What's up guys.
My jealous friend likes to be the bearer of bad news regarding my "hobby". I told him they have been saying this crap since the revelation of Thorpe's book. In AC, you're a carp in a puddle as it is anyways...
http://m.fool.com/investing/general/2015/02/28/the-death-of-blackjack-and-what-games-are-replacin
Here are some of my thoughts of blackjack in casinos in the next 5-10 years:
Blackjack will live on, but beatable conditions will be far and few.
CSMs will dominate the percentage of blackjack tables.
Double and six deck shoes will be replaced by eight deck games that aren't worth trying to beat.
Counters from this era will eventually retire and the next generation of blackjack players won't be able to implement strategies and ideas written in classic books since those games will hardly exist.
Backcounters will be spotted immediately since eight decks take a long time to deal out, and the window of opportunity is small.
The beatable games may still be around, but only in the high limit room where scrutiny is high, and the table minimum will be too much for most.
Great post. That is my feeling exactly. The article you attached was right on the money. Sad... Ive played blackjack and counted for 30 years... Just not the same.
Though I doubt blackjack will die off anytime soon. To some extent the expansion of gaming generally stateside has hidden the downward trend for blackjack.
I made a conscious decision to focus on baccarat advantage play in the 90's due to what I perceived to be two trends working in its favour: the rise of the asian market and the centralization of wealth into fewer and fewer hands generally.
please explain
A lot of this stuff is in the mainstream now, used to be highly controversial.
The easiest way to is to hustle rebates and minimize the house edge through a variety of methods. This can range from a highly elaborate shuffle or counting-based schemes to simply negotiating a great deal and keeping your sessions short. The effective house edge a high-roller faces with all the promotional inducements is often less than a few tenths of a %, very easy to overcome.
I don't believe that assessment. I continually find good and even great games. I don't see that changing. The sweat factor is always present but so what?
Hey Mav,
Online poker seems to be very efficient nowadays. To the extent that it seems very unnattractive to me: marginal win rate for an awful lot of work. Railer would probably say otherwise (feel free to chip in if your reading).
Offline probably not so much. The sharp online kids are filtering through to the offline tables to some extent but there's still a lot of fish out there. Tells and other mostly offline skills can still be effectively employed. The pace of the game is still crushingly slow of course.
I was going to comment on back counters but you answered that. That is all I do. If you get a count with 8 decks, that's great.
But, overall it's very difficult now, and Don agrees.
Trouble with this is that a couple of AP's get greedy, win a ton of money, and then blab about it to the whole world to show off how smart they think they are when they are shut down. This ruins any chance for anyone else to do the same. You won't find any casino anywhere that will let you replicate what Phil Ivey did unless they are idiots. Just like it is increasingly difficult to get any loss rebate programs thanks to Don Johnson.
I couldn't really see the point of Don Johnson talking about what he'd done. With Ivey I just had no comprehension of how he thought he'd get away with pounding them that hard.
In Ivey's case in particular I feel like he could have been the first billionaire AP had he thrown some basic cover down. There was a thread on this on GC where a lot of people came to his defense. I'm not sure whether they had a legitimate point, or people just find it difficult to criticize any one successful like Ivey even when he did something transparently dumb.
If so, then are you OK? Where have you been?
Daily Fantasy Sports. Captain Jack made a very good case for this being the new poker boom. If I was living stateside I'd probably be doing that right now.
You have to be a different breed to either do or pull that off consistently. I never liked to play less than a quarter hands I see,but I was a loner.
Backcounting was never easy. If it's crowded, you're never getting a spot. If it isn't and artificial crowding isn't happening, you stick out like a sore thumb, AND, if you happen to be playing and a backcounter plays in your game, you may tacitly tell them to fuck off for eating your cards :)
I've enjoyed your posts throughout the years.
These practical considerations don't get enough coverage in the literature.
AND, if you happen to be playing and a backcounter plays in your game, you may tacitly tell them to fuck off for eating your cards :)
There was actually a time when you could do stuff like this when you get a small long-term edge simply through card-eating effects. Sadly deterioration in game conditions make this type of approach more marginal.
Is a brave warrior from the east. Always well spoken.
Try wonging a DD game with deep pen and see how many seconds it takes to get booted.
