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Casinos
are the only businesses which make money by beating their own customers
at games of chance. The operators of lotteries and parimutuel betting
do not care who wins or loses. With casinos, however, the house
cares very much who wins. The casino participates as a player covering
the bets of the other players in every hand.
Under the rules
of every game the casino has a built-in advantage over every other
player. Blackjack is a percentage game because the player goes first:
The house wins, even if both the player and the casino dealer bust.
It is easy to
understand why casinos want to make the game of blackjack difficult
for card-counters, or to ban card-counters completely. When the
rules are liberal enough, and the player is skillful enough, the
casino will actually have a small statistical disadvantage, for
short periods of time.
A large cottage
industry has developed over the last three decades whose principal
goal is to beat the casinos' percentage advantage in the game of
blackjack. No other casino game has received this much attention:
A host of scholarly and popular books, professional conferences,
newsletters, magazines and mechanical devices have been made available
to players who want to try and get the percentage in their favor.
Casinos spend
an enormous amount of time and money attempting to foil card-counters.
Some of these counter-measures are aimed not only at card-counters,
but are part of the industry's continuous attempt to speed up the
velocity of money. Among the many tactics casinos have used:
Identifying
known counters through photo books and face recognition computer
technology. Linking computers with imbedded scanners in blackjack
tables. The most sophisticated of these systems can even recognize
which system a player is using.
Dealing out
only a few hands before shuffling. Dealers sometimes shuffle whenever
players greatly increases the size of their wagers. Changing the
rules, often in the middle of a game. These include lowering the
stakes, and limiting the right to double-down, split or play more
than one hand at a time. Sometimes the restrictions are imposed
on the entire table and sometimes only on the card-counter. Harassing
skilled players. Skilled players have been subjected to such crude
tactics as having drinks spilled on them. One was even arrested
in Atlantic City on trumped up charges, leading to a civil suit
and a large jury verdict against the casino. Bringing social pressure
against the card-counter. Casinos are social settings. Slowing up
a game to measure where the cut card is can turn the other players
at the table against the card-counter. Casino executives are sometimes
so emotionally tied up with their battles against card-counters,
that their actions are often self-destructive. Slowing up a game
to shuffle may hurt the skilled player, but it prevents the other
players at the table from playing. Government's role in the on-going
war between casinos and card-counters usually fall into one of two
categories:
In jurisdictions
like Nevada, casinos are free to take any counter-measures they
wish. State law prohibits discriminating on the basis of race, color,
religion, national origin or disability. But Nevada casinos may
exclude players for counting cards, or even just for winning.
Nevada regulators
have gone so far as to informally allow casino dealers to count
cards and shuffle whenever the remainder of a shoe favors the players.
Preferential shuffling has not been challenged, but a court might
declare this to be cheating. The house is manipulating the odds
as if it were removing tens and aces from shoe.
On the other
end of the spectrum are jurisdictions which by statute and regulation
make all decisions on how casino games are played. In New Jersey,
at one stage, casinos did not even have discretion as to the color
of the felt covering the gaming tables. The state Supreme Court
held, in Uston v. Resorts International Hotel Inc., 445 A.2d 370
(1982), that government control of blackjack was so complete that
casinos in Atlantic City did not have the authority to decide whether
skilled players could be barred.
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