STREETWISE BLACKJACK

Streetwise Blackjack

State of the Art: New Year's Day

By Peter Ruchman

"Nothing changes on New Year's DayŠ" U2 nailed it many albums ago, but as the 20th millennium draws to a close and the 21st begins, I thought it might be useful to examine the blackjack universe in conjunction with some of the recently published books devoted to blackjack. Most of these books are written by previously published authors or adept players quite familiar with casinos and blackjack. Almost to a man (all are written by males), they understand the casino world and blackjack in particular, is radically different from the recent past‹this is not your father's game.

How does one reach an accommodation with these changes? How does one survive in a casino universe increasingly packed with state of the art high technology, designed to undermine the player's chances of winning? The issues are quite clear. Not only are surveillance departments looking for cheaters, card counters, and thieves -- their traditional tasks. They are now equipped with biometric profiling equipment, allowing them to capture and store facial recognition information isolating an individual's unique characteristics (color and distance of eyes in millimeters, shape of lips, ears, cheekbones and jaw, etc.).

In addition many utilize the Griffin Gold System offered by Griffin Investigations, the long-time detective agency specializing in outing card-counters. A Griffin operative utilizing the Gold software, from any global location on a laptop computer, can mine the years of files of the company's resources and assist any casino customer in the world. A suspected card counter running it up in Australia? The casino can send a live video capture of the player sitting at a table to Griffin personnel anywhere in the world. The player's face and method of play can be systematically run through the electronic files and either identified or a new file created. Did I hear you mention Big Brother?

Most casinos have the capability of tracking a player's betting and playing technique themselves, putting each individual decision entered into a computer to decide the level of knowledge and experience and isolate a particular counting method. The computers are programmed to account for camouflage. No longer solely reliant on the powers of observation of floor personnel, the options for the modern casino are many.

Then there are the automatic shuffling shoes, dispensing cards from 4-8 decks, with no beginning or end. The cards are in a continuous shuffle mode, preventing counting. These infernal machines are now placed in almost every major casino throughout the world. Digital electronic blackjack, played at a traditional table setup, permitting any type of inclusion/exclusion of rules and variations, is the wave of the future.

Is the modern high-tech casino a frightening concept? It shouldn't be except to the rapidly diminishing army of semi-pro and professional blackjack players. As the world has shrunk, countries and continents connected together by global high technology, so has the casino universe. Players share information and it shouldn't surprise many to learn casinos do as well. The advent of the universal "player's club" with their plastic membership cards permit each casino to track any number of particulars, including your buy-in, average bet size, high/low wagers, style of play, experience rating, and win/loss, time of play, etc.

In today's corporate-controlled casino universe, where each area of operations must show a yield, the atmosphere of profit or perish has created a reigning paranoia. No job is safe from predatory and watchful stockholders and Wall Street analysts. From vice-president of casino to marketing, and middle-level managers to the floor personnel, everyone is beholden to the next rung in the company hierarchy. Naturally, the inherent problem lies in the very nature of the business itself -- gambling is volatile and unpredictable -- players sometimes win. And who suffers the greatest in this brave new world? The players. Comps are more difficult to get and game conditions have deteriorated in almost every Las Vegas casino. When players report on a regular basis there are better games in Mississippi than Las Vegas, from this reporter's perspective, there is something wrong.

Truth be told, players have gotten smarter over the years. And it is with some amount of pride I can point to the founder of Gambler's Book Shop, John Luckman, as the shepherd who led the flock to the river. John was the head librarian, publisher and editor of most of the first wave of contemporary gambling books in the 1960s through the late 1980s, a time frame which paralleled the American gambling explosion. I'm fond of pointing out there were 18 books in print in English on gambling when John and Edna Luckman started Gambler's Book Shop/Club in 1964. Most of the books published since owe a large debt to the Luckmans and their intelligence, imagination and innovative ideas.

That millions have benefited from these books is obvious -- in the 1960s, casinos used to hold (win) about 18 percent of the money in their blackjack games. Currently that figure has dwindled to about 12 percent, a diminished return I attribute to informed decisions from education.

Greater challenges lie ahead. The authors and card counters of the last 40 years have proven blackjack can be beaten. Casinos introduced measures and technology to counter the positive edge gained by an educated player. It remains to be seen what, if anything, can be done by players to regain an advantage. In the next few weeks we will examine some of the new literature to learn if there are any sharp insights on the homefront. Until then, may each of you have the happiest of New Year's and as always -- keep the faith! e thoughts on this volatile subject next week.