The
following all draw quick attention:

• Reducing your bet to your minimum bet size after the shuffle
• Pulling back all of a blackjack payoff or a tie bet
• Never tipping
• Leaving the table to take a phone call or use the bathroom when the count goes very negative.

Demeanor
can also be a giveaway and get you noticed, such as:

• Watching the cards too closely
• Not drinking
• Not conversing with dealers or guests
• Nervous or furtive behavior
• Very precise with chips and/or cards.

But
of course, the biggest hurdle is getting more money in the betting circle
without bringing down the house.

To
be truly effective, you will need to bet somewhere between 12x to 16x your
lowest wager when the count goes higher in a shoe game.

That means a player who starts off betting a $100 a hand, and who will stay betting that same $100 a hand for more than 70% of their play, must sometimes be able to get a $1,000 or even $1,500 bet out on the layout.

And ideally more.

Players
have come up with many ingenious methods to try and disguise this bet spread.

But
no matter the story, no matter the reason, this kind of bet spread will draw
attention.

And
then we will have someone counting down the shoe and rating their play, whether
it’s another trained counter or, more and more often, a computer program.

If
players do get away with it for an extended period, it’s because the dealer or
the floor didn’t do their job.

Ideally,
when a dealer sees that kind of bet spread, they will say something like “checks
play,” which usually means something like “this person just suddenly started
betting a lot more than they were.”

That
is to alert the floor to large bet spreads so that they can relay that on up
the chain.

As
you can see, there are many, many ways a card counter can be tripped up. They
are literally constrained by the math that makes all of this work.

And
as soon as they’re outed once, it becomes incrementally harder to get away
unnoticed the next time.

It
was exactly these constraints that made for the team play that was immortalized
by Hollywood in movies like 21.

The Old Bait And Switch

The
premise of the “big player” attack was simple. Skilled counters could watch
games, and continue to flat bet, but call big players in when the count was
high enough.

These
players would bounce from table to table, only playing when the count was high.

This
meant it was hard for casinos to spot the real counters; they remained camouflaged
on their games, and since the big player was only betting large amounts of
money each hand, it didn’t call into question the bet spread.

Often
the big player would assume a theatrical role to lend some credence to their
often odd and erratic behavior to lessen suspicion even more.

While
it seems unlikely 30 years later, these teams would take Las Vegas and other
casino jurisdictions for millions.

👉 How The MIT Blackjack Card Counting Team Beat The House

The
solution was simple yet costly.

Casinos
would only allow new players on a table to bet a maximum of $100 until the new
shoe.

It
stopped this attack in its tracks, but at the cost of casinos telling millions
of guests that they couldn’t place large bets until after the shuffle.

Some
argued that the remedy was worse than the malady, but it did put an immediate
end to that particular loophole in the casino’s counter defenses.

Many
of these rules have been relaxed now as casinos have gotten better at knowing
what to look for and mining databases of players to find connections between
seemingly unrelated players has become exponentially easier.

Working In Teams

One
of the best team plays I’ve seen involved a group of five or six players who at
first seemed unrelated, who often bet erratically and didn’t seem to pay close
attention to the count.

They
would position sometimes two but mainly three players on a table and take turns
keeping the count while the others engaged in conversation.

They
would signal the count using chip stacks, and while each member’s bets might
not follow the count, the team’s as a whole would.

They
would also disguise play this way, with smaller bets on larger counts not
always matching the index deviations.

They
were eventually only discovered when some of our dealers noticed them on
multiple occasions playing at other casinos in the same cohesive groups which
caused us to reevaluate their play.

Once
we knew they were a team, we could see the bets and play move with the count in
total, instead of through one individual’s actions.

While
team play can slow down a casino’s efforts to identify counters, it is still
constrained by the need to put large bets out only when the count is high.

And
ideally, the ability to play that hand in a very defined way, though large
enough bet spreads can make up for some of that.

As
a long-ago shift manager once told me about game protection, “The money will
always tell the story.”

And
that’s as true today as it was 30 years ago.

The
math that makes blackjack beatable and card counters successful is exactly the
hook that we use to catch them.

What To Bear In Mind If You Plan To Count Cards

For
those still intent on card counting, there are a few important considerations.
The first thing is to remember that the age of the MIT teams or the Hyland
Group are gone.

The money laundering laws and know-your-customer regulations post 9/11 did more to end counters and count teams than all of the casinos’ efforts combined.

Big
money bets now mean filling out W-9s and tax paperwork. Identification, and
even sometimes occupation, are verified through databases.

The
same types of databases that casinos and the government look for to fight money
laundering can be used to look for counters and count teams.

They
often uncover relationships that might not have been visible to the human eye.

This means you need to manage expectations;
the big bets won’t be as big, and the payouts will need to be smaller.

If you’re a lone player, it’s going to
be more of a grind. Teams will need to adapt to the new rules on the ground.

Asymmetrical team play – where
individual bets and even index plays may not match the count, but the overall
money at risk and play does – can be very effective. The trick is not to overuse the same players
at any one property.

Another way some teams have adjusted is
by finding players with long histories with casinos, especially losing
histories, and recruiting them. The casinos will have done their due diligence
and won’t be as alert to the high action.

Others have recruited wealthy business
owners or tech execs that might look like the exact type of player that the
casinos are marketing to and can withstand a quick background check.

Counters will also want to pay close
attention to the many other various advantage plays that are possible in
casinos, from excess free play on electronic table games and badly designed
promotions, to tournaments and giveaways – and many others.

EV (expected value) can be gained in
many different ways to help offset lower betting spreads.

Using all of the possible ways to
extract value has a long and sometimes hilarious history in the tales of
counters.

From rummage sales of merchandise bought
with comp points, to using porn stars to induce dealer errors, many players
have gone the extra mile when attempting to gain the advantage.

Don Johnson is one of those. He beat
Atlantic City and Vegas for millions not just due to his superb counting
skills, but by scaping the battlefield before he ever sat down to play.

By using counting, confusion, and badly
designed casino cashback, he won against casinos that should have known better
by being better prepared and having a mathematically sound plan – a plan that
just happened to include porn stars.

A New Day

One slip-up or one mistake that draws
attention to your play or your team’s play can be disastrous with the speed of
information and depth of data available now.

Players must be more cautious, measured,
and smart.

Situational awareness is very important.
Watch pit personnel (especially when they go to a phone) and pay attention to
furtive glances or whispered conversations in your area. Don’t panic, just flat
bet.

If I come over and move the cut card up,
or tell the dealer to shuffle and you run, surveillance will be rewinding your
play.

Counting cards for fun and profit hasn’t
come to an end just yet. Though truly, technology will probably bring about its
demise in the next five or 10 years.

I’m sure there are individuals and teams
out there making lots of money. But I’m also sure they would tell you that it’s
just not as simple and fun as it used to be.

That being said, there’s something about
pitting your wits and imagination against a determined foe, that will always
probably draw the hustlers and the dreamers to take their shot at bringing down
the house.

And that’s just fine. It keeps me
employed.

👉 6 Reasons Why You Should Never Count Cards