Scam Alert 2 - Our side

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Scam Alert 2 - our side

We've just under gone another card counter attack. You probably didn't notice because it was over in the Baccarat forum. Apparently these guys don't know the difference. We used to get these nuisance characters on a daily basis but such attacks, thankfully, have died down to one every several years. This huge slacking off of attacks parallels the huge slacking off of the prominence of card counting in general. It was the rave about 15 years ago and new card counting sites popped up on the internet on almost a daily basis. This was, in fact, a bunch of scammers jumping on the band wagon of a new way to make money from a gullible public. Not all were scammers. The legitimate teachers pulled in their reins as soon as they realized that card counting no longer worked, that the casinos had very effectively countered card counting with multiple deck blackjack and the cut off card. I have no argument with those who quit. My argument is with those who did not quit even after the true demise of card counting. These I call scammers because they know better. They could not produce a single winning player yet they continued to take money from a gullible public and to promote their obsolete books.

The public perception of card counting was enhanced by the frequent mention of it on television and in the movies. Movies like Rainman, for instance. Casinos en masse jumped on card counting promotion because it was very good for their coffers.

You can easily prove this to yourself. Note that casinos sell card counting books in their gift shops and allow card counting gurus to conduct their card counting seminars right there in the casinos. Now use your head. Would they do this if card counting worked? Call the Marketing dept of any major casino and tell them you are the best card counter in the world and you have $100,000 to put in their cage. They’ll send a plane for you. You don’t scare them in the least. They modified the game to defeat card counting 20 years ago and those modifications are 100% effective. The casinos are gleefully confident. Call the same casino and tell them you are the best NBJ player in the world and watch what happens. Your popularity will suddenly vanish.

But just what is this card counting and why does it no longer work?

First, the old card counting sites would have you believe that card counting is reserved only for mathematical geniuses. They do this so they can portray themselves as geniuses. Makes them feel important. The fact is that any normal person above the age of six can be taught to card count. Yes, even 8 decks.

Card counting was devised by mathematician Edward O Thorp back in the days of single deck BJ no cut off card. Ed noted that high cards are player favorable and low cards are dealer favorable. This much is still a fact in today’s game. This is because high cards can break dealers but low cards can’t. Think about it. There is no way a dealer can break on a card less than 6. In fact she can break on 6 only if she is unlucky enough to arrive at 16 and draw a 6. Do you know any unlucky dealers?

So basically Thorp said Ok we’ll assign a value of +1 for all low cards and -1 for all high cards as the cards are dealt. This way we will know when the remainder of the deck is rich in player favorable highs and just how rich it is and raise or lower our bet accordingly.

Now yes, I’m over simplifying this a bit but only a bit so you can quickly understand it. Actually Thorp assigned a different value to all 10 different cards in BJ. Others later simplified this to +1-1 so they too could play it in the casino with less skill than Thorp had. No matter.

And it worked! It never worked to the 7% advantage that Thorp calculated but it did produce a legitimate advantage of 1% in single deck BJ. That’s what ALL of this craze is about, that 1%.

What happened to the missing 6%? Thorp did not recognize (and I realize that just the beginning of that statement is pure blasphemy to all card counters, nevertheless) that the casino card pickup routine effectively clumped the cards even in single deck BJ. The more the cards are clumped the less the dealer breaks and Thorp had calculated Basic Strategy on the random card dealer break rate of 28%. But because of the clumping caused by the card pick up routine, there went the 6%. Who discovered this? I did, but not until 1986.

How does the card pick up produce clumping? It’s really simple. Think about it. The dealer ALWAYS picks up the break hands first. Well what are break hands mostly composed of? Think about it. They are mostly low cards aren’t they. Sure, there are always some highs in there, particularly the last card dealt to the breaking hand (otherwise you wouldn’t have broke) but they are ALWAYS predominantly LOW cards. Ok, she puts those in the discard rack forming a low card clump. Then she picks up all the non break hands (Usually including her own). What are non break cards mostly composed of? Right, high cards. 19s and 20s mostly. Sure you get some lucky hit hands in there but they are predominantly high cards aren’t they? So now we have a high card clump right on top of the low card clump in the discard rack.

Why do you think dealers are taught by the casino to pick up the break cards and non break cards separately? Do you believe the party line: We pick up the break cards first to avoid paying off a player that broke. Yeah, sure! When did you EVER see a dealer make a mistake and pay off a losing player? Ever? Now consider this! If the dealer picked up ALL the hands in order she could easily eliminate every argument at the table. Hey I won and you took my money. You constantly hear this in the BJ pits. But had she picked up the cards in order she could simply reverse deal them back and settle every single dispute W/O ever saying a word, couldn’t she? So they must have a darn good reason to pick up the break cards first. And they sure do and now you know exactly what it is. The more the cards are clumped the less the dealer breaks. An extremely important BJ fact lost on the card counting world. Do you still think casinos are stupid like the card counting gurus preach? I know better. Now, you do to.

