Gambling With an Edge - guest Michael Konik

The guest this week is Michael Konik, on to talk about his new novel, Becoming Bobby.

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Gambling With an Edge - guest John Chang

This week's guest is John Chang, head of the famous MIT blackjack team featured in the movie 21, and the book Bringing Down the House.

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Advice to new card counters

It seems there are a lot of new card counters on the blackjack boards recently. I don't know if they received blackjack books as early Christmas presents, or maybe the movie 21 has been playing on cable, but for whatever reasons the new posts are proliferating, often with the same questions, and often making the same mistakes.  Here are a few suggestions to those just starting out.

1. Learn basic strategy backwards forwards, and in your sleep.
If your wife shakes you awake at 4am and asks, "What do I do with 13 against a 2?" you should know the answer without a blink. When people tell me they have learned basic strategy I ask them a few questions:
13 vs. 2
A7 vs 10
99 vs 9
If they get those right (which almost never happens) I ask which basic strategy did you learn? The one I recommend is DAS ( double after split) H17 (dealer hits with soft 17) LS (late surrender). I found I had to ask this when I was quizzing my son. I asked him when you double A7 and he said 3-6. I gave him the "incorrect" buzzer and he whipped out a basic strategy card he had been using. Unfortunately it had the BS for S17 and no surrender. That's okay. It's only a few tweaks.

2. Learn the right count.
Which is the right count? To answer that I have to ask, WHY do you want to count cards? Here are three different types of players, and a recommendation for which count to learn.

• I want to excel at something difficult and challenging, that if viewed in a vacuum could be considered the count that would win the most money for a given session.
  Okay, you want the "hard" count. If an easy count would win $50 per hour you want the hard count that will win $51 per hour. Maybe throw in a side count of aces and 7s. Boost that win up to $51.05. The count for you is one of these - Zen, Uston APC, Revere APC, or Hi Opt II. But make no mistake - if your end goal is to make as much money as possible, these counts are not for you. These counts are for people who will not play lots of hours, and want to play single, and  double deck. These counts are for the type of guy who likes to be able to solve a Rubik's Cube.
  
• Vegas Baby! I want gourmet meals, tickets to fights, champagne, and I want them to pay me for it!
  Right on. You want the simplest count possible. For that you want either the Red 7 which you can find in Blackbelt in Blackjack, or the KO which you can get in Knock-Out Blackjack. You should also pick up Comp City, which will help you get the most out of milking the comp system. Your approach here should be that you are making most of your ev from the stuff the casino is giving you, and you do not want to get any heat or barred by trying to earn extra money with a big bet spread.
  
• Show me the money! It's all about the Benjamins!
  If you just want to make the most money possible I would recommend the Hi Lo. For that you should read Professional Blackjack by Stanford Wong. Hi Lo is a simple strong count, and if you ever team up with someone chances are this is the count they use. The large successful teams of the past like the MIT team or the Hyland team used this count and won many millions of dollars.  I know you are saying, "Why can't I use the "better" count if my goal is maximum earn?" Obviously you can, but I don't think you will earn more money. Making money counting these days means playing shoe games. The stronger counts perform better on the single and double deck games. Playing one of these counts for long hours will cause you to make mistakes, and become mentally fatigued sooner. If you can play just one extra shoe because you are using an easier count then you have more than made up for any gain you would have had with a stronger count.

3. Learn what is important, and what is not.

There are 3 things beginners obsess over that are not important. Which count to use, keeping side counts, and the rules.

Here are 3 things that are important. 

Penetration - how much of the shoe do they deal?  Here are 2 games

6 decks cut 2 1/2 S17, DAS, LS - good rules, less decks, bad cut

8 decks cut 1 H17 no DAS no LS - terrible rules, more decks, good cut

Which game is worth more for the card counter? It's very close but the 8 deck game is worth slightly more.

Game speed - how many hands per hour are you getting?

If you are playing at a full table you might get 50 hands per hour. If you play by yourself you can get 150 hands per hour or more. That means you are winning 3 times as much if you play alone versus playing at a full table. Wouldn't you like to triple your paycheck? Game speed is important. A side count of 7s is not.

Your bet spread - How big a spread is there from your minimum bet to your maximum? Say that you have determined you will bet $100 at a TC 2, 200 at TC 3, 300 at TC 4, and 400 at TC 5 or higher. 

At a $50 table you are spreading 50-400 or 1-8 you win $24.02 per hundred hands

At a $25 table your spread is 1-16 or 25-400 you win $43.70

If you only wong your spread is 0-400 you win $63.37

Look at the way you win rate goes up by increasing your spread. Many new players think that when they increase their spread it increases their risk, but in this example you actually decrease your risk by increasing your spread.

And the most important factor...

