The gambler who beat roulette

I was TDY to Nellis AFB in Las Vegas around 1977 to a not particularly difficult training class. Picked up a book on counting cards and went to town with a deck. I did not particularly find it difficult, although I did not completely master the hit/stand table variance depending on the card count.
During the 80s I made multiple trips to Nellis, with some visits to the blackjack tables. While I did not play at a high level, I noticed a number of counters the casinos employed. The worst was to adjust the point of shuffle. With a 2 deck table, I noticed the dealer would sometimes deal the deck all the way down, requiring a reshuffle before completing a hand. Other times, the dealer would reshuffle after only one or two hands. With a multi-deck shoe, the dealer would sometimes deal to the burn card, other times he or she would reshuffle before that point. There seemed to be two types of these dealers. One would reshuffle when a player who well could have been counting raised his bet. The other type of dealer (the cheating one, in my opinion) adjusted his shuffle point based on the card count, shuffling early if the deck was not in the house favor (ratio of 10s to non-10s), dealing all the way down if the deck favored house odds. This last method of countering card counters was cheating IMO because it improved house odds against all players.
Another method was based upon my fear and superstition rather than science. Whenever one of the seedier downtown casinos got tired of me taking up a seat and not losing sufficiently fast enough, they would move in an Asian Female dealer, who would beat me 9 out of 10 hands, 2 of those 9 drawing a multi-card 21 to beat my pat 20. Try as I could, I could never hold my own against one of those ladies.
 
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It doesn’t matter how many decks are in a shoe.
That's not true. Taking it to the limit, if the shoe was an infinite stack of shuffled cards, the probability of drawing a high card would be constant throughout the game. It would not depend at all on the count of previously drawn cards.
 
Other than card counting, the only way I think most people can win is controlling when to leave the table and cash out. When you start the first several rounds you may win and you may lose, and if you play long enough you are guaranteed to lose, so this is how my dad played back when he did it once a year:

1) Get to a table playing black jack, start with some small to medium amount bet
2) If he win, leave the table right away
3) If he lost, play a couple more time till he win as a whole in general, then leave the table right away
4) Spend the next several hours watching others play, and don't gamble afterward.
 
This criminal team "won" 225k in a few days cheating on electronic craps in Las Vegas. Had no idea craps had gone automated.

 
Casinos are like insurance cos.

They sure love collecting, but if they have to pay they won’t stop until they get all of their money back.

Imagine if you don’t throw the dice the way they want you’re a criminal 😂
 
Casinos are like insurance cos.

They sure love collecting, but if they have to pay they won’t stop until they get all of their money back.

Imagine if you don’t throw the dice the way they want you’re a criminal 😂
Yes, that is correct. Casino gambling is a losing proposition. It is a mathematical formula to make sure the casino wins. Insurance companies wish they had the same model as a casino.
 
This criminal team "won" 225k in a few days cheating on electronic craps in Las Vegas. Had no idea craps had gone automated.


I looked up what it was. They use real dice. But the betting is automated. If you've ever seen real table games it can get confusing who placed which chips, but I believe they often have different colors for each player so as to not be as confusing if two players opt to be the same. I think the idea is that it helps the player understand the rules and the payouts better. It seems more like playing on a slot machine with playslips. And the surface isn't felt but glass where it's on top of a video display.



I couldn't imagine sliding dice across a felt table without them snagging the fabric and then rolling over. But apparently this has been done before on traditional felt surfaces.



I guess it doesn't need to be perfect. But they just have to be able to get that specific outcome more often than it would normally be and then do it enough times. Hitting a specific "roll" pays out a lot and I guess if they could manage that half the time they would do really well.
 
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