A.P Heat

The title of this post is one of Buddha's "Four Noble Truths." We all suffer. But leave it to APs to actually quantify desire.

A recent article in the Lehigh Valley Live discussed a New Jersey man, Ikwaan Anin Dobbins, who was accused of cheating at Three Card Poker. What this goofball allegedly did was to “swap cards” (also called card mucking) to give himself better hands.

One of the most interesting aspects of this conference was a competition between the table games for best game. Each participant in the conference was given the opportunity to vote on the games. To be eligible to vote, the participant had to play each game. This play is certified: after a game was played, the vendor stamped a card. Only a participant with a full card could vote.

It's a math geek thing. People who don't understand what I do often think that everything is simulated.

Recently, I’ve been looking at a lot of new proprietary games for game protection weaknesses. I’ve long been interested in this subject, dating back to my decade of play as an advantage player. But now it’s just getting downright silly. Every time I turn around, I find another game with a weakness.

This week, Phil Ivey filed suit against Crockfords Casino for over eleven million U.S. dollars in baccarat winnings that were confiscated from him after a three-day monster win in October of 2012. The news here is not that Phil Ivey won this money or that Crockford’s withheld his winnings. The new news is that Phil Ivey is suing Crockfords to get his money back.

Many people on both sides of the table are aware that some sort of (alleged) incident may have happened to me in June, 2005 that precipitated a change in my hobby as an AP. I have never before shared the details of this incident (if it happened).

For about 8 years, I lived the life of an undisciplined low limit card counter.  I had all the usual issues that keep guys like me from the big time. I struggled to make the large wagers when the count was high. I played too long. I chatted with management, drawing attention to myself. I didn’t hide my skills by using cover plays.

The opportunity to see a hole-card is one of the most advantageous situations an AP can find. Because blackjack is so abundant, it is usually the first game that is considered when an AP scouts a casino. In blackjack, the edge can get over 10% by hole-carding. But that's a small edge by comparison with the edge obtainable by seeing the hole-card in some proprietary games.

In June of 2005, I was busy playing Three Card Poker in a downtown Las Vegas casino as a member of a “team.” By no means were we a serious group of APs.  Our team consisted of a friend who traveled with two others from Florida for their semi-annual vacation to Las Vegas.

I often receive E-mail from readers asking me to explain the mathematics that I present in the posts in this blog. This material can be very challenging for someone with little background in probability theory or statistics. With that in mind, I wrote a small booklet on gaming mathematics. If you want to better understand the material presented here, I offer you:

One of the largest leaps a young advantage player (AP) makes early in his career is the realization that ordinary blackjack card counting is an essentially worthless pursuit.  Seeing his first hole-card opens a panorama of potential income never before considered. The first question is if it’s legal; few advantage players want to cross the thin blue line into cheating.

I am hesitant to address a company by name, but I have something very good to say about Galaxy Gaming, so I doubt they will mind. Back in August, 2003, when I published my article on Lucky Ladies in the e-zine "Blackjack Insider" (see this post), I was still an advantage player.

The casino industry is built on mathematics. It starts with probability theory and goes on from there. Concepts like variance, hold, house edge, odds and theoretical can each crash a casino’s profits. Advantage players understand mathematics. They find errors and pounce. It is not just a question of games having weaknesses, it's a relentless search for an edge.