Mad Dog

OK, now that I have made clear I'm not on any blackjack team, I know some people aren't as serious as me, and want to have fun. IF I were on a team, I'd love to try this: In single deck blackjack, you actually get to touch the cards, right? That can be exploited, big time. Here's how: You only get to touch the cards with one hand, but with practice, you can learn to switch the order of cards that you are holding. My idea is that you would arrange the cards HI-LO-HI-LO-HI-LO. You look at your team mates hands and do your best to get this zig-zag thing going. After doing this for a while, I predict that the dealer will start breaking like crazy. The tens will become more evenly distributed, and this will help the dealer break. I've never tried this, and I never play single deck. I don't plan on trying it, but I'd sure like to know if it works like I think it would.

Seriously, regarding team play, I was kidding about that. I have been told many many times by pit bosses that winning is OK as long as you're not playing as a team. I think all of you should think very hard before actually doing team play. The pit bosses I've talked to seem very sensitized to losing money to teams. I think it'd be great to meet up, but I think I'll head out on my own when it comes time to play cards. The game can be beaten very well by a lone wolf playing NBJ as Ellis and many others have proven.

I have used this method with great results. Another example: The dealer is showing an 8 up: 8 a,5 7,8,3 10,7 So let's add it up to see what to do. What is the hole card? This is how I add it up: 8 would give the dealer a 16 a would would give the dealer a 19 5 would would give the dealer a 13 7 would would give the dealer a 15 8 would would give the dealer a 16 3 would give the dealer an 11 10 would give the dealer an 18 7 would give the dealer a 15 So now we have the following strong dealer hands: 11, 18, 19 and the following weak dealer hands: 13, 15, 15, 16, 16 Not only does it tell you strong or weak, it tells you how strong or weak, and you can forecast dealer breaks based on the above outcomes combined with hit cards using the cards you are seeing on the table as the hit cards. There's more to teach, but let me say this: This method works well in clumped cards and in random cards. You are designing your own play strategy for this hand based on the cards you are seeing right now, rather than falling back on the basic strategy chart which is based on a lot of cards you are NOT seeing right now.

OK so when exactly is the Bac thingy going to be?

"None of us are as stupid as all of us."

Hey, lets all get together in Vegas in Feb when the Bac people are there.

Also, when you're playing on a team, you're playing with other people's money. That sucks hard for the guy who's making the tough hit/stand decisions with the big bets. Playing with other people's money is stupid.

I played on a team with Ed Goldstein and a couple of other guys for about an hour at the Mirage in 1993. I was a sac player at third. I did anything and everything I could do to get a ten to appear before the dealer, including splitting 10s hitting 19 etc. Afterwards Goldstein said "The moves were wrong." So he and I disagreed as to what the sac player was supposed to do. Goldstein was stupid about team play. We made money, but no more that we could have made individually, and then felt stupid sneaking around and dividing up the money. We all said "teams suck" and went our separate ways. That was the last time I saw any of those guys. Blackjack teams suck. They are impossible to organize, and keep together. It's like herding cats. Why play on a team when you can kick ass all on your own?

I have had many conversations with pit bosses about winning, getting barred etc. The one thing they always say is "As long as you're not playing with a team." I'm a lone wolf when it comes to blackjack. Here's my top ten reasons: 1. Teams are stupid. 2. Casinos will bar you if you play on a team. 3. Stupid team members don't do their job, fear losing etc. 4. Team play is collusion and is illegal in some places. 5. Stupid team members skim cash. 6. Stupid team members have lives. 7. Stupid team members can't go RIGHT NOW to the casino. 8. Teams require management and overhead. 9. Working for a team is like working for a boss. 10. Per capita one well trained man can do better than any team over the long haul.

Well I must say, it's a great thing to do! I think it should be front and center in our training. Good tables are hard to find, but they may be easy to make with a little cash and a low player number.

I hate doing table selection. It's boring, and I hate doing it. I have always wanted to find a way to create a player bias instead of look for one. I have been experimenting with doing this and I think I'm on to something. I don't mind investing some money to set up a table for take down. I look for a table with a low minimum bet and buy in for 12 units at that minimum level. I play dealer strategy from third base. During this time, I am not trying to win. I am conditioning the cards to produce a playable game. I choose tables that have a low number of players, and play at a time when it is unlikely that the casino will be able to control player number. I play dealer strategy for a good long while, and study the shoe at the same time. When I see that the dealer break ratio is well above normal, I buy in for 12 units at my normal unit size, and just play NBJ 1-4-6 with aggressive raising of stakes. If I see the dealer break ratio get low, I suspend my play, and flat bet table minimum, playing dealer strategy until the cards are behaving themselves again. Also, if I see an entire round of two-ten pushes, I immediately retreat to dealer strategy at the table minimum. If you're lazy about table selection, you need something with which to replace it. I replace it with 12 table minimum units, and some aggressive hitting. There's nothing like a good blackjack game. I'm willing to invest a little cash to create one by "plowing the field".

