He goes around the country gambling playing Blackjack enjoy this clip

1995 called, they want their blackjack card counter back.

The last time I went to a casino & watched blackjack, they shuffled the deck after every 3 hands thus defeating all card counters & making it impossible to beat the only game that could ever be beaten in a casino in the long term.

I made some fairly decent money card counting a long time back...around 1996-2002 period.

As suggested above, it became a heck of a lot more difficult and potentially impossible depending on the casino conditions they apply. It also just wasn't worth bothering with all the hassle you would inevitably start to get from the staff - one night I was even playing recreationally (drunk) for small stakes, and a guy basically came over and started counting numbers in my ear. He was one of the main staff managing the place. They lost out on my few hundred quid that I would have lost that night, as I left. I think I stopped bothering at all not long after that.

If you can be bothered to do it, the only game you do still have a chance for real advantage is Roulette - not fully the game of chance some believe it is.

and you're sitting in the forum when the casino's are open?

Excellent documentary, I loved the idea of taping a high value chip to his knee to confuse the NFC technology when switching his bet size. I tried basic card counting in Vegas in about 2001 +1/-1 etc, its very difficult, especially annoying when the cards are coming out relatively evenly all the time. And very annoying when you have some doughnut ahead of you on the deal taking pictures and busting when best strategy would be to stick as the dealer is showing a two/three/four or five. Looks like auto shuffling has ruined card counting then...

Stu- part of my PhD in Statististics covered roulette. Believe me it can't be done UNLESS you clock a wheel & find a mechanical imperfection. To overcome this, casinos rotate the position of the wheels. The only casino game that could be beaten was blackjack & I did it by card counting after purchasing the book by Lawrence Revere when I first visited Las Vegas in the 1970s. I was "encouraged" not to play blackjack in a certain casino in London & banned by 4 casinos in Brighton.

stu is away to the local casino..be back later with his p&l.

if stu has the odds in his favour with roulette his only destination will be HMP Belmarsh

can someone explain how you click on a link on here again please
i,d like to give it a watch sometime
cheers

Interesting slicer - depends on which method you were testing?

Dealer bias is the key - which can be either accidental or if very dodgy then intentional - just enough to alter the 'random' odds of a spin.

I didn't say I do it now, it's far too much work for small profit. But I have in the past - the 'accidental' version, not the intentional.

Is Time

Right click and highlight the link and take it from there.

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2023-how-to-beat-roulette-gambler-figures-it-out/?leadSource=uverify%20wall

long read, disable javascript to avoid firewall

The cliff notes for my technique - you find a very tired and/or pissed off roulette croupier working in the small hours of the night...

Best also with a fairly busy table so you won't get noticed.

I was a dealer for many years and thought of a way to win at Roulette.

It's not gambling it's a way of cheating and I have never heard of anybody else doing this.

It is so simple and takes a fraction of a second to set up.

from above article

One of the biggest livestreamers was Evolution Gaming Group. Founded in 2006 with some casino equipment and a small office in Latvia, the company charged betting firms a percentage of revenue to use its platform, which became a wildly lucrative niche. About a decade ago, according to several former employees, Evolution staff made a strange discovery. A handful of players were winning at statistically absurd rates on the roulette wheels spinning day and night at its facility in Riga. Engineers investigated and pinpointed a culprit: the floor. Specifically, there was a gap between its solid concrete base and the carpeted playing surface laid down just above, a standard feature in studios where audio is recorded. When a croupier stood next to the televised table, the floor flexed ever so slightly, not enough to catch the human eye but tilting enough to help anyone using prediction software. One online user won tens of thousands of dollars from a major Evolution partner before engineers installed platforms to steady the wheels.

Pros at roulette and blackjack. Horses a walk in the park compared

I'd agree freddie - wouldn't bother these days with casinos to try and make money - even if you manage it, it will be small profits and plenty of hassle and time spent to earn it.

Stu the wheel has no memory or soul so how you going to make money long term?

read the bloomberg article I posted ladycarla

That's not the way it works lady - it's about how the dealer spins the ball and wheel.