This is not difficult to understand once you are alerted to it. We already discussed the fact that the dealer virtually can’t break when her cards are dealt out of a clump of lows. Think about it. She also can’t break when her cards are dealt out of a clump of highs. She doesn’t hit therefore she doesn’t break. See? So what does this mean? Two things: 1. The entire basis of Basic Strategy, that the dealer breaks 28% of the time, is wrong! Therefore Basic Strategy is wrong! 2. Your odds of winning were also calculated on a 28% dealer break rate. Your odds were calculated wrong!

But you say, they shuffle the cards. No they don’t! At least not effectively. Einstein, the Canadian, proved that you must shuffle a single deck of cards 25 times to make it random. Two decks is not 50. Two decks is 25 times 25! Of course the counting gurus immediately outcasted him because their entire livelihood depended on random cards. They came up with their own version. 7 times. Let’s allow them that little bit of wishful thinking for a moment. That means 6 deck would be 7 X 7 X 7 X 7 X 7 X 7 whatever ridiculous number that works out to be. How many times DO they shuffle the cards? Well, they are supposed to shuffle 3 times but few casinos shuffle more than once or twice these days. No body complains because the average player doesn’t know any better. The casino wouldn’t care anyway. Ultimately casino control commissions work for the casinos. Indian casinos don’t even have those.

Then came shuffle machines. Do they effect NBJ? Yes, they make our job much easier because shuffle machines are far more consistent than dealers. What about continuous machines. Better still. See unlike card counters NBJ players don’t give a hoot where the end of the shoe is or if it ever comes.

Do they randomize the cards? God no. If they did, the casinos would throw them out in a flash. Remember, the casinos thrive on non random cards. That’s what produces their, published by law, bottom line. If you were around at the time of inception of the shuffle machines you certainly would have noted the comedy surrounding their inception. Casino by casino the machines would go in for a month or two get thrown out for redesign, go back in, come back out over and over again until the machines could do precisely what the casinos wanted, preserve clumping and reduce the dealer break rate. That took a lot of trail and error. Now I suppose that our card counting yokels here will go to the machine sites and point out that they advertise random cards. Well, of course they do! Anything else would be cheating!

But meanwhile, the casinos were not just sitting around letting the card counting gurus do all their work for them. No they were fighting back big time. See, casinos have mathematicians of their own and they can afford to hire the very best. They did three extremely effective things at the same time.

1. They went to multiple decks.

Why? The more decks you have the bigger the clumps. The bigger the clumps the less the dealer breaks. The less the dealer breaks the more money they make.

2. They closed down tables to crowd up the open tables as much as possible. Recognize that in the late 80’s there was a dealer behind every table with his cards neatly spread in boxed card order. You could play head to head any time you wanted. They changed all that didn’t they?

Why? Simple! The more players at the table the bigger the original clumps going into the discard shoe, the less the dealer breaks. The less the dealer breaks the more the casino makes.

3. They introduced the cut off card. That stops them from dealing out all the cards.

Why? Because they recognized full well that the counters advantage only comes at the end of the shoe. They said fine! We’ll fix them! We won’t deal the end of the shoe!

At that moment, card counting was finished! That was 20 years ago.

But, you say, they still teach it. Yes but fewer and fewer. Most have come around to our way of thinking. But put yourself in the shoes of those who still teach it. That is their livelihood. Most have books out on the shelves. What do you expect them to do? “Look, here’s your money back†I don’t think so.

It’s just like when Billy posted what Arnold Snyder had to say about NBJ 12 years ago. Somebody puts a copy of NBJ in his hands and asks what he thinks of it. He was the King of card counting with thousands of followers even though none of them were winners. NBJ trashed everything Arnold stood for. What would we expect him to say. “ Yeah, Davis is right, Let’s fold our tent.†I don’t think so.

So how does NBJ differ? NBJ has nothing in common except that NBJ does use Basic Strategy WHEN the cards are Random

because that is when Basic Strategy works.

Once in the game successful Blackjack is all about one thing, knowing where the tens are. We do that far far better and far more accurately than card counting. But should you be in that game and where should you sit? They have no idea, we do.

I like to compare pro BJ to pro golf. Can you imagine going to a top PGA tournament and seeing one of the players show up with just a 5 iron. It would be funnier than Caddy Shack. That’s exactly how I look at a card counter. He expects to beat a casino with one weapon even though many weapons are available to him. Pro BJ just ain’t that simple. You need a full bag of tricks and you need to be truly skilled with each one. That’s what we teach. The casinos very successfully orchestrated BJ to beat card counting. We use there own orchestration to beat them. We don’t give a hoot about half % or 1 % advantages. Might as well get a job. It would pay a lot more. We are out for blood and we go straight for the jugular. That’s what we teach. Card counting has no winners. The only winners in BJ are right here. The only pros are right here. Thousands of card counters have switched to NBJ. No NBJ player has ever switched to card counting. Come join us. It won’t be long before you too are posting about YOUR exploits.

Uncle Ellis