National Review: Counting cards - a bit of advice from a professional gambler

COUNTING CARDS

HIS NAME isn't Ron. "I think you'd better not describe me either,' he said. So, well, Ron isn't six foot two, and he doesn't have the posture of a rachitic steamer chair. "Some casino pit boss might read your piece and say, "Come out into our parking lot and meet Rocco and Animal, my vice presidents for customer relations.'' Ron isn't a brilliant intellect, and he can't play chess at grandmaster level. I'm sick of interviewing all these people who request anonymity. Me, I don't have to request it. In any case, Ron makes his considerable living as a professional blackjack counter.

NR: Who can count? What sort of person?

RON: You have to like a certain amount of discipline. It's not a creative game. The ideal in your play is to approximate a computer as closely as you possibly can. What you do is register a proportion of high cards to low cards as they come out of the dealer's shoe, and make your decisions based on that. You'll never, ever deviated from what you know to be the correct play.

NR: Sounds kind of tedious.

RON: I don't find it tiring any more. When I first started, I'd rivet my attention on the table. I notice now that I walk through the casino, glance at the table and I have the count--and I look at another table and I count that one down. I just sort of stand between the tables and count the two of them.

NR: Isn't there some pressure?

RON: I find pressure in maintaining my act. Here's a play that's an optimal play, should I bet heavily or will it attract attention? On the other hand I enjoy the James Bond business of walking into the enemy's citadel, so to speak, and taking their money right out from under their noses. You can't very well come in wearing torn jeans and battered sneakers and start making $1,000 bets. You have to look smart enough to have brought this money to the table--and not quite smart enough to keep it.

NR: You play as part of a team.

RON: Yes. We have eight players on our present team. A single player just can't put in as many hours, and it smoothes out the fluctuations. If you're playing with a 1 1/2 per cent edge and you play 12 hours, your chance of being ahead is barely 60 per cent. You'll lose in two out of five of those 12-hour sessions. The same 1 1/2 per cent edge over a period of five hundred hours produces a better than 98 per cent chance of being ahead. We buy in for a certain amount and play that bankroll until it either goes completely broke or we double it. A bankroll is usually about 45 or fifty grand.

NR: You sell shares, I hear.

RON: We have a couple of nonplaying investors. A share is $7,000. We'll sell whole shares or half shares. We offer this prospectus: there is a 97 per cent chance of doubling the bankroll. We play with what is called a 3 per cent element of ruin.

NR: So you do lose now and then?

RON: Sure. It's never fun to lose a lot of money, but it does improve your cover. You can take a computer and run ten million hands. At the end of the ten million hands the win is almost exactly the predicted expectation. But within those ten million hands there are groups of fifty thousand hands where the computer is actually losing. Now, if you were, as a human, playing those fifty thousand hands and losing, you'd say, "Man, this crap doesn't work.' It can be very irritating. A player on our team said recently, "We have a partner in this fascinating venture of ours, it's called standard deviation.'

NR: Are the casinos alert to card counting?

RON: Some are very alert, some are minimally alert, and there are a few --bless them--that aren't alert at all. In Vegas I've been thrown out. The security guard stands alongside while you cash in your chips. Recently in Vegas two counters were beaten up. They sued and received a rather large settlement. There is nothing illegal about counting. You're not changing the order of the cards in any way. A counter challenged the casinos in state court and won. Atlantic City is no longer allowed to bar counters since September of 1982.

NR: Is card counting a real threat to the casinos?

RON: On the contrary, the concept of counting has enriched the casinos unimaginably. Since the popularization of card counting in the 1960s, blackjack has become the most profitable casino game. It supplanted craps. But casinos don't feel it's enough to make tremendous profits by beating most of the people who walk in. East Coast players have a tolerance for very, very poor conditions, so no doubt the casinos in Atlantic City will make them even poorer. The games are now eight-deck games, six-deck games. They're so intrinsically unfavorable that even the best counter can only hope for the barest of edges. It's been estimated that only one out of 25 blackjack players can count and one out of twenty counters can win.

NR: How often do you play?

RON: I try to play 25 or thirty hours a month. For the stakes we play, our Atlantic City earnings should be about $140 an hour. In the optimum games, the one-deck games offered in northern Nevada and Las Vegas, about $265 would be a realistic hourly win rate.

NR: Suppose I wanted to play on your team? Would I fit in?

RON: We have an English teacher. A securities analyst. A few businessmen. A travel agent. Me. We'd test you. We'd test your ability to count down a deck in 25 seconds or less. We's test your knowledge of basic strategy. We're also supposed to have polygraph tests, but they never materialized on this team.

NR: If conditions are so bad and getting worse, why do you continue to gamble?

RON: I don't like to use the word "gamble.' Because anything you do with a positive expectation is a form of investment. I don't know. I'm not very good at keeping jobs. I don't arrive anywhere on time. I like games. I enjoy winning from casinos because their attitude is so greedy and meanspirited. I like the idea that I'm personally responsible for my success or failure, that there's no question of currying favor with the boss or being bypassed for someone who's less qualified. I rise and fall on my own efforts. There's something very American about all that.