musings

So Ruchman took a job at Caesars. So what? He isn�t the first and he won�t be the last. We all spend our time trying to figure out ways to take money from the casinos. So he found a way by taking a fat consulting contract. Beats working for a living.

Maybe you say, �But he knows I count because I�d talk to him at Gambler�s Book Club.� If you are a low stakes player it probably won�t make any difference. Even if he asks you not to play, this is only a hobby for you and it will make great dinner conversation back home. If you had greater aspirations, maybe you have just learned a valuable lesson about this business. You shouldn�t share your business with people who don�t need to know about it.

As for Stalker and A Real Player � Imagine you are in the NBA. You have come to a gymnasium filled with High School basketball players. They love the game, they love to talk about it, they think they are good, and they have an old coach who used to be a great high school player himself. They even have a guy who met some players from the NBA and writes as if he�s one of them. You don�t need to piss on their dreams.

Imagine the alternative. You don�t really want all these people learning the techniques that you play do you? Or worse, discussing them on an open forum. You know what happens when amateurs show up and start playing your games. This is a place for people who count cards. That�s what they know how to do and there is nothing wrong with that. Maybe you could set up a site for REAL advantage players� but then do you really want that?

So Ruchman took a job at Caesars. So what? He isn�t the first and he won�t be the last. We all spend our time trying to figure out ways to take money from the casinos. So he found a way by taking a fat consulting contract. Beats working for a living.

So does organized crime. Is there an issue you can't rationalize? Can't you recognize evil when you see it?
Dante's Inferno reserved the seventh circle of hell for traitors.

I have tried to stay within the provable and even the obvious. The contrary respondents to my post all approximate this statement:

Don is so valuable as a resource we should just trust him and accept his word.

Are the clones that masocistic? Maybe they have guilt feelings about beating the game that Don is a catharsis for. It is (sorry about this stereotype) like the stereotype of Brits and Caning in the Public (here called private) Schools, and going for the leather and lace bit once successful in the City of London.

What a realistic and quite eloquent post.
I'm not sure how much stock you might put into a question I have for you. I am surely not NBA material, maybe first string high school though.
This is all theory but in over three thousand hours of play the one thing I noticed again and again is how so few players actually even count cards at a 21 table much less profit from it. This preponderance of flat or nearly flat bettors is in my opinion what allows the PB's etc. to spot the occasionally proficient counter so easily.
Do you think that if all of a sudden most if not all the 21 players were to begin altering their bet sizes with the count(nearly all would still lose in the short and long run for a multitude of reasons) that it would be a godsend for the pro or semi-pro counter?
Wouldn't this be tantamount to free and easy cover for the pro?
Wouldn't this also apply to SOME of the advantage techniques that you hint at?
Again I really liked your post. I even printed it up because it's so damn true. But the last paragraph made me wonder if this whole element of secrecy that pervades counting etc. might not be an unnecessary handicap.

"So Ruchman took a job at Caesars. So what? He isn�t the first and he won�t be the last. We all spend our time trying to figure out ways to take money from the casinos. So he found a way by taking a fat consulting contract. Beats working for a living."

I'm sorry but shrugging one's shoulders and commenting "It's a job" doesn't cut it with me. I commented as much about Stanley Ko and I happen to believe that about Olaf Vancura as well. Some people may feel pissed about this stance and would rather prefer to have these people enlighten them here, even though their "teachers'" bread is getting buttered by the casinos - but no me.

I fully agree with Green Baize Vampire on this one : You make your choices and you must live with them - don't expect us to rationalize how you make your living by saying "it's a job". No fucking way.

...And I don't understand your NBA example: "As for Stalker and A Real Player � Imagine you are in the NBA. You have come to a gymnasium filled with High School basketball players. ... You don�t need to piss on their dreams."

What are you saying exactly? We do have players of "NBA" caliber around here, who rub shoulders with amateurs and casual players and give them food for "dinner conversation" as you put it. But these guys are players - not casino employees!

"Imagine the alternative. You don�t really want all these people learning the techniques that you play do you? Or worse, discussing them on an open forum. You know what happens when amateurs show up and start playing your games."

Discussing advantage techniques has always been left to the discretion of those in the know. What do you think stops an advantage player from publishing truly valuable secrets? Only his sense of discretion and sometimes his loyalty to colleagues. But what if he's in the payroll of the casinos, what then? Then his criteria are altered and he takes into account the welfare of his employer. (These guys' defenders have protested that these casino employees, when advising players, are ignoring the casinos' interests and think only about the players. Which is as pathetic an argument as I've ever heard.)

This is not about keeping things secret from "amateurs" but about the motives of those purporting to teach & inform. Call me a paranoid fool but I always trusted and continue to trust Donald Schlesinger a thousand times more than an astrophysicist who spends his mornings thinking new ways for casinos to make money.

