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"RGB Classic" #6 - Wong on Count Teams
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Stanford Wong used to participate in this group, but the clutter and the
disruptions forced him to create his own web site. Now Stanford only shows
up here about once a month to plug his site. Since charges for membership
to many of the pages, the Ranting in rgb only serves to increase Stanford's
income. The law of unitended consequences being ironic sometimes. At any
rate, Stanford says in this article quite clearly, why team play has to be
used carefully.
Subject: Complete team article for Casino Player (long)
From: stanfwong@aol.com (Stanf Wong)
Date: 1995/09/30
Message-Id: <44ij1t$aso@newsbf02.news.aol.com>
Newsgroups: rec.gambling.blackjack
This is the text of an article I will submit to Casino Player Magazine in
a few days. I’m running it by you first to see if you have any suggestions
for improving it. I apologize for taking three tries before getting this
post to run in its entirety; I ran into an AOL bug. With John Imming's
help, I think it should be okay this time.
How Not to Run a Blackjack Team
This article assumes you are a good enough blackjack player to get an edge
over the casino, probably by counting cards. If you are not playing with
an advantage, then there are no financial advantages of teaming up with
others with similar gambling skills.
Advantages of team play
Multiple players financing their play from a combining bankroll has its
advantages. If you are a good card counter and you have $10,000 you are
willing to risk and you play alone, the better blackjack books advise that
you should bet more than about $100 on any one hand. But if you can hook
up with another good card counter who also has $10,000 to risk, and you
two agree to share your outcomes, then if everything works out right (your
partner stays sober, is honest with you, etc.) you should be better off
than if you played alone. You can play with some combination of higher win
rate and less risk.
Suppose that after you find a partner and make your risk-sharing agreement
you continue to make the same bets as before your took on a partner. Your
expected win will be the same if your partner is as skillful as you, plays
the same number of hours you play, and at the same quality of game and
same bet levels; but your risk will be reduced. (If you want to get
technical, the standard deviation applicable to your expected outcome is
divided by the square root of 2, so your ups and downs will be only 71% of
what they would be if you played without a partner.)
Another option is to keep your risk the same but play for higher stakes,
and thus increase your expected win. Combining your $10,000 bankroll with
your partner’s $10,000 bankroll gives the two of you $20,000 to risk. You
can now afford to bet twice as much as if you played alone, meaning bets
up to $200 in this example, and keep the risk the same as if you played
alone.
The same mathematics applies to having more than two on a team. If you
have N players on your team you can bet N times as much and have N times
the expected win at the same level of risk as if you played alone. Or you
can keep your bets the same as if you played alone and reduce your risk by
the square root of N. Or you can achieve some combination of higher
expected win and lower risk.
Suppose you find nine other card counters who also have $10,000 apiece, so
that your group has $100,000 to risk. If you want to keep the risk the
same as if you played alone, you can increase the size of your bets by a
factor of 10. Each team member can afford to bet as much as $1000 on one
hand. Of course you will have to work out some way of moving money around
so that a player who bets $1000 and needs another $1000 to double down or
split a pair can get his/her hands on enough chips.
Sounds great, eh? Now you can bet $1000 instead of $100. Your expected win
rate is ten times as high as if you went it alone. Your risk is the same
as if you went it alone.
Potential problems of team play
There are potential problems, and you probably have thought through many
of them. People who have run teams of this size mention handling the
personality quirks of team members and assuring the honesty of team
members as being the two biggest headaches.
Here is something you may not have thought of: Focusing only on your win
rate, and ignoring whether the casino can afford the wins of you and your
teammates, is a mistake. If you want to leave ‘em smiling, and you should
be wanting to do that, you are going to have to keep the amount of your
win down to a number that does not bother the casino.
Casinos differ in their willingness to absorb losses. There are a lot more
places that can afford the win of a lone $100 card counter than that can
afford the win of ten simultaneous $1000 card counters. The effect is
geometric: Ten people betting ten times as much has 100 times the win
potential of the individual, which from the casino’s viewpoint means 100
times the loss potential.