Casino tolerance. You could find a casino that dealt 51 cards out of a single deck, super fast dealers that deal 200 hands per hour, and you spread 1-100, but if they won't tolerate your action the game is worthless. Some casinos, like The El Cortez, have a great single deck game. But they have been known to bar people that have not even played a hand! Just the way someone looks at the blackjack table can get them backed off. I know several players this happened to. There are other casinos where a $5,000 bet may get a yawn from a pit boss. If a casino will not take your action there is no way to make any money. 

So the next time you are headed to a new casino venue don't ask your counting friends - "any places with good rules?" Ask them, "Any places that take action, have good penetration, and lots of empty tables?"

And when you are ready to move beyond counting, check out advice to new advantage players.

Gambling With an Edge - guest Bob Nersesian #5

The guest this week is Bob Nersesian.  Bob is a frequent guest to the show, and always entertaining.  Bob is the lawyer who advocates for the players against the casinos, and has successfully sued many Vegas casinos on the behalf of players.  This episode is primarily about the laws regarding using a device in the casino. He is also the author of Beat the Players.

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Gambling With an Edge - guest Eliot Jacobson

Eliot is a Ph.D. mathematician and former advantage player. Now Eliot works as a consultant designing casino games, auditing Internet casinos, and advising on game security. On the show Mike and Bob ask Eliot about switching sides, and the latest advantage plays, among other topics.

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Quote of the day.

"Learning to count cards is easy. Learning to get away with it is tough."

RWM

Gambling With an Edge - guest Bob Nersesian #4

The guest this week is Bob Nersesian.  Bob is a frequent guest to the show, and always entertaining.  Bob is the lawyer who advocates for the players against the casinos, and has successfully sued many Vegas casinos on the behalf of players.  He is also the author of Beat the Players.

Bob Nersesian podcast

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Today's Advantage Play

Last week I went to Frys to buy a battery charger, and a new lens for my camera. They have an odd system at Frys, you select your item in the department, and they print out a slip for you to take to the cashiers. The cashier then gets the item and rings you up. While I was walking to the front of the store I remembered I had an app on my phone called Shop Savvy. I had never used the app before but figured I try it out. You open the app and it allows you to scan the bar code on any item, and it tells you how much the same item is selling for at local stores near you, and online. When I looked at the lens I was buying it showed that it was $50 cheaper at Amazon, and had free shipping. When I got to the cashier I told her I no longer wanted the lens because it was $50 cheaper at amazon, and showed her my phone. She said, "We'll match any price." Is this a great country or what?!

Benjamin Franklin said, "A penny saved is a penny earned." But Franklin was wrong. A penny saved is worth much more than a penny earned. When you earn money you have to pay taxes on it, and saved money you don't. So take advantage of this shop savvy app. It's in itunes, and the google play store, and you can't beat the price, FREE!

Now if you are shopping at Frys and want to take advantage of their matching price offer you do have to take that paper over to customer service where they will do the price matching. In my case there was a long line at customer service and I didn't have time to get my lens. So if you are looking for a Christmas present for your favorite blogger...

Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4.0-5.6 IS II Telephoto Zoom Lens for Canon Digital SLR Cameras

Quote of the day

"All the evidence shows that God was actually quite a gambler, and the universe is a great casino, where dice are thrown, and roulette wheels spin on every occasion."

Stephen Hawking

Gambling in movies

Richard Roeper is a very good movie reviewer. He also considers himself a bit of a gambler. He wrote a really terrible book called,  Bet the House: How I Gambled Over a Grand a Day for 30 Days on Sports, Poker, and Games of Chance. To professional gamblers Roeper is what we call, a "ploppy." Now to be fair it would not surprise me if Richard thinks my movie reviews suck, and as a director he may call me... a ploppy. I don't really know since I was afraid to see if he ever reviewed one of my movies. But on one thing we agree. When it comes to gambling in movies they usually get it wrong. Here is an article of his about two upcoming movies that contain gambling.  Gambling movies not always a sure bet - Chicago Sun-Times.

Gambling With an Edge - guest Willy Allison

This week's guest is Willy Allison, surveillance expert, and CEO of World Game Protection Inc. I thought this was a really good episode with lots of good info on surveillance.

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Quote of the day

"Money won is twice as sweet as money earned." 

"Fast Eddie" Felson 

The Color of Money

The Color of Money

Gambling With an Edge - guest Arnold Snyder

This week's guest is Arnold Snyder talking about his new novel Risk of Ruin.

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Interview - Mike Patterson VP of Table Games at Barona Casino

When I walk through a casino it is with a critical eye. You still have a Caribbean Stud table? What a waste of space. CSMs that pay 6-5 on blackjack and you can only double on 10 or 11? You must be kidding. I'd get rid of two of those crap tables, and put in four more carnival games. All of these decisions are the purview of the Director of Table Games. I wanted to know more about how tables games directors think, and was fortunate to be able to interview Mike Patterson, VP of Table Games at Barona Casino near San Diego, CA. Barona is the most successful casino in California, so they must be doing something right.