It's a fairly long and complex process to use that, and as I say I wouldn't bother to do it for the amount you can win - but it can turn the odds into your favour if you study and work at it long enough.

I'm not referring to dave's article BTW not read that yet.

ive scene the ball plop into 1 number and stay there..

ive seen the ball bounce around 5 times..

ive seen the pop bounce halfway across the wheel..

walofs.

ive scene the ball plop into 1 number and stay there..

ive seen the ball bounce around 5 times..

ive seen the ball bounce halfway across the wheel..

walofs.

Just bet the split on 8 and 11 - half a billion chinese can't be wrong surely, can they?

Odd analysis rico - sure you've seen horses fall over fences, so what - you can still win can't you overall?

You don't need to win every time to make a profit.

Just need to win a fraction more than the odds you are given.

I read an article a couple of years back saying many casinos were using an eight deck counter. Impossible to beat for card counters.

3 card brag……

the eight decks isn't a problem - it's the shuffle machine and only going to half way or less that is the problem.

back in the day eight decks was an advantage as most dealers shuffled in sections because it took too long to shuffle properly. So if you kept an eye on where the area with a lot of tens were you could work out where that went when it was shuffled.

Stu- I seen people lose their house on the wheel, in fact I know someone who lost 3 houses when he got hooked Never known anybody to be a long term winner on it. My mate once thought he had a system and has he walked in the casino he said the manager 'I've got a system and going to take alot of money of you'.

The manager coolly said 'Come on in, what you drinking?

He got free drinks all night what cost him 10 grand

Increasing the number of decks to 8 is the old way of beating the counters because it evens out the count making it much less skewed or extreme. The way to try to beat that was to divide the true count by 8. The modern way is using the automatic shuffler after every 3 deals. And the problem with the floor fits in with what I said about the mechanically defective wheel. I repeat what I posted in another thread: I was in a casino once & saw zero come up 3 times in 5 spins. All the systems players were wiped out while a little old granny who bet her 1 pound on zero & one other number every spin went home very happy. I'll also repeat what the pilot of the plane on which I travelled to Las Vegas or Lost Wages as I call the very first time announced over the pa on landing : "Take a look at all these luxurious hotels ladies & gentlemen. They weren't built on winners!"

evening rainman  ....

Not really. just someone who researched the statististics of Casino gambling within PhD. It is said that to win at gambling one needs an edge. The only edge you'll ever see regarding Casino games the the one you'll get pushed off of if you cheat or upset certain people associated with worldwide casinos!

Watched a dude play 500 pound chips on evens the colours, lost 10k, doubled up his bets and lost another 10k in no time, he never won a single spin, was a few ago and never felt the need to go back. The croup was a Russian and was giving it a bit of needle, once dude was empty he was gave it arms in air , I am the best in the business, don't mess with me. Was bizarre.

Slicer, I spoke to a professional croupier who worked for many years on roulette - he said most croupiers know that how they make each spin can clearly link to the area or region of the ball falling. The words he used were 'it's basically a ball skill or sport' and you could easily make sure approx where the ball ended up each spin. He also said their bosses looked out for collusion in roulette spinners - which tells you they know it could be predictable based on spins.
I never worked directly with a croupier (which is basically fraud), but the related issue is that when they get sloppy and/or tired, they can also become partly predictable, if you know what you're looking for and how to apply that. The bosses around the tables will often look out for that too, and then change the spinner - but sometimes they don't...

I too have noticed croupiers have certain actions. BUT it's not consistent over any extended period. They change their action & the boss replaces them after a period of time. It is just as likely there'll be an even distribution of numbers as there will be a skewed distribution.. And there is no such thing as the Law of Averages. It is The Law of High Numbers which states the closer one gets to infinity, the more even the distribution. If I reveal any more of my thesis I'll have to start charging a fee so I'm going to leave you all to make up your own minds. What I will state is that it's so refreshing to have a sensible respectful debate without hatred on one of these forums. Wishing you all good luck, & you'll certainly need more than that to win consistently in a casino.

