Hey everyone,
I've spent the last couple years learning the game of texas hold 'em, which has become so popular recently, and was wondering if anyone would be interested in some posts on my thoughts about the mathematics of this game and how math can be used to consistently show a profit.
Jameson
I recommend to learn Blackjack. Because Blackjack is the game, the only game, in casinos in which a player actually has a chance of beating the house. Because all the other games, slots, roullete, whatever, run by independent events. While blackjack runs by dependent events. Therefore, knowledge of what happened before effects the entire game. If you learn how to play blackjack (which is not easy, but not super difficult, the main point here is to practice and not be lazy) properly you can win 150 or 200 in several hours in Las Vegas if you ever choose to go.Originally Posted by Jameson
I agree that blackjack is a great game to analyse mathematically because of the dependent event of the cards being dealt the same. Poker is beatable though, if you can accept a premise that you will always find a player who maintains the same style, mainly that they play a constant percentage of hands, then there is always a logical counter-style to this that will profit.
On a side note, I do find card counting very interesting. I know that is has almost no room for error though and a huge standard deviation in respect to expected profit per hand.
It depends on how many decks you play. If you are in Atlantic City almost all Casinos offer an 8 deck game (with a exception a few). Remember you need to divide the running count by the total number of cards that remain. So if you been counting all the cards and now have 14 while the actual count is 12 and there are 5 more decks to go you are only off by 2.8 - 2.4 = .4, not a big error. Though, of course, the better the count the bigger advantage you have. A good card counter can easily keep track off the cards, even as he is talking with the people at the table. As it it is automatic for him. But if you are playing with 1 deck (no Casino offers that) then keeping a perfect count is a must.
Though You can dramatically increase Your chances of winning by card counting there is one major problem. If You saw "21" then You know how far the casinos are going to get rid of the card counters.
I think this is one of the reasons for the poker boom. The professional gamblers switched to poker, because in poker You don`t play against the house.
While a card counter will probably been removed by the security staff a poker player wont. If You count cards at blackjack then it will become obvious that You are making small bets all the time, and then come up with a huge bet when the situation is good for You. Once the casino realizes this style of play they will remove You from the table, put a photo of You in their database and many casinos world wide will get alerted by their face recognition software when You enter them. So the hard part to win at Blackjack is not counting the cards, but not getting caught by the casinos.
And the casinos have the right to throw You out at will. It doesn`t matter that card counting is NOT cheating.
Whereas in Poker the house can sit back and relax while a good player collects the other players chips. The house doesn`t loose, no matter how dominant one player is in poker.
I never seen it and was not interested in seeing it. But the rule of throwing out card counters applies only to serious card counters. Players that play for thousands of dollars. If you are a type of player whose minimum bet is 5 and maximum is say 50 then the casinos will not even realize if you act naturally at the table. Casinos get suspicious when a player beats a lot and wins more at the higher bets. But what I am talking about is beating the house, not destroying the casino. Just sit and play for a few hours and win 150. That is not going to make you rich. But at least it shows that one can gain an advantage over a house. However, if you gather a professional team of card counters, shuffle trackers, and ace locaters and in the processes you win 100,000 dollars in a few days you will probably be caught and get banned from all casinos.
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