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The Man Who Broke Atlantic City

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Man Who Broke Atlantic City

#21

Post by harryh »

There's a lot in this article that doesn't add up. For example this quote:

"So my philosophy at that point was that I can afford to take an additional risk here, because I’m battling with their money, using their discount against them."

If he's already up significantly (battling with their money) the discount isn't likely to come into play. And he's still playing a negative expectation game so every hand he plays he should expect to give back a little of his gain.

I don't think we're getting the real story here.

Re: The Man Who Broke Atlantic City

#22

Post by schleyfox »

krschultz wrote: post #13
raldi wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the summary. I hate when articles open with a teaser then bury the explanation.

Then you probably shouldn't click through to anything published by The Atlantic. (Or for that matter, the New Yorker, the New York Times, etc). This isn't a blog post or a new article. This is a short story. I thought it was interesting and I thought it was well written. HN has a strong bias against anything artfully written (read: more than the bare minimum of words). I guess I shouldn't be surprised considering the…

Sadly, I think this is an increasingly recent phenomenon (get off my lawn). It's kind of funny given the style and length of HN favorites like pg and Steve Yegge.

Re: The Man Who Broke Atlantic City

#23

Post by bootload »

TylerE wrote: post #18
nostromo wrote: post #4

The short version: Because of the recession casinos are desperate for high-rollers. To lure them in they offer perks. Some of those perks include slight modifications to the rules and a "loss discount" -- for example: losing $500k only costs you $400k. This guy negotiated rules that changed his odds to 50/50. Then he negotiated an 80% loss discount, which meant for each $1 of upside, his downside was $0.80. So to pul…

No, that still doesn't make sense. The loss discount was on a per-trip basis, not per hand, so basically if at the end of the week you were down $100k, you only owed $80k. The rules were generous but NOT totally even. The house still had around 0.25%, which is low, but not unheard of. Even on the Vegas strip you can find Blackjack games open to the general public under 0.50% house edge. Of course, that's with optimum…

"... The odds of beating 3 separate casinos, over a reasonable number of hands, even against a very low house edge, are quite small. ..."

what about the MIT Blackjack team? (I assume you're refering to Blackjack) ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXR5sKR3f-E&feature=rela...

Re: The Man Who Broke Atlantic City

#24

Post by dfc »

The description of his odds system did not make a lot of sense to me; especially in light of the statement that he does not count cards. Can anyone elaborate?

"Many casinos sell laminated charts in their guest shops that reveal the optimal strategy for any situation the game presents. But these odds are calculated by simulating millions of hands, and as Johnson says, “I will never see 400 million hands.”

More useful, for his purposes, is running a smaller number of hands and paying attention to variation. The way averages work, the larger the sample, the narrower the range of variation. A session of, say, 600 hands will display wider swings, with steeper winning and losing streaks, than the standard casino charts."

Re: The Man Who Broke Atlantic City

#25

Post by TylerE »

bootload wrote: post #23
TylerE wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that still doesn't make sense. The loss discount was on a per-trip basis, not per hand, so basically if at the end of the week you were down $100k, you only owed $80k. The rules were generous but NOT totally even. The house still had around 0.25%, which is low, but not unheard of. Even on the Vegas strip you can find Blackjack games open to the general public under 0.50% house edge. Of course, that's with optimum…

"... The odds of beating 3 separate casinos, over a reasonable number of hands, even against a very low house edge, are quite small. ..." what about the MIT Blackjack team? (I assume you're refering to Blackjack) ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXR5sKR3f-E&feature=rela...

They were counters. I meant the odds of beating 3 casinos without counting, which is that the article was claiming.

Re: The Man Who Broke Atlantic City

#28

Post by fragsworth »

harryh wrote: post #21

There's a lot in this article that doesn't add up. For example this quote: "So my philosophy at that point was that I can afford to take an additional risk here, because I’m battling with their money, using their discount against them." If he's already up significantly (battling with their money) the discount isn't likely to come into play. And he's still playing a negative expectation game so every hand he plays he…

I agree - they state the following:

“You’d never lose the million. If you got to [$500,000 in losses], you would stop and take your 20 percent discount. You’d owe them only $400,000.” ... So when Johnson got far enough ahead in his winning sprees, he reasoned that he might as well keep playing.

I don't quite see how this makes any sense - if you get far ahead in a winning spree, the value of your discounted loss diminishes significantly... doesn't it? For instance, if you won $2 million, the discount is now $100k on a $2.5 million loss, which is only 4% (much smaller than the initial 20% discount of $100k on a $500k loss)

Re: The Man Who Broke Atlantic City

#29

Post by CurtMonash »

The article is clear on only one point, but it's not an explanation for his winning. That point is that if he loses $500K, he only has to pay $400K of it. I'm pretty sure that if you bet $100K a hand, and stop whenever you hit the first of +$500K or -$500K, and get a $100K rebate if you hit the lower number ... well, the whole plan would seem to have a positive expected value. And perhaps the same would be true even with a bet increment of $10K or less,

Second, it is strongly implied (without details being given) that he has negotiated rules giving him an unusually favorable expected value per hand -- either a very slightly negative one (which would explain why Tropicana is willing to keep playing with him), or perhaps even a positive one that they keep overlooking. The only rule I saw in there that sounds odd to me is "calling the hand" -- is that a recent twist to blackjack or something?

Re: The Man Who Broke Atlantic City

#30

Post by pragmatic »

krschultz wrote: post #13
raldi wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the summary. I hate when articles open with a teaser then bury the explanation.

Then you probably shouldn't click through to anything published by The Atlantic. (Or for that matter, the New Yorker, the New York Times, etc). This isn't a blog post or a new article. This is a short story. I thought it was interesting and I thought it was well written. HN has a strong bias against anything artfully written (read: more than the bare minimum of words). I guess I shouldn't be surprised considering the…

The problem is these articles are low signal to noise.

You get the info on the subjects childhood, house, car, wife/husband, children, upbringing, college, style of dress, appearance, office, eccentricities, pets, etc, etc.

There's a lot of human interest element in these stories.

And of course the are paginated to increase page views for advertising.

Not that there aren't good articles occasionally in the publications you cited, but there is way too much "Sunday paper" in it.

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