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The Man Who Broke Atlantic City

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Man Who Broke Atlantic City

#41

Post by mikeleeorg »

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…

I love the TL;DRs just as much as I love the artfully-written short stories. I find they both serve a useful purpose for me.

Re: The Man Who Broke Atlantic City

#42

Post by mikeleeorg »

cantbecool wrote: post #37
dsrguru wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this article is awfully written. Its portrayal of counting as even possibly unfair ("he had beaten the casinos fair and square [by not counting]") is ridiculous, and it does a horrendous job explaining his method. His method isn't even addressed until half-way through the article, the article is littered with totally unnecessary comments like "He plays perfect cards" (if you're not counting, every hand's decisio…

You couldn't have written it any better. Mark Bowden, the writer of the article, is superficially looking at the situation and not telling us Don's methods of success. I'm more interested in what tactics Don is doing rather then the romanticized story behind it all. That's just me though.

I was really hoping to read about Don's tactics too, but when I saw the publication source, I removed those expectations ;)

Re: The Man Who Broke Atlantic City

#43

Post by dkrich »

Even taking into account his negotiated edge, which is impressive, it isn't enough mathematically to account for such substantial winnings over such a short period of time. I agree with what others have said and think he must either have had a counting system or had a terrific run of luck.

Great runs are rare of course, but not unheard of. The reason people don't hear about them often is that very few players play at such a sophisticated level to minimize the house advantage to a paper-thin margin, and even fewer do so at a high-stakes table where this would make big news.

Re: The Man Who Broke Atlantic City

#44

Post by vacri »

dsrguru wrote: post #17
po wrote: post #2

This stuck out to me: Made famous in books and movies, card counting is considered cheating, at least by casinos. In most states (but not New Jersey), known practitioners are banned. The wagering of card counters assumes a clearly recognizable pattern over time, and Johnson was being watched very carefully. The verdict: card counting was not Don Johnson’s game. He had beaten the casinos fair and square. Card counting…

Yeah this article is awfully written. Its portrayal of counting as even possibly unfair ("he had beaten the casinos fair and square [by not counting]") is ridiculous, and it does a horrendous job explaining his method. His method isn't even addressed until half-way through the article, the article is littered with totally unnecessary comments like "He plays perfect cards" (if you're not counting, every hand's decisio…

if the balance is 50/50 (or close enough to), but your losses are 20% less than your wins, then over the long game (which is repeated several times in the article) you will come out ahead. You will have some winning streaks and some losing streaks. But in the long run, that 20% difference at 50/50 win/loss will give you an overall win. He did not just walk into each casino and win those millions in one sitting apiece.

Re: The Man Who Broke Atlantic City

#45

Post by dsrguru »

vacri wrote: post #44
dsrguru wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this article is awfully written. Its portrayal of counting as even possibly unfair ("he had beaten the casinos fair and square [by not counting]") is ridiculous, and it does a horrendous job explaining his method. His method isn't even addressed until half-way through the article, the article is littered with totally unnecessary comments like "He plays perfect cards" (if you're not counting, every hand's decisio…

if the balance is 50/50 (or close enough to), but your losses are 20% less than your wins, then over the long game (which is repeated several times in the article) you will come out ahead. You will have some winning streaks and some losing streaks. But in the long run, that 20% difference at 50/50 win/loss will give you an overall win. He did not just walk into each casino and win those millions in one sitting apiece…

But they said he won 2 million afterwards when they didn't give him the discount.

Re: The Man Who Broke Atlantic City

#46

Post by gojomo »

dustingetz wrote: post #40

hey guys, i actually think he might have positive expectation: he negotiated a .25% houe edge (roughly half of normal perfect play) and if he loses 500k he gets 20% back, each session independent. check this analysis. he is +EV by martingaling his wins - 7/8 times he loses 400k with a 20% discount (400k x 7 x .80 = 2 240 000), 1/8 times he wins 400k x 8 with no reverse-discount = 3 200 000, so that's a mil in EV. if…

This explanation seems most consistent with the limited information in the article.

We don't know whether he had several -$400K sessions before his big run. Gamblers and non-gamblers talk more about upswings than downswings.

There could be some other unmentioned factors that aided him a little, but the capped downside, a lucky run, and selective reporting are probably a sufficient explanation.

Re: The Man Who Broke Atlantic City

#47

Post by vacri »

dsrguru wrote: post #45
vacri wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if the balance is 50/50 (or close enough to), but your losses are 20% less than your wins, then over the long game (which is repeated several times in the article) you will come out ahead. You will have some winning streaks and some losing streaks. But in the long run, that 20% difference at 50/50 win/loss will give you an overall win. He did not just walk into each casino and win those millions in one sitting apiece…

But they said he won 2 million afterwards when they didn't give him the discount.

which can happen on a winning streak - stats works that way. $2M is only a part of the $15M he took the casinos for. If he's playing on 'their money' - that is, he's already ahead, he can keep playing until the streak turns.

Re: The Man Who Broke Atlantic City

#48

Post by grepherder »

I skimmed over the comments, and I'm surprised to see no mention of it here. Maybe I missed it.

The house always wins, and they still won. This is, for each of them at just a few million, very cheap advertising. Consider how poker/holdem was hyped during the last decade, this is just the same in a different setting.

They will easily win those few millions each back and more. For every smart person such as this guy, there are thousands of idiots out there. The article itself mentions they're trying to lure in high-rollers. This looks rather obvious.

Thus, the title, how Atlantic City supposedly "got broke" by a man, seems very misleading in this context.

Still, maybe I'm missing something here.

Re: The Man Who Broke Atlantic City

#49

Post by pellias »

shareme wrote: post #36

What is surprising is how easy it is to compute the odds..its just permutations and combinations..not that hard its a 100 level math course in most colleges. What makes it different is that we needed two things to leverage the $1 million he put up per Casino and the Casino management being fool-hardy enough to believe that they computed the odds on the change in rules and discounts correctly. It would be like say oh…

How does hand shuffling six decks in the shoe give the player an edge compared to the normal machine shuffling of the same six decks ?

Re: The Man Who Broke Atlantic City

#50

Post by acak »

fragsworth wrote: post #28
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 dimi…

He went in with $1M, odds of 50/50 and a 20% discount once the losses are over $0.5M. Lets assume for simplicity that all hands he plays are equal ($0.1M according to the article)

Because the discount kicks in at $0.5M of losses, he should plan to lose bets for $0.5M first. This is a setup.

Now he needs play to win the bets for remaining $0.5M he has.

Because the odds are 50/50, after a few rounds of playing with the $0.5M he has, he's going to have lost half the hands, and won half of them. While he gets 2x for his wins, he gives up only 0.8x for his losses.

Net = 2x - 0.8x = 1.2x. He just had to rinse and repeat with the $0.5M he was left with. Though I'm sure he brought in a lot more money once the $0.5M loss kicked in the discount.

Just note that this explanation is a simplification. 50/50 odds (technically 49.75/50.25 according to Johnson) have to be accompanied by an even performance on double-downs and splits.

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