Dealing With Card Counters

Casinos are the only businesses that make money by beating their own customers at games of chance. The operators of lotteries and parimutuel betting do not care who wins or loses. With casinos, however, the house cares very much who wins. The casino participates as a player covering the bets of the other players in every hand.

Under the rules of every game, the casino has a built-in advantage over every other player. Blackjack is a percentage game because the player goes first: The house wins even if both the player and the casino dealer bust.

It is easy to understand why casinos want to make the game of blackjack difficult for card counters, or to ban card counters completely. When the rules are liberal enough, and the player is skillful enough, the casino will actually have a small statistical disadvantage for short periods of time.

A large cottage industry has developed over the last three decades, the principal goal of which is to beat the casinos' percentage advantage in the game of blackjack. No other casino game has received this much attention: A host of scholarly and popular books, professional conferences, newsletters, magazines, and mechanical devices have been made available to players who want to try to get the percentages in their favor.

Casinos spend an enormous amount of time and money attempting to foil card counters. Some of these countermeasures not only are aimed at card counters, but are part of the industry's continuous attempt to speed up the velocity of money. Among the many tactics casinos have used are:

1. Identifying known counters through photo books and face-recognition computer technology.

2. Linking computers with embedded scanners in blackjack tables. The most sophisticated of these systems can even recognize which system a player is using.

3. Dealing out only a few hands before shuffling. Dealers sometimes shuffle whenever players greatly increase the size of their wagers.

4. Changing the rules, often in the middle of a game. This includes lowering the stakes, and limiting the right to double-down and split or play more than one hand at a time. Sometimes the restrictions are imposed on the entire table, and sometimes only on the card counter.

5. Harassing skilled players. Skilled players have been subjected to such crude tactics as having drinks spilled on them. One was even arrested in Atlantic City on trumped-up charges, leading to a civil suit and a large jury verdict against the casino.

6. Bringing social pressure against the card counter. Casinos are social settings. Slowing up a game to measure where the cut card is can turn the other players at the table against the card counter.

Casino executives are sometimes so emotionally tied up with their battles against card counters that their actions are often self-destructive.

Slowing up a game to shuffle may hurt the skilled player, but it prevents the other players at the table from playing. Government's role in the ongoing war between casinos and card counters usually falls into one of two categories:

In jurisdictions like Nevada, casinos are free to take any countermeasures they wish. State law prohibits discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or disability. But, Nevada casinos may exclude players for counting cards, or even just for winning.

Nevada regulators have gone so far as to informally allow casino dealers to count cards and shuffle whenever the remainder of a shoe favors the players.

Preferential shuffling has not been challenged, but a court might declare it to be cheating. The house is manipulating the odds, as if it were removing tens and aces from the shoe.

On the other end of the spectrum are jurisdictions that by statute and regulation make all decisions on how casino games are played. In New Jersey, at one stage, casinos did not even have discretion as to the color of the felt covering the gaming tables. The state Supreme Court held, in Uston v. Resorts International Hotel Inc., 445 A.2d 370 (1982), that government control of blackjack was so complete that casinos in Atlantic City did not have the authority to decide whether skilled players could be barred.

A casino in Australia imposed special rules on one player only, restricting his bets to A$25 (U.S. $13) a hand - no more, no less. But a court in New Zealand prohibited a casino from putting in continuous shuffling machines or taking any other countermeasures against a card counter.

(In the spirit of full disclosure, I have been an expert witness or consultant in some of these cases, including on behalf of the successful player in the ongoing case in Auckland.)

Lawmakers often think they have to protect players from themselves, but regulation can go too far. In England in 1970, players could double-down only if their first two cards totaled 10 or 11. This rule was designed to protect players from doubling-down on whims, although computer simulations later showed that there are many times when it is to the players' advantage to double-down on other two-card combinations, such as A-6 when the dealer has a 6 faceup.

Lawmakers also have to protect casinos. In recent years, casinos have been able to convince the New Jersey Casino Control Commission to permit countermeasures.

It is highly doubtful that any well-run operation has been bankrupted by card counters. But regulators and legislators do not talk to players; players are not organized, and they have no spokespersons. The regulators and legislators do, however, hear regularly from casino executives and their lawyers. Government decision-makers thus tend to overestimate the fiscal impact skilled players can have on a casino.

The result is that casinos have sometimes been able to win by lobbying what they had initially lost through regulation.

Professor I. Nelson Rose is recognized as one of the world's leading authorities on gambling law. He can be reached at his website, www.GamblingAndTheLaw.com.