At only a few casinos will ten team members blend in comfortably with
$1000 bets. (Do you really think your individual play will be so different
from that of your teammates that nobody will realize that you are all
together?) Most casinos will react unfavorably to the losses a team that
powerful can inflict. Even places that have bent over backwards to be
friendly to you in the past when you were making $100 bets will get nasty
in the face of a serious threat to their bankrolls.
Casinos’s win is revenue, not profit
Something to keep in mind when estimating how much a casino can afford to
lose to you: A casino’s win is its revenue, not its profit. A casino has
costs, such as rent, salaries, and electricity to keep all those lights
burning brightly. The amount the casino can afford to lose to your
counting team is considerably less than the amount of the casino’s win.
And of course it is not the amount that the casino can afford to lose that
matters, but how much the casino is willing to lose before taking action
to protect itself.
An example of what not to do
On the rec.gambling.blackjack newsgroup of the Internet is a frequent
poster who has organized large teams to play blackjack. I will call him
Rant to avoid giving him publicity. In early 1993 he supervised a team of
50 card counters in Biloxi, Mississippi.
At that time, Mississippi casinos were noted for gracious hospitality.
Getting kicked out of a casino for counting cards was practically unheard
of in Mississippi. The word got around among card counters that
Mississippi was blackjack heaven.
Rant broke his large team into smaller teams, and spread out to hit all
the casinos in Biloxi. The teams played blackjack for weeks and got great
games while making huge bets. They did not receive any heat (heat is
unwelcome attention in a casino) except at the Biloxi Belle, which was
having financial problems and could not really afford Rant’s team.
My reaction to that situation would have been to be thankful for all the
casinos that were giving good games, and to forget about the Biloxi Belle.
That was not Rant’s reaction. He got angry at Biloxi Belle for not giving
his teams a good game, and forgot about all those other casinos that
allowed his teams to make huge bets with no heat.
Rant wanted to teach the Biloxi Belle a lesson. So he executed what he
calls a Team Raid. He combined all 50 of his card counters into one large
team, and they all swarmed into the Biloxi Belle to play blackjack. Rant’s
huge team had twice as many players as the casino had blackjack tables.
Facing multiple big-betting card counters at every table in the casino,
the Biloxi Belle had two options: 1) go bankrupt, and 2) kick out counting
team. The casino did what it had to do to survive. At a time when getting
kicked out of a Mississippi casino was practically unheard of, the
counting team got kicked out.
After the Biloxi Belle barred everyone on Rant’s team, all 50 team members
filed complaints with the Mississippi Gaming Commission, and then they all
50 started legal proceedings against the Biloxi Belle. The Belle, which
was having difficulty anyway, went out of business.
I am not making this up. I have gotten confirmation from independent
sources that the team raid on the Belle really did happen. All the details
are as accurate as I can make them.
Rant’s team certainly taught that the Biloxi Belle a lesson!
Unfortunately, it also taught a lesson to the other casinos in Biloxi, and
to the other casinos in Mississippi, and to the other casinos in the rest
of the world.
If other casinos never learned about the raid, Rant’s teams might have
been able to continue playing blackjack without any heat at all the other
casinos in Mississippi. But being raided by a team of 50 big-betting card
counters is not the sort of thing a casino keeps quiet about. There is no
way Rant’s teams could have kept getting the same great games at other
Mississippi casinos after the raid on the Biloxi Belle.
Rant has also conducted team raids on other casinos, sometimes with as
many as 150 card counters making bets of $400 or more. He describes these
raids as "successful." His definition of success obviously is different
from mine.
These raids have taught casinos that card counters are a foe to be
reckoned with. They have taught casinos that card counters are mean, evil
creatures that love to put a casino out of business. I don’t like that;
I’ve invested too many years trying to convince casinos that card counters
are caring, sensitive, and lovable.
Stanford Wong
_________________
Rusty Martin
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