Welcome!

Mark over at The Vegas Tourist mentioned that it might be a good idea to write a post to explain who I am, and why I love to talk about gambling and poker and blackjack and all things Las Vegas.  If you listen to The Vegas Tourist podcast, you might have heard them talk about “The Ringleader.”  That’s me.  I’ve also gone by the name “Heather Floppenstrop” and “T-Dawg.”  Those are interesting stories, but maybe better suited to another post.

My first experience with gambling happened when I visited Germany immediately after high school.  I visited an uncle, who was living on an Army base in Gelnhausen.  They happened to have some slot machines, and I happened to have a few extra coins.  On my third roll, I won about $10 and thought to myself that it was way too easy!  I expected to give away a couple of bucks but instead ended up winning $10.  I then proceeded to give the entire $10 back to the machine hoping for another win that never came.

After that, I went to college and was introduced to two forms of gambling:  blackjack and the stock market.  I applied for a job at a casino, where I would deal blackjack; I had to get a license from the state, and I promised to spend some time at the casino practicing in their back room before they would give me the job.  I got the license, and spent many hours practicing.  I was smart enough at that time to know that people who visited the casino were basically giving their money away, in much the same way I gave my money away in Germany.  There’s no way the casino would offer any games that provided a positive expectation, or I would see people making a living at the casino.  Well, I figured I was one of the smart ones; I expected to make money at the casino as an actual employee.

Interestingly enough, I was offered a better, higher paying job as a database developer, which I took, before I ever stepped up to a blackjack table to deal.  That was when I started to learn about another type of gambling:  my 401(k).  Still, somebody told me about card counters, and how they were able to beat the game by keeping track of the high cards in the shoe.  I was very intrigued!  I wanted to know more, but needed to spend my energy where I had a more guaranteed source of income.

Not long after that, I was given an assignment by my employer to travel to Wisconsin, where I would do some programming work for a company out in the middle of nowhere.  I only spent a couple of weeks there, and it was in the middle of winter and the town was small.  The only entertainment available, as far as I was told, was a casino about 10 minutes out of town.  I went there with some employees from the company I was working for, and we played blackjack.  This turned out to be perfect for me; I remember playing and I knew intuitively that there MUST be a correct move for each and every situation.

The first night I lost $40, and went back to my hotel room with plenty of spare time, and I wrote a program that would deal out blackjack and keep track of what hands won and what hands lost and how each hand was played.  In fact, I had a really fun time because I wrote a genetic algorithm program that started with a random distribution of moves – so for each possible hand combination, along with the dealer’s up card, do you hit stand, double down or split?  I was able to seed a set of solutions, and then run them through tests to see which ones worked best.  My little program then “married” or combined portions of the best solutions – those which resulted in the best win rates, and then ran the results through yet more tests.   Eventually I ended up with a basic strategy which after some research, I realized had already been done for me and was available on the Internet.  :)  It was interesting to see that there were some minor differences in the published basic strategies – for different situations.  But basically I had managed to recreate at least a very good basic strategy based on the game in Wisconsin.

I set about to memorize basic strategy, and even took down some notes for myself on a piece of envelope paper and went back to the casino.  As luck would have it, I managed to make my $40 loss from the previous night back and then make another $100.

Having found the sites that provided information about basic strategy, I then decided to learn more about card counting.  I ended up at a book store, where I purchased “Beat the Dealer” by Edward Thorpe.  It is a mathematically intense book, but provides sound theory, and explains why and how card counting actually works.

Well, I returned from Wisconsin energized.  I still had to focus on work, so I let card counting go for a while; I knew that in order to do it well, I would need to practice – a LOT.

Eventually after college ended, and I got a “real” job and some discretionary income, I purchased a blackjack table and explained to my little brother (who lived with me) that I wanted to learn and practice card counting.  I bought as many books as I could find on the subject, and learned how to count, as well as how to vary my strategy based on the count.  We practiced for literally hundreds upon hundreds of hours.  Eventually we started visiting card rooms around Seattle and put our new talent to practice.  It worked very well.  In fact, it worked well enough that I was able to supplement my income to some extent.  In fact, as a gadget geek, it allowed me to keep up with the latest in technology.

A few years later, I started to bore of card counting.  Here’s the thing – card counting is really a grind.  You’re working with very small advantages – usually around 2-3% over the house, so you have to get LOTS and LOTS of play time in, in order to make it pay.

I had played a little poker with family and friends as a child, and after Chris Moneymaker’s fantastic win, I started to become interested in Texas Hold’em.  With the same intensity that I put into blackjack, I went about reading and learning as much as I could about poker.  I started to host a small game at home, where a group of us played and learned poker.  Of course we all started with Texas Hold’em, but today we play everything from Omaha Hi/Low to Crazy Pineapple.

