Poker Poker Poker!: [vpFREE] RE: "Greatest Gambler of All Time" Busted

stadinger2000 posted: I have long realize that the odds are against you, so I only bet what I can afford to lose. Once in awhile, I get lucky and come out ahead.

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There's more than one way to come out ahead.

Do a yahoo groups search on "grosjean" and check out one minute youtube ad by grosjean for a poker site:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRt377iIN4E

---In vpfree@yahoogroups.com, <haaljo@...> wrote:

stadinger2000 posted: I have long realize that the odds are against you, so I only bet what I can afford to lose. Once in awhile, I get lucky and come out ahead.

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"Luck comes and goes; knowledge stays forever"

"Better lucky than good."

"Some people are born lucky, some make their own luck."

"You have more luck than brains."

"Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate."

All anonymous

---In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, <vpfree@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

I have long realize that the odds are against you, so I only bet what I can afford to lose. Once in awhile, I get lucky and come out ahead.

---In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, <vpfree@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

Wouldn't it just be better if people stopped trying to bargain with casinos (card counters et al. ) and just accept the fact that casinos do not want you to win. You want to take the money from them and they want to take your money. It would be prudent to filter all of your actions and thoughts regarding gambling, both inside and outside the casino, through this filter. Nothing inside the casino, from the first shovel of ground broken to it's opening night and beyond, is consciously designed let you make money . Everything they "give" you, (RFB comps, pretty girls, a nice welcoming attitude) is designed to be a net credit to the casino and a net debit to your cash.

Once you have accepted this, then incorporate this fact into your gambling methodology. When casinos realize that sharing information protects their profits, they will share information. If they find you are taking money from them in any way, with or against their rules, they will bar you from participation on their properties, and alert other casinos of your actions. Too many of you think casinos are really individual casinos or groups of casinos that are somehow in competition with one another. In reality, this is not the case. Their #1 rule is to protect their way of making money, and they certainly don't want to let anyone who is successful at beating their games go around from casino to casino doing so, and motivating more people to do the same thing. They want to shut it down, and now they are doing that as a group because they realize that it protects their interests to act as one group. The Griffin thing is yesteryear's technology. Its far far far more advanced. It's very possible they are reading this email, unlikely but if they wanted to they could. Email access is now sold to the highest bidder or the most powerful groups. But I digress.

Further, casinos know that their are always loopholes in their game design, even in video computer games, and they try to keep this a secret from planting shills on websites, to publishing books about their being some standard and only way to win (advantage play, for example). How do I know this? I know this because there is a big market for PhD mathematicians, game theory specialists, and systems testers that develop whole businesses around doing private consulting for casinos...after the games are running on the casino floor. The casinos themselves are not always sure of the return and actual play of their designed games, and they constantly hire firms to test them and make changes. They are looking for these loopholes. This happens consistently. You can verify this right now by searching the internet for this type of firm.

The point is there are loopholes, edges and many ways to make money from casino games. Casinos understand this and they have put measures in place to attempt to close those edges (not very successful) but moreso eradicate profitable players (they hope this is successful). If you do win pretty consistently, they don't really care why, they just want you out. So debating with them about being kicked out is pointless. Use your creative energy to figure out a better plan. Even if the casinos eradicate all the profitable players, they will still be net profitable anyway. Profitable skilled players maybe (I'm guessing) make up less than 10% or maybe less than 1% of the customers. The rest are all pretty much asleep giving their money away for some bright lights and conditioned excitement. But, casinos want it all, that's why if you make money and they know it they won't let you play.

You are welcome.

From: Barry Glazer <b.glazer@...>
To: "vpFREE@yahoogroups.com" <vpFREE@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, September 29, 2013 6:06 AM
Subject: [vpFREE] Re: "Greatest Gambler of All Time" Busted

The links provided by others to the Wikipedia article were helpful to me in responding. The Wikipedia article lists only two black books related to gambling -- the Griffin book (I had forgotten the name of the "detective" agency that maintained the book) and one kept by the gaming commission. The latter is for those with criminal records or ties that are prohibited from involvement in the industry under NV law, but the former, the Griffin book, indeed includes card counters. That was the one I was talking about.