RWM: Let's start with, how long have you been VP of Table Games, and what was your path in the casino business to get you here?  

MP: I started out in 1994 as a dealer for Barona.  I worked my way up as a floor supervisor, pit manager,casino manager, director of table games which was later changed to VP of table games.  I have been responsible for the table games department since 2001.

Gambling With an Edge - guests Staci Alonso & Chris Brune

The guests this week are Staci Columbo Alonso - IGT Vice President of Global Marketing and Chris Brune - IGT Distinguished Game Designer.

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Ace - Duece Book Review

I moved to Las Vegas in 1977. I had just turned 22, and I was a pretty fair backgammon player. My plan was to go to dealer's school, hone my skills as a card counter, and in the meantime supplement my income with backgammon.  The backgammon club was at the corner of the Strip, and Spring Mtn. Rd in a disco called Dirty Sally's. The club was run by Mike Maxiculi, who everyone called Max. In the beginning I was in awe because legendary gamblers like Puggy Pearson, Chip Reese, Amarillo Slim, and later Stu Ungar would show up to play for stakes higher than I had ever seen. We young hustlers would salivate because these guys couldn't play a lick, but they were betting $100 a point while we were playing for $5. They would never let us into their game. It turned out lucky for us because these guys were always fucking each other. Max would team up with Puggy to play Chip Reese for $100 per point each, but in reality Chip and Max were carving up Puggy's money, and Max was making sure their side lost. Later weighted, shaved, and magnetic dice all made their way into the room.

Sunday night was tournament night. There was a group of about 20 regulars who would show up, and the entry fee was 10 or 20 dollars. One of those regulars was a soft spoken man named John Anderson. John was a strong intermediate player. I never knew much about him other than that he was always very well dressed, played a lot of golf, and drank a lot of scotch. He had a girlfriend who also played backgammon, golf, and was a dealer at the Sahara. One day I opened the morning paper to find that John and his girlfriend had been busted at the Sahara for putting in a cooler. For those not familiar with the term, a cooler is a deck that has been prearranged so the player will win every hand. In this case I believe it was a 4-deck shoe that was switched. I was relating this story to a friend recently, and he said, "Oh yeah. He wrote a book." I immediately whipped out my phone, and ordered it.

Ace - Deuce: The Life and Times of a Gambling Man is the story of Ryan, a young hustler, that starts in 1958. It seems an odd choice for the story to be told in third person with a different name. Everyone else in the book is named, and I can't find anything on it designating it fiction. The book opens with Ryan and his crew making two moves in Lake Tahoe. One is quite sophisticated, and the other as rank a shot as you can imagine. The first move is the "stolen die" move. An obnoxious shooter at the dice table keeps throwing the dice too hard, and one or more fly off the table. When this happens someone from the pit is sent to look for them. One of Ryan's crew secretly gets ahold of one of these missing dice and walks it over to a confederate at the opposite end of the table from the shooter. This player now bets table max on 11 and 12, and goes down to put a max bet in the field. He has the missing die in his hand with the chips. The shooter makes his throw trying to hit the confederate's hand, but he only throws one die. The confederate puts down the other die with a 6 up, and yells "Ow!" as the shooter hits his hand with the thrown die. The die that the confederate was placing 6 up is covered by all the chips he was betting in the field. In this case they end up with 6, 2 and lose all their bets. You can read much more about this move in the book, Loaded Dice by John Soares. This is a terrific gambling book if you haven't read it. So the crew loses their money, and heads to another little casino in Lake Tahoe to drown their sorrows and complain. While at the bar Ryan flashes a huge roll of cash and heads over to the roulette table. He puts $200 down on the end of the roulette layout with the bills half covering one of the columns just as the ball hits. The dealer goes to give him change, and he says, "That was a bet." Of course the winning number is in the column he was half covering. This is what I would call a "rank move" and I would think most places would throw you out on your ear, but he gets paid. And that is what you can expect from this book. Some clever cheats and hustles, and some just down and dirty thieving or shot taking.

Ryan travels around the country, and meets legendary figures like Titanic Thompson, and mobster Santo Trafficante. He cheats, and often gets cheated. But when he is cheated he seems to just shrug it off as part of the cost of being a road gambler. One story I liked was him going into a one table casino. While he is having drinks at the bar he notices the count sky-rocketing at the one blackjack table. He jumps into the shoe and gets beat for a few thousand dollars.  He realizes that there is something odd about the way the dealer is looking at the shoe, and figures out there is a prism in the shoe, and the dealer is busting him out dealing seconds. Does he throw a fit, threaten to call Gaming? No, remember this is the 60s when cheating was common, and Gaming Control a joke. He goes back to the bar as the dealer closes up the table, waits for an opportunity, and then just walks out of the joint snagging the gaffed shoe off the table as he goes. That is one of the reasons that dealing shoes are now chained to the tables. He later uses the gaffed shoe in an underground game he dealt at a California racetrack winning many tens of thousands.