You do have to get lucky in finding the right 'target' - and it's sometimes more difficult depending on vigilence at different casinos. For such, and many other reasons, it's barely worth doing it - but interesting non the less in a supposed 'random' game.

Getting the ball to land say nine numbers to both sides of 0

How easy would that be

Oizins du zero. I think it's called

Oisins

If you were a spinner who was deliberately rigging it, with years of pro experience fairly easy to hit a range of slots.

Which is why one clue is always place your bets after they have spun

I worked for years dealing in casinos let me tell you it's impossible to know where the ball is going to land do you not think if I could control the ball and make it land in a section of the wheel I would?

I have seen people win and lose £1,000s my wife was also a dealer and she dealt to a person who won Millions and this was in the 70s.

This is a fact if you win in a casino they will bar you just the same as the bookmakers.

My tip, if you do play blackjack, is tracking look it up if you don't know what that is.

My tip, if you do play blackjack, is tracking look it up if you don't know what that is.

Where do you suggest we get a time machine to go back to when auto-shufflers didn't exist?

seaside 30 Jan 24 20:17 
I worked for years dealing in casinos let me tell you it's impossible to know where the ball is going to land do you not think if I could control the ball and make it land in a section of the wheel I would?

sense from seaside at last.

I've now watched the very interesting item mentioned  by the op. What is notable to me is that even with his incredible skill, he still had some terrible losing runs. The skill included tracking, counting etc. At least he built up a bank. It would be a different story if he'd had the losing run at the start & lost his starting bank. Auto shuffling stops tracking as  mentioned by Dave. But it's the shuffling of the decks after every three hands that defeats counting. And it was counting that was the only way to win consistently.

What's intriguing is how well he deals with the losing run, cool head and all that. It goes to show how small the edge is even with card counting. A fair chunk of his profit came from a weak dealer inadvertently showing the hole card.

the best time ever at bj was when ladbrokes casinos introduced an under/over side bet, think 13 was the push, might have been twelve. In random circumstances it was a shocking bet, but with a ten rich deck you had a huge edge.

I worked for years dealing in casinos let me tell you it's impossible to know where the ball is going to land

There are many roulette croupiers who would completely disagree with you, including the ones I knew personally and had many conversations with about this exact question.

If you think of it logically, anyone doing that same physical task many hundreds of thousands of times gains some form of 'skill' and understanding for doing it, just common sense - it's a skill like any other physical skill or game. My friend who worked for many years was confident he could land in a specific segment if trying to do so. It was a ball skill like I said, in his terms.

The main point is that if you can (near enough) estimate the particular 'throw' of a roulette dealer then you don't have to be exact in predicting where it lands - near enough will do to beat the odds in the longer run.

Either way, it's a moot point of discussion, because the practicality of sitting for hours trying to find good spots to play is too difficult and time consuming, with very small margins of profits overall.

Stu- no disrespect here that's madness if you believe it!! Why do you think they have diamond ribs and raised edges on every number IYO.

Plus every expert croupiers mates would never work again if it were true

If there's a consistent bias (and there is sometimes in the dealer spins) it shows in the results they churn out (just like a fault in a wheel etc).

It doesn't always happen of course, and may never happen in some casinos, but in some it certainly did (when I used to be involved with it seriously).

There's no such thing as a perfect system or something that is always presenting an edge, but at times it does, that's all.

They don't usually want to get involved in deliberate fraud though for sure - that is a different question entirely.

Oh so you're talking about a bent dealer, that's totally different

True story back in the 80s, one of the local croupiers used to switch the ball to a far heavier ball, cut long story short got away with 30k before they got caught, did 2 years never paid a penny back.

I'm sure with statistical analysis any design flaw causing a bias with a roulette table can be spotted. I'm also sure casino's can monitor for this and rectify. Do casinos rotate the wheels between tables from time-to-time? Nowadays the number-slots are designed to allow the ceramic (or ivory or plastic) balls (so no magnetism) to bounce out easily and that along with the croupier spinning the wheel clockwise and the ball anti-clockwise or visa-versa; I very much doubt the physics allow any manipulation of where the balls finishes up.