--Cyrus

Call me a paranoid fool

paranoid fool.

ruchman couldn't catch a cold.

There is something called a paranoic state of denial that is part of paranoia. Cyrus is exhibiting that I think. It was a shock for such a blantant crossover to be defended, so that is understandable. I repeat a suggestion to read Richard Belzer's book on this, UFOs, JFK and conspiracies you don't have to be paranoid to believe.

John F. Kennedy was killed by a lone assassin and that assassin was Lee Harvey Oswald. There are no UFOs. There is no Easter Bunny. There is no Santa Claus. And if there's a God up there it's not an old guy with a white beard.

Anything else we left out?

Good.

Now, having made that clear, let me be clear on someting else too, because some poor illiterate soul could misunderstand what I said : I am not worried about Ruchman "catching me". I'm more worried about me catching a cold. Neither am I "shocked at Schlesinger" cause he defended a friend - a notion which apparently completely escapes the lower forms of life. (Check up on your Biology.) All I am saying is that I prefer my experts and those who purport to be on my side not to get any money from the casinos.

Simple as that. And over and out.

All I am saying is that I prefer my experts and those who purport to be on my side not to get any money from the casinos.

So then I take it Wong+Snyder and bj21 fav Zman are on your bad list?

Wong: Check out all those flashing lights on the the page. Also, Wong+Snyder were paid for their testimony by Tropworld, along with other less popular charges.

Zman: I respect Bill. I find Bill knowledgeable and helpful. But that respect is based on him being a worthy adversary. I would never buddy up to Bill, nor would any serious player. Firstly because if Bill were to get back in the biz (does he know anything else?) his first responsibility would be to his employer (as it should be). Secondly, if Bill were my "pal", out of respect I would not play on his watch, thereby costing me $$$. I played at the old Alladdin (and never was backed off)and regularly chuckle at posters who claim Zender was extremely tolerant of advantage players. That may have been true of red chippers but I personally saw things differently. I saw Alladdin security guards chasing legal advantage players around the parking lot. My surveillance contact at that time told me they got more faxes from the Alladdin than the next 3 casinos combined (sort of a latter day Stratosphere). No, i'll keep my distance from Zman, nothing personal.

What's this got to do with Ruchman you say? Ruchman is far from an expert despite Schlesinger's protestations otherwise. He poses a threat to no one but those who were naive enough to buddy up to him. Clarke actually makes a lucid point when he notes the bj "expert" at the GBC was Paul Keen and that Ruchman has nowhere near the expertise Paul had.

I'm happy Ruchman flipped. It's guys like him running the show that keeps me in business! God forbid the Paul Keens of the world were to turn! Of course the fact that he's Don's pal makes it all the more joyous for me (I know C, I know...)especially in light of Don's bashing of all casino types.

p.s. From the "It Takes One To Know One" dept, Pro21's analogy is spot on.

Get money from the casinos, that is--or hope to--ultimately?

Ruchman is now in the employ, or " on lease, " to such and such a casino.

Ruchman, perhaps, has always been on " leash " to things which bind and enslave him--in terms of his monetary priorities. It is very unlikely, that is, that his so called disloyality is a new state of affairs with him--as much as it is with us, or those of us who were foolish enough to believe that things were ever otherwise with him.

Ruchman, like so many other " weaklngs, " shall I say, are loyal to those interests in which a sense of freedom is sacrificed for some form of financial protection or gain. That always seems to be their trade-off; as BUISNESS-men first, their alliances bind them toward strict monetary goals and " deals "--at the expense of personal freedom, autonomy, and ( heavens ,) heartfelt loyalities.

Ruchman's reward, is not at all our loss, as those who love, and even worship, personal freedom and autonomy--which knows not even the fickle boundaries of loyalty or, as you put it, sides--at least when it comes to the practice of our craft.

When will people get it through their thick skulls that the reason they are attracted to BJ advantage play is not for monetary reasons primarily, but rather for the personal autonomy it affords--or that very area of *being* for which no sides can be drawn. The monetary conquest through BJ is simply the final PROOF that personal autonomy or freedom can be had here, and this is its ultimate reward: the self freedom and not the monetary reward per se. I am not a slave to the casino or the game--I do not work FOR it. Rather, I am its unafilliated, unincorporated, and solitary master--all other loyalities be damned!

I don't give a flying f*ck what Ruchman does with his time ( or the potential for personal freedom found there-in. ) He is bound, I am not. He is a slave to his new master, I am my own master as I ply my trade in the care-free silence of a craft which treats all loyalities ( or should ) with a preemptive distrust. This is part of the integral formula which makes anyone successful at this game ie., wariness, or an instinctive distrust for all those around you who might possibly deter you from your goal of " escaping " with the goods. Without this element of danger, of wariness, and this catch as catch can escape into freedom and solitary conquest, the juice of the game is gone.

