing anything.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She thought about this for a moment, then said, \u201cObviously, there\u2019s one rule you\u2019re breaking.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat\u2019s that?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou\u2019re not allowed to think while you play,\u201d she said matter-of-factly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unfortunately, matter-of-factly, she\u2019s right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I was a kid, my father worked for IBM. He was a computer salesman back in the 1950\u2019s when the only computers were garage-sized mainframes used by the few huge businesses that could afford them. On his desk at home, he always had a small wooden placard that read: \u201cThink.\u201d It was the motto of Thomas J. Watson, president and founder of IBM. On the few occasions I accompanied my father to his office in downtown Detroit, I saw these placards all over. Think. Think. Think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps the casinos should adopt a similar placard they could set on each blackjack table, right next to the betting limit sign, a placard that says: \u201cDon\u2019t Think.\u201d Or, maybe they could just append these words to the rules sign: \u201cDouble down on any two original cards. Split and resplit any pair, except aces. Split aces receive only one card each. No thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Or, as Descartes once said: \u201cI think, therefore I can\u2019t play blackjack.\u201d \u2660<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Or . . . Is it Legal to Think in Casinos? by Arnold Snyder (From The Intelligent Gambler , April 1997)\u00a9 Arnold Snyder 1997 If you\u2019re the type of person who lets the word out among your friends and acquaintances that you are a serious blackjack player \u2014 one of those notorious \u201ccard counters\u201d \u2014 you may […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[631,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851234"}],"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\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=851234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851234\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=851234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=851234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=851234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\u00a9 Arnold Snyder 1997<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n