Oh so you're talking about a bent dealer

Well, more accurately, what I mean is that a tired or lazy dealer can start to act like a 'bent' dealer in roulette, if you are able to spot it and use it carefully enough.

It's not easy though.

I'm very skeptical, but as there are computer systems than can video the wheel and predict the landing position with enough tolerance to beat the house edge, it isn't beyond belief that a croupier could certainly have the skill to spin the ball so that its decay was consistent ie it moved down on to the numbers at the same position. It also reasonable to believe that the wheel could be spun at a consistent speed. So although the ball bounces around, if it is still possible for a computer to predict with sufficient accuracy, then the human spinning the wheel and the ball consistently could set up a scenario for a bias.

Yes dave, though the key point is you don't have to be 'perfect' in your predictions - just a bit more accurate than the 'near chance' prediction it's supposed to be - law of averages can do the rest, if you know a bias, bit like your wheel points earlier.

A racing analogy is like laying all runners from a stable when you know there is some kind of consistent issue with that stable (horses underperforming) - you will lose some that go on to win still, but overall will come out on top as the bias underlies the results.

Combine the two stu - you just need to find out when the croupiers have had their flu vaccine!

reiterayshun..

croupier spins the ball around the wheel...it probably does 6-10 full revolutions before it starts to drop..

ive scene the ball plop into 1 number and stay there..

ive seen the ball bounce around 5 times..

ive seen the ball bounce halfway across the wheel..

walofs.

You have some silly ideas about random events and prediction - how can a computer predict with sufficient accuracy to beat the house?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4069629.stm

A group of gamblers who won more than £1m at the Ritz Casino in London by using laser technology have been told by police they can keep their winnings.

The trio - a Hungarian woman and two Serbian men - were arrested in March but police have apparently decided that they did not break the law.

A laser scanner linked to a computer was allegedly used to gauge numbers likely to come up on the roulette wheel.

lol TM - yes, suppose could work for both

Computer in a shoe was used to beat roulette.
Speed of wheel and speed of ball swiftly calculated to narrow down probable area of ball landing.

you can bet on the number while the roulette is spinning?

yes till the ball is slowing then ewe will hear 'no more bets please'

I reckon about 15 years ago when I used to be up late studying the horses it had live roulette on after like 12 itv  I used to have it on in the background and after a few months I could predict the ball I won’t let cat out of the bag as there will be plenty doing same it’s boring and takes a lot of work but I got shut down

I reckon about 15 years ago when I used to be up late studying the horses it had live roulette on after like 12 itv  I used to have it on in the background and after a few months I could predict the ball I won’t let cat out of the bag as there will be plenty doing same it’s boring and takes a lot of work but I got shut down

know all 31 Jan 24 14:26 
I reckon about 15 years ago when I used to be up late studying the horses it had live roulette on after like 12 itv  I used to have it on in the background and after a few months I could predict the ball I won’t let cat out of the bag as there will be plenty doing same it’s boring and takes a lot of work but I got shut down


then get a friend to take over..then another ..then another blah blah

I will tell you one thing about blackjack as a dealer I could shuffle the cards in a way that would benefit the house
I never did but I could have done if I so wanted to.

froysdc

This has nothing to do with card counting and is still down to pure luck but it does make me wonder all the same...

Not long after blackjack could first be played online, I briefly met someone who said they were logging onto a different blackjack site each day and playing for £10 a hand until they were £10 in front. Then they would stop for the day.

The rationale was that every time he had ever played blackjack in a casino he had always been at least 1 unit (betting to level stakes per hand) in front. Thus, his reasoning was that he would surely always be one unit up at one stage each time he played. By stopping at that one unit up (in his case £10) EVERY day he would make £3650 a year! He was at 42 days consecutive '£10 ups' when I met him and I would love to know how he ended up after one year.

There is no logic or maths to his idea, yet it does have a certain appeal if you are highly disciplined.

