Hate the Game, Not the Player
I almost never get to see movies in theaters anymore, but while staying over in New York on business last night I made a point of going to see 21 – the fictionalized account of a group of highly mathematical MIT card counters. It was an irresistible draw to me, as I was both a theoretical math major at MIT and a card counter.
Surprisingly, one thing that 21 made clear was that card counting isn’t an IQ test, it’s a character test. A good card-counting system, as executed in the field, might give you a 2% – 3% weighted advantage versus the house, so each hand is very close to a 50/50 proposition; consequently, you can run way down and way up several times even within a single day of play. It looks and feels a lot like luck, and a player can get very spooked when he goes down $8,000 out of a $10,000 bankroll. It is amazingly hard not to deviate from the system when you are on either a hot streak or a cold streak. The characters in the movie discuss this numerous times, and most fail this test at one point or another.
In the broader sense, the gambling environment tends to attract self-destructive people and encourage self-destructive behavior. The card counting teams that I knew did pretty much what was shown in the movie, e.g., wear costumes to avoid detection, repeatedly return to the same casinos to be treated like high rollers and so on. Though the members had trouble admitting this to themselves, they were acting out fantasies and seeking camaraderie as much as they were trying to take the house for money. Eventually, the teams (in somewhat less dramatic fashion than in the movie) would always fall out over money as a consequence of trying to divide up gains and losses in a venture with large capital requirements and extremely variable earnings.
That said, they were usually a blast for a while. When I was at MIT there were three well-known teams: the MIT team, the Stanford team and the Czechoslovakians. The Czechs were by far the coolest – a small group of mathematicians and scientists who had somehow gotten across the Iron Curtain and were living the American Dream in Vegas, complete with gold chains, Kangol caps and plaid polyester pants. They were almost perfectly represented by a famous Saturday Night Live skit.
My experience was that it was very easy to stay under the radar of casinos if you didn’t feel the need to do any of that. Just play solo at the quarter tables, never spike your bet above 5:1, and play no more than one hour at casino before you move on to the next one. There are about 100 casinos in Vegas, so you can play ten hours per day every other weekend and only visit a given casino once every two or three months (for an hour each time). No pit boss will know who you are or care what you’re doing because you’re so far down in the noise. You can make a lot of money this way. Of course, nobody will ever know that you are taking them, and the emotional satisfaction arises from walking into this multi-billion dollar enterprise and walking out with their money because you’re smarter and more disciplined than they are. In a bizarre way, you succeed through classical bourgeois virtues: self-discipline, frugality, ego control and steady work.
Once you realize all this, of course, you figure out that you can make a lot more money in that giant casino called Wall Street.
( cross-posted at The Corner )
Fascinating post, Jim.
— Alan Jacobs · Apr 2, 03:54 PM · #
Yes! Thank you for pointing this out. You don’t need to be Rain Man to count cards. You are in most systems keeping track of a single number, one which you manipulate only by adding or subtracting one, many many times. What prevents most people from making a living counting cards isn’t a lack of mathematical acumen; it’s having a bankroll, being able emotionally and financially to lose that bankroll, having the time and patience to work the system properly, and having the discipline and guts to actually do it.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I believe I’ll visit the famed Mashantucket Pequot museum….
— Freddie · Apr 2, 04:14 PM · #
Alan,
Thanks very much.
Freddie,
It’s funny, but casinos set up single-deck tables for the specific purpose of attracting people who are “card counters”, 90%+ of whom lose money. By the way, you normally need to do division as well as add/subtract in order to keep a true count, but your broad point is precisely correct.
— Jim Manzi · Apr 2, 05:22 PM · #
Jim – Excellent post. I’ve wondered why the blackjack teams chose blackjack as their game of mathematical advantage instead of poker. As Alan stated, the traits that make a successful card counter also apply to any successful poker player. Obviously, playing poker does not get casino security on your case like counting cards can. But there is more to poker than just working a system. Could you shed some light on this please?
— Scott · Apr 3, 03:25 PM · #
Poker is a MUCH more complicated game than Blackjack. For every situation in Blackjack, you can figure out the exact expected value of each play based on what the dealer must do according to the rules. This cannot be done in poker due to the fact that you are playing a human and not a de facto robot. Much more psycology involved – like playing “wrong” in a small pot to have the table image advantage in a large pot.
— Paul B · Apr 3, 06:29 PM · #
good article. lots of players made the switch to Wall Street, ie Thorp and Gross
http://s.wsj.net/article/SB120614130030156085.html
— WorldBeta · Apr 3, 07:08 PM · #
I would imagine the hardest thing to contend with would be boredom.
— brian levine · Apr 3, 07:28 PM · #
The greater discipline is to be yourself, and not change to fit in. How did you come to have this strength of self-perception?
— Ed Brenegar · Apr 3, 08:02 PM · #
I worked solo too.
I am the author of “Striking It Rich: Golf in the Kingdom with generals, Patients and Pros”, the story of my path to the pro tour after a 30 year layoff and while working as a surgeon in Cambodia. I am also an M.I.T. grad (physics, 1978) who counted cards for 2 years religiously. I documented my story in “Striking It Rich”. I haven’t seen 21 yet but I read the book. It was only partially realistic. For a more real account, read chapter 3 of my book. In 2 years, I was only disturbed once by the casino management while extracting about $750 per day going from table to table. We called it “the paper route method”.
It was like taking candy from a baby.
— Reid Sheftall, M.D. · Apr 4, 02:20 AM · #
I come from a long line of Scots who told me many things all of which helped me to retire at age 45.
One of these is that if you dont play you cant lose. I never bet on anything.
Another which may fit into this same catagory is that if you want to make a lot of money, watch the poor people and dont do what they do.
And there are many more, but I digress.
— Martino DelaHaya · Apr 4, 02:36 AM · #