OK. I will begin with a bit of review. New cards are packed into the boxes in a certain order. The first card on the top on the deck is the ace of hearts. Then comes the two of hearts and so on up to the king of hearts. After the hearts come the clubs, again from ace to king. After that come the diamonds and then the spades, but these start from king and go in reverse order down to the ace. Now I will explain my point by way of example. Let's say you enter the game and happen to see a nine of clubs. You know that in the box it was the card before a long run of pure tens that form the middle of a deck: ten of clubs jack of clubs queen of clubs king of clubs king of diamonds queen of diamonds jack of diamonds ten of diamonds Let's say you also see a nine of hearts in the same round. You know that it precedes a group of pure tens as well. Since you're seeing both of these nines together, the tens that follow these two cards probably happened to get shuffled together and are probably coming out soon. My point is this: if these two clumps are interleaved, the density of tens will soar because each card typically goes through only 2 riffs after the wash. If one of those two riffs was expended by riffing the tens clumps together, then that means there is only one riff left to mix in any other cards. The highest chance of dealer breaking occurs with a 2:1 tens ratio. SO look for cards that signal the presence of ten-valued cards in two suits, along with some lows mixed in and then bet the farm. If someone had the patience to wait for just this situation before placing a high bet, I believe his hands won ratio for his high bets would be through the roof.

Lets say you're at the casino and you are there to observe the card prep. You notice that the casino is using a wash procedure that results in exploitable clumping. Now you know that you can use advantage betting, but here's a tip: Enter the game right after card prep. When you see cards that would make you raise your bet to your high bet, IF YOU SEE that those cards are comprised of a variety of card suits, then you can expect that the tens ratio will be very high on the next round of play, since multiple high card clumps have been interleaved from the original boxed card order. You can alter your bet and card play strategy to take advantage of this fact.

Hey I picked up a cool tip from the WCB manual. Play 1-4-6 until you have 18 units, then switch to 1-3-4 with double units. Then progress to 1-4-6 with double units when you have enough. Try it; it's great!

welcome back buddy

Back counting works if you wait for a really high count. It takes a lot of waiting or some kind of team. I play NBJ because I can do it all by myself.

Mad Dog Mad Dog Mad Dog Mad Dog Mad Dog Mad Dog Mad Dog Mad Dog Mad Dog Mad Dog Mad Dog Mad Dog Mad Dog Mad Dog Mad Dog Mad Dog Mad Dog Mad Dog

Vegas dealing the first card down is certainly used by cheating dealers. This I have seen myself. I think they may have other reasons for doing it. They know the cards are clumped, and I think they deal that card down and then turn it up so that it will be somewhat unclear to the players, so they won't start catching on to the relationship between the cards that are dealt to third and the dealer's cards. So even when they're not cheating, maybe they do it to obscure the clumping.

I entered a game mid-shoe at PH and they wouldn't let me bet more than $100 even though the table max was $5000. That'll stop those BPs, (along with everybody that wants to gamble.)

Sometimes chip stacks are used by shuffle trackers to track ten clumps through the shuffle. The chips get shuffled the same way as the cards, and this produces a profile of where high concentrations of tens are in the shoe. If the pit boss thinks you're a tracker, you can get the boot.

Yesterday I played 8-deck blackjack in Vegas. It is so easy compared to six deck. I played at third base, but used advantage betting instead of 1-4-6. It was beautiful. It was like taking candy from a baby. A crowd gathered to watch. Conditions are great right now in Vegas as long as you mind your table selection.

> Explain their shuffle tracking techniques? You should call me dude. It's kind of involved. They used key card memorization, and also learned to cut the cards precisely so that they knew the exact position of a single ace or ten. They steered the ace to their BP and they steered the ten to the dealer hit card. > Also, Before they lost money, how much did they win and how many people were involved in this win? How much did they lose. After all that, were they still up? Were they able to pay the investors back? 1 Million? After paying back the investors, if they did, were they still up, if they were up? > Even if you have a +18 count and start betting big and say the Tens do come out. How can they ever know who on the table does not get the tens? How do they know if they will get a first card ten and then a second card low? How do they know the dealer will not get 2 Tens? Well sometimes it worked out and sometimes it didn't. > So, to me, all that counting is useless anyways? No I wouldn't put it so, but I think our methods are superior. > Also explain THEIR basic strategy? As I mentioned it is unremarkable.

The MIT team's methods were: 1. Have a whole shitload of card counters watching a large number of tables. 2. Signal the entry of the Big Player when the count was high enough. 3. Signal the Big Player what the count is upon table entry. (Sometimes the BP was an unskilled gorilla and they did the math for him and signaled everything to him.) 4. Perform long division in their heads to turn the count into a true count. 5. Bet according to the true count. 6. Play according to a basic strategy chart. (I had a copy of it at one time. It was unremarkable except that certain plays called for the player to do things according to suit sometimes.) 7. An elite part of the team used sophisticated shuffle tracking techniques that I can explain if you want. They would wait for a very high count, like +18. The tens really do need to come out when the count is +18, so the BPs caught a lot of tens. The thing is this: Why do all this team crap? The team lost money at one point and subsequently fell apart. Also the investors hired a second team which led to infighting with the first team. Why not be a lone wolf like Mad Dog? I have had many conversations with pit bosses and they always say "as long as you're not playing with a team, we'll let you play." Mad Dog does not need investors or squadrons of card counting scouts. I play NBJ because it is superior to card counting. Private detectives were constantly hounding the MIT team. They used secret identities etc. What a pain in the ass. John Chang, the mysterious Mr. M, could not hold his team together. Some broke off on their own.

Well... the cards can be "kind of random" in a biased game. Which means they are really not random.

When we say a game is biased, we are also saying that the cards are not random.