He also took the time to clear all the cookies off his PC every day. It is through cookies (NOT IP's addresses which are different every time you logon) that PC usage is tracked. This made sense as well, apart from how I was not sure if the gambling company keeps track of its cookies at their end. Hence, even if you delete all cookies, next time you logon a fresh set will be put on your PC. But the first thing the cookie might do is check back to its host, where the host machine then sees if a previous cookie has been placed on your PC. In other words, they would know you had been with them before whatever you do.

Anyway, the latter aside, the guy I met had made it to 42 days and £420 at that point.

Imagine spending all that time to win just £10 a day. I'm sure some days it took many hours. As my ancestor Slicerius, a lesser known Roman philosopher once said (translated from the Latin)" You can always earn more money, but you can't earn more time!" I  value my time at much more than a tenner a day. If your friend really believed it worked, he'd have upped the stakes!

It's just martingale, so essentially a massive bet at very low odds to win a tenner. You will win almost all of the time but eventually will blow your bank.

Slicer • February 1, 2024 12:44 PM GMT
Imagine spending all that time to win just £10 a day.

I wouldn't imagine he spent much time in those 42 days. The big time investment comes when he plays for 24 hours straight and loses £5k.

(NOT IP's addresses which are different every time you logon)

my ip address signing in to BF every day is static.

pretty sure the story was from the days of dial-up

In 1991, Australian businessman Kerry Packer stepped into a casino and left with $7 million thanks to blackjack. But this isn’t even the most extraordinary win we’re looking at in this list. What’s even more impressive is when Packer won $40 million in less than an hour at the Las Vegas MGM Grand.

Packer’s winning strategy was playing eight hands simultaneously on the same table and betting a massive $250,000 on each round. And unlike other wins on this list, Packer’s win didn’t take months but mere minutes. After just 40 minutes of blackjack, he cashed out an astounding $40 million. Naturally, he left his dealers a million-dollar tip.

Sadly, Packer might not be on the list of the most skillful blackjack players. He’s also known to have lost £27.4 million in 10 months and even $10 million in one night. However, after cleaning out the house a few times, we’d say he got even before being served with a lifetime ban.


Bet that got quiet a crowd watching What were the odds the dealer quit same night

It is very hard to win at blackjack I know the game back to front I can count down a pack as well as anybody

Even with all my knowledge, I found it very hard to win, and if you are good enough to win just like the bookies you will be shown the door.

i was with zeljko once in a casino. he said he wasnt allowed near the table despite auto-shuffle, which seems daft. what did they think he would do?

defecate on it?

Rico,,,you must have a static IP address then? Did you buy one?

Take it from me, though, if normal IP addresses did not sit in a pool with all the other currently not-in-use IP address to be allocated every time anyone logs on to the web, then the internet would become unusable very, very quickly!

If we all had the same, static IP address then there would be more people than available IP addresses. Something called sub-net masking comes into it, as well.

So, if you do not have a specific, static IP address, then I cannot see how you can be logging onto to BF with the same one all the time.

But, remember, it isn't at the logon with BF you receive the IP address for your online session, it is when you first logon to the internet itself. After being a mainframe programmer, I then qualified with Cisco twenty years ago as a CCCE. Hence, I do have a reasonable idea of what I am talking about. Mind you, I have been retied since 2013 when I sold my business for good money - so perhaps things have changed and the new idea back when I was finishing up of creating unlimited IP addresses has now come to pass!

(Lastly, though, the cookies which are placed on your computer, or phone, by all the sites you visit can make it look like you do have the same IP address.)

And Jamee and all..it isn't a martingale because he wasn't changing stakes every time he hit losing hands (as far as I know). I never said that when I told the tale, either. Everyone has just assumed that to be the case. He was just banking on getting one unit in front a some stage.

BTW, I was not really passing judgement on what he said he was doing, although it wasn't a totally unreasonable idea. That said, about 15 years ago, on a dull Sunday morning, I once played BJ online and lost 26 hands in a row playing 'classic' strategy before it dawned on me that playing with a unseen 'dealer' was probably the height of stupidity! Never, ever touched it since and never will.