Fake. Counting cards (in blackjack) isn’t a good way to make money. It involves large changes in your bet size that make it extremely obvious. If you’re bad at it, places will let you do it while you lose money. If you’re actually good at it (he’s not), they’ll kick you out. It’s an obvious thing that places don’t put up with if you’re winning.
Op is counting 52 cards in a basement game, he’s found his calling, until he encounters a shoe
Or worse.
For his sake, I hope he takes his winnings so far and walks.
Clowning on a bunch of underground gambling rings is a good way to end up on a lot of shitlists of a lot of less than scrupulous people.
The good thing about underground gambling rings is that 2k is hardly an amount worth shitlisting about…
It’s absolutely possible to make good money counting cards. There’s a great series by Steven Bridges on YouTube where he goes through the process of counting cards in action, in several different casinos in different states and countries, both alone and with team-play.
Oh, it’s on youtube? Must be true then!
Literally has videos on his channel of him card counting and winning big. Consistently.
It’s really hard to do in casinos too. They often use something like six decks and shuffle well before they’re through it.
It’s not impossible to count a standard 6 or 8 deck but with dealers moving at 90mph it’s fuckin hard
I mean. Temporarily.
While the profits rolled in, so did the “heat” from the casinos, and many MIT Team members were identified and barred. These members were replaced by fresh players from MIT, Harvard, and other colleges and companies, and play continued. Eventually, investigators hired by casinos realized that many of those they had banned had addresses in or near Cambridge, and the connection to MIT and a formalized team became clear. The detectives obtained copies of recent MIT yearbooks and added photographs from it to their image database
I’d argue that getting away with it for 20yrs means they were still pretty successful.
past two months
In the OP implies this wasn’t twenty years ago.
So? I was replying to a comment that said it wasn’t a good way to make money. I gave an example of a group using it to make money for 20yrs. I’d argue that that proves it can be a good way to make money.
Oh, I meant it’s not a good way to make money now. I wasn’t speaking for 1990.
If you’re actually good at it (he’s not), they’ll kick you out.
I never understood why this isn’t allowed. Just seems like getting good at the game to me
Just seems like getting good at the game to me
Because it isn’t sportsmanship that they’re interested in it’s getting all your cash. They don’t give a damn about the integrity of the game or anything like that.
Because the whole point of a casino is to take your money.
I like how he went to a poker night and figured out he’s good at blackjack. Sounds like his friends wanted to gift him some money even though the idiot couldn’t even figure out what game they are playing.
I see people latch onto that detail. I find it plausible that some guys having a “poker night” might play other card games in addition to poker. Play a few hands of 5 card draw, some 7 card stud, maybe a round of blackjack or two.
Don’t casinos use something like seven decks simultaneously to make card counting super hard to impossible?
If you’re using a random number of decks what’s even the skill? You might as well go to a slot machine
That’s the thing, they don’t want skill to be involved. It’s gambling. The house wants to win.
Sounds like a pretty decent job to me
My younger brother counts all 52 cards without effort when playing Bridge, he’s an ace at mental math, has zero facial expressions.
Could have gone pro as a poker player, said “you spend your whole life actively seeking out drunks and malcontents”.
Ended up an IP lawyer, I guess the pay is more regular.
A friend’s poker party had blackjack? Sounds weird
There’s a sizable minority of male zoomers into gambling in some countries, tightly related to the proliferation of small casinos in working-class neighbourhoods through a historical period where typical socialization spaces have been getting dismantled. I met a guy whose friend group’s main activity for socialization was going to gambling and his life was pretty much a mess, roughly around the same as the guy from the green text.