There is a lot of golf hustling and scamming in the book. He uses grease on his clubs, deepens the grooves in his wedge, and has a magnet in the bottom of his putter. He uses a fake penny as a ball marker that is magnetic. This allows him to pick up the ball marker with the magnet, and move it closer to the hole under the guise of tamping down divots in the green. Ryan eventually settles down in Vegas, and for 8 years had a daily golf game with Jay Sarno. Sarno built Caesar's Palace, and Circus Circus, and dumped off millions of dollars at golf and other vices.

Ultimately Ryan's downfall is cocaine. It's hard for young people to imagine, but cocaine was everywhere in the early 80s. It was so prevalent that people wore gold coke spoons around their necks as jewelry. There were gold crucifixes that were coke spoons! It wasn't just people on the fringes, and the bigger the gambler, the more they seemed to be doing it. Ryan takes to dealing enough to support his own habit, and eventually gets busted. That is where his story ends, and no year is given.

I really enjoy this type of book, and this one was no exception, but it does point out the major problem with self-publishing. The book really screams out for a good editor. This is the 3rd self-published book I read in the last month, and every one of them could have been miles better with professional editing. My big disappointment with the book was this: the back cover states,

"Mr. Anderson went to Las Vegas in 1958 to shoot some dice. He went on to work as a dealer, became a floor man, pit-boss, Casino Manager, and eventually a Casino Consultant. During the same time period he played poker, golf, and any game you could gamble on. A few lapses in judgment, described in the book Ace-Deuce, led to his becoming an author rather than a player."

None of that is in the book! Not a peep about working in a casino, and nothing about the cooler. So John, if you're out there you should write a second book. I know you have the material. If you are like me, and you like the tales of the old crossroad gamblers, pick up Ace - Deuce: The Life and Times of a Gambling Man. You won't be disappointed.

Las Vegas Backgammon early 1980s

This article was written by Jake Jacobs in 2006. It is about the Vegas backgammon scene in the early 80s. I wanted to post it here as a prelude to my review of Ace - Deuce: The Life and Times of a Gambling Man. The book was written by J. E. Anderson who was a staple of that Vegas backgammon scene. The review will go up in a day or two, but in the meantime enjoy this article by Jake. Las Vegas Backgammon

Silk suits. For me that is the first image that comes to mind when I think of Las Vegas backgammon in the good old days. Backgammon, for you kiddies, was a disco game, played in Pips, Faces, Maxims, Studio 54. Slick hustlers, the Gabby Horowitzes and Joe Dweks and Billy Eisenbergs, preyed upon Lucy and Hef and, yes, O.J. Tina Turner turned a cube or two. The man himself, Jim Brown, rushed a few thousand yards to get in the chouette. Vegas was the capital, epitomizing the glittery slippery “what’s that white cake around your nostril?” time. Frank and the Rat Pack? Your parent’s thrills. This era was neon and hip and in-the-know and what we knew your daddy (and Frank and Sammy and Dean “ring-a-ding-ding”) were too old to learn.

Gambling With an Edge - guest Brian McAllister part 2

This week's guest is Brian McAllister, a long-time video poker player. This is part 2 of the interview from the October 4th show.

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Darryl Purpose - Next Time Around

For those of you not familiar, Darryl Purpose is a member of the Blackjack Hall of Fame. I did an extensive interview with him, which you can read here - interview. In the interview he said that when he was 16 his mother gave him a copy of Beat the Dealer, but he forgave her because she also gave him his first guitar. My first trip with Darryl was in 1983. We went to England, and Darryl brought his guitar. He performed for the people on the ferry to Dover, and at a folk festival in Enderby. Since that time we have made several trips to Europe, the Caribbean, and Asia, and the guitar is always there. I have watched him perform all over the world.

Darryl quit blackjack the first time in 1985 to join the Great Peace March. But like Michael Corleone, every time he thought he was out, we would pull him back in. But now he is out of blackjack for good, and has just released his 7th CD, Next Time Around. The genre of his music is called singer/songwriter and I would compare it to people like Jame Taylor, or Jim Croce. Here is a video of Darryl performing one of the songs that is on the album. The Ghost of Crazy Horse. I love his music, and hope you will too. If you would like to check out his other CDs you can do that here - Darryl's other CDs. If you want to know more about Darryl, and when he might be playing a gig near you, check him out at darrylpurpose.com.

Gambling With an Edge - guest Kelly Flynn

This week's guest is Kelly Flynn, a master of ceremonies that runs promotions at many casinos in Las Vegas.

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