I'm not sure "cheats" (those caught doing something illegal against a casino) go into the gaming commission black book, but it certainly seems likely that these would qualify as individuals that the state does not want employed in the casino industry - and it's interesting that you report a relative being in that book! While I was aware of the NV law barring certain criminals or those with certain criminal ties from the gambling industry, this was the first time I learned that the gaming commission kept a list of them. Makes sense, of course, or how else can they enforce that law.

Also, to show how old my info is, I didn't know that Griffin had filed for bankruptcy in response to a lawsuit. Are they back in operation, either as Griffin or under another name?

I know the last time that I was barred from a casino for counting cards, I was sufficiently tired of it happening that I was ready to quit blackjack -- so I asked the pit boss that barred me some questions, rather than my usual response of acting innocent (I always wanted the pit boss that barred me to go home wondering if maybe they'd barred a non-counter by mistake). I asked what made them suspicious (no response) and whether I'd be able to play at "sister" properties (this was Treasure Island, and Mirage still had good games at the time) -- and the latter question got the answer "they'll know". At least within that particular group of properties, they shared information (no surprise) about card counters. I always assume that, at that point, I was probably in the Griffin book.

As I recall, the Griffin book did not distinguish why you were in it, so being in the book meant you were an advantage player or a cheat, with no distinction -- which was what was offensive to me.

Today's technology really would make it easy for all casinos to participate in sharing such information, which would be in their mutual interests. Also, I've heard stories, and have no reason not to believe them, that current technology no longer requires the "old way" of identifying card counters -- i.e., first of all, someone gets suspicious (a dealer or a pit boss, perhaps, and for a variety of reasons that can generate suspicion), then someone observes the play through the "eye in the sky" and counts cards, watches the player's betting and playing, and makes a judgment as to whether they are sufficiently likely to be a counter that they should be barred. In the old days, if it looked like you were being watched too closely by a pit boss, you just left, especially if you saw a couple of them glancing toward you, talking to each other, and/or calling someone (presumably upstairs) on the phone -- you'd leave before they could prospectively observe your play and confirm their suspicions.

Today's technology (and I've heard this is done) could feed info from the "eye in the sky" directly into a computer, which could track every card and every bet and every bet variation and every playing decision, and determine, with a pre-assigned level of certainty, the statistical likelihood that the player is counting cards, and then alert management for the appropriate intervention. The only question is whether it's worthwhile to do this for every single player, or only select players, e.g. those "suspected" (back to the pit boss) or those playing higher stakes. If the "pre-assigned level of certainty" is high enough, they could be sure that when they bar someone from play, there is an acceptably small chance that the bets / plays / etc. matched those of a card counter by chance alone.

Clearly the same technology could theoretically be used to track every playing decision made by a video poker player and assign a level of expertise to them, giving the casino reliable data on which to base their decisions to comp or not, and how much, and if it's their inclination, to bar a player from playing video poker at their casino. I don't know that central computers are indeed collecting hand-by-hand playing decisions at video poker machines, but it could easily be done.

Finally, facial recognition software could foil any plans, by either a blackjack or a video poker player, to use an alternate I.D. and/or disguise to advantage-play either game (or any other game that comes along) after being barred. Technology has definitely given the casinos the upper hand over advantage players, and while I am only a recreational player who accepts as little disadvantage as I can, but will still play with a disadvantage sometimes, the "real" advantage players will not be around much longer, I expect, except to exploit the occasional and progressively less common mistake by a casino in offering a machine or a promotion that can be beaten.

--BG

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2e. Re: "Greatest Gambler of All Time" Busted

>both cheats and card counters can end up in the black book.

You might be confusing the Black Book with other books by detective
agencies, such as the Griffin book. I don't believe any card counter
is in the Black Book. People in the Black Book are thereby barred
from every casino in Nevada. One of them, a relative of an
acquaintance of mine, was a line producer for "The Cotton Club."