Bring'em on then! The traitors! The double dealers! The dealer's of treachory and trouble!...THE...WEAKLINGS!!...the whole stinkin incorporated batch of'em!!

Bring em'on!!... Bring'em on!!... Bring'em on!!

I am better than you all!!...I, The Solitary!! I, The Unleashed!!

( and far far more slippery.......too. )

You oblige me to qualify what I just wrote: Yes, as I have also written in the past, I do welcome the presence on the internet boards of people from the casino side. I find it very profitable, in many ways. That's why I find Bill Zender's insights very helpful.

And you gets to keep your distance, if you so choose. (You are not obliged to attend GC parties, nor to give out your phone number over the airwaves. It's a huge joke to have players bragging about how they can evade the best catchers in real life but don't want them on an innocuous web forum!)

Now, about Wong and Snyder: As far as I know, the flashing lights on bj21.com indicate money from web casino advertising. This money, as long as it doesn't become the website's primary source of income, does not bother me, because I don't expect the website's setup to take into account inordinately the advertisers interest.

As to Snyder, I have read the testimonies he has given and have read his detailed account about his one and only opportunity to teach the staff of a casino about gambling, on an issue irrelevant and non-detrimental to advantage players. I have come away perfectly satisfied that he's dead set against fraternizing with the enemy (an opinion re-enforced by the fact that the Doug Grants of this world are all over Snyder. When Grant says something, smart money should go against it.) You may believe otherwise but that's your prerogative.

As to Snyder, I have read the testimonies he has given and have read his detailed account about his one and only opportunity to teach the staff of a casino about gambling, on an issue irrelevant and non-detrimental to advantage players.

I hadn't heard about that and I don't really care. However, Snyder's consulting work on the Super Sevens tie wager is another matter entirely, that did piss me off.
The organization that commissioned the work obviously had no idea how to analyze a game. They came up with the single-deck over/under wager which could be beaten by card-counters to the tune of 4% even without a spread. They almost certainly would have screwed up again without an advantage player like Snyder to assist them.
That was tens of thousands of dollars directly out of my pocket and yours, for what, a measly 1K consulting fee? It made no sense on any level.

And to me it was high strangeness that DS was posting that any people worried about PR crosssing over were just "gossiping washerwomen," according to DS.

So you could not handle that!

You can find real names of just about anyone who has published any book by going to the public library the links to the US Library of Congress and finding out who owns the actual copyright of a book and going over the first person filing for that copyright.

There are ways to keep real ID secret even then but many who have consulted have not done this.

It has become a real battle for me NOT to get involved with an ex-inlaw that tried to make me part of the business, and dumped me with a share in a family unitary trust that is hard to get rid of and is an Albatrus about my neck in its effect on other investments. I would hope to totally bankrupt the SOBs. I have disclosed details, that are quite sordid, only to T-hopper. You and ETF keep claiming that I work for the casinos though. And keep posting about conventionalizing things. Because when new things present themselves, or strange things happen you cling to authorities who will literally rationalize anything.

That last is quite weak thinking on your part to say the least: the conventionaling. Most players find that the idea of beating the casinos long run to be strange. Sometimes having things explained to them, in the most mundane academic manner, allows them to get past this. But sometimes it just prevents a player from dealing with their guilt --yes guilt over winning. The other ex-wife was a southerner who claimed that she was glad I was beating the casinos, but also kept quoting religious BS about how gambling was a sin against God in that gambling and probability theory argued against God being in charge (you can guess which televangelist she got that from).

Deal with it or go on clinging to suragate father figures, almost as pathetic as the southern-wicked-witch clinging to her beliefs. Choose but don't pretend rationalization is rational thought!

My appologies to the postbusters for the dilemna I have created for you in this post.

. . . but I now see you can't read clearly either!

"You and ETF keep claiming that I work for the casinos though."

I never suggested that. You may or may not be working for the casinos, but I have no way of knowing either way, nor grounds to supect it. And that's why I never suggested as much. That's also why when ETF claimed that you come on as a casino plant, I actually protested.

You are a confused, Clarke Cant.

So please try to think for more than 5 seconds before you fire off post after post after post.

--Cyrus

but that astrophysics crack was something that ETF may actually believe, even though you apparently meant it as sarcastic hyperbole defending myself.

Funny, I have never had any problem in that field publishing as an accepted amatuer.

If you are going to slander somebody come out with it. No "hints". It implies a lack of substance behind your accusation. It is too emotive an issue to be coy about.

I know Olaf Vancura is an astrophycist, I didn't know you are.

(Those poor stars..)