A.P Heat

Things are really mixed up. At least, they should be. I’ve been thinking about commonalities between recent successes that some players have had against casinos. While the cultural and casino industry obsession with card counters is not fading, the powerful methods advantage players and cheaters use to beat the house continue on in relative obscurity.

Suppose the world’s greatest blackjack card counter heads out to a casino to pursue his chosen vocation of beating the house. Our hero sits down and starts to count. After a few hands, he realizes that the casino doesn’t care: he is free to count the day away, playing and spreading his bets however he likes.

Over the last few years I've analyzed, played, written and spoken about scores of proprietary games with vulnerabilities to card counting, hole-carding and other straightforward advantage play techniques.

The Ace automatic shuffler has many game security problems, the most serious of which is its propensity to encourage hole-card exposure by even highly trained dealers. (See my blog post "Little Ace of Horrors.") After many years of fighting that battle, Shuffle Master finally gave up the cause.

In recent years there has been a steady rise in the adoption of new table games. When a new game arrives, the staff is often unfamiliar with the rules, procedures, and basic methods of protection for that game. Thus, most casinos attempt to follow the rules and procedures as written without understanding the “whys” of the procedures. Over time, certain parts of that procedure may get sloppy.

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.