Today I play poker almost daily.  It’s pretty much become a second job for me, except the only game I have consistent access to is $3-$6 limit with $6-$12 kill.  It’s tough, but I make a fairly consistent $10-$15 per hour.  I keep detailed records in order to ensure that I’m being honest with myself.  :)

Unfortunately I don’t get to play what I really want to play – no limit cash games.  It’s kind of a dream of mine to become good enough to one day make a living playing poker.

Next year I’m hoping to buy into the women’s no-limit Texas Hold’em event at the World Series of Poker.  I’m reading and studying and gearing up as much as I can!

So that’s who I am, and why I love to talk about poker and blackjack and gambling.  :)

Card Counting: A dying art or a necessity?

Card counting has certainly become popular in recent years; even before the movie “21″ came out in theaters.  I started counting several years ago when I was in college.  Somebody explained to me how it worked, and I remember at the time thinking that it seemed too simple; yet, something I felt I could actually learn.

It turns out that card counting is pretty simple; it just takes a lot of practice.  I spent several years counting cards in the Seattle area, making enough money to supplement my income enough to buy gadgets and go on vacations without dipping into my “real” income.

So when I started going to Vegas for vacations, I was very interested in playing and counting cards there.  I have to be honest though, I was a little disappointed when I started seeing games with rules that significantly increased the casino’s edge over the average player.  They’ve increased the edge so much that card counting is almost a necessity anymore.

In a traditional, single deck blackjack game with the best rules (those rules that are the most advantagous to the player) the house has about a .5% advantage over the player.  For a card counter, this means that the player can increase their edge to about 1-3% over the house.  This is one of the big misunderstandings about card counting.  The player has to play thousands upon thousands of hands in order to make money.  When you’re dealing with about a 2% advantage, you need to play a LOT of hands, and at high enough stakes to make 2% actually worth something.  A few hundered hands at $5 to $50 isn’t going to make a lot of money.  I would argue it might not even be worth playing.

So in Vegas, I saw games that offered such rules as paying 6:5 on a natural, or blackjack instead of 3:2 (this is a horrible rule, and increases the casino’s edge significantly).  Other rules, such as no double downs after splits also increase the casino’s edge.  Sure single and two deck games are available, but the rules increase the casino’s edge so much that it’s almost not worth counting.

So I’ve come to a conclusion:  card counting is almost a necessity if you decide to play blackjack anymore.  In fact, I believe that the casinos almost expect card counting to a certain extent.  I played at Binion’s this year, and I am confident that at least one dealer knew exactly why I increased my bets when I did.  Here’s the thing: I’m not increasing my bet to the table maximum.  I think my bankroll could only support a maximum of $100 per hand.  I would suddenly increase my bet from the table minimum, $5 to my own maximum, $100 in a single hand and nobody even bothered to announce “checks in play!” as they normally do.  Around the Seattle area, if I did that, the floor supervisor is almost guaranteed to stop by and chat with me for a minute.  They’re still pretty paranoid around here.

At $100 maximum, I just think it’s not worth the casino’s attention or time to address the situation.  I’m not going to make a lot of money from them, and even more importantly, with the rules of the game having changed so much, I’m only increasing the edge to maybe 50% at best (in other words, I still don’t really have an advantage).

I suggest that casinos have changed the rules of blackjack enough that they have come to expect card counting, and at low limits, probably don’t even care.

If you’re interested in learning to count cards, there are really plenty of books available.  It’s simple math; all you have to do is keep a tally where you increase or decrease your count by one.  In multiple decks, you have to do some simple division to convert the running count to a true count.  At any rate, I’ll write other blog posts to explain in more detail how it all works.  Just remember that even if as I claim, the casinos don’t really care, you still don’t want to get caught.

Everybody starts by learning basic strategy.  Before you can count, you have to know basic strategy well enough that you don’t even think about it when you’re playing.  After that, you can pick one of the several card counting methodologies available.  I learned the hi/low strategy, where you assign a +1 to low cards (2, 3, 4, 5, 6), 0 to middle cards (7, 8, 9), and -1 to high cards (10, J, Q, K, A).  When the count increases significantly, the player begins to see a slight advantage.  When the count decreases, especially when it is negative, the casino has a better advantage.

Then you have to learn to convert the running count to a true count by dividing the running count by the number of decks remaining in the shoe.  All of this takes a lot of practice, both in terms of keeping track of the count, and doing the conversion.  All of this is done while you are playing perfect basic strategy.  Once you’ve got that down, you start to learn ways you can adjust your play from basic strategy based on the count.  So for instance, according to basic strategy (when surrender is not available) you are supposed to hit 16 against the dealer’s ten card.  If the count is positive however, you might want to stand in that situation.

One of the things I love about card counting is that you can take it as far as you want.  It’s a skill that requires constant practice.

Good Luck!