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The Man Who Broke Atlantic City

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Man Who Broke Atlantic City

#51

Post by zone411 »

TylerE wrote: post #34
jyu wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on the number of hands he played. As it mentions in the article, the house edge is based on billions of simulated hands. If he played nonstop for 1 week, that is at most 14,000 hands (100 hands/hr x 20 hrs/day x 7 days). Card counting or not, this is a statistically insignificant number of hands. This article describes someone with a lot of money playing blackjack with bad bankroll management who quit whil…

The std. deviation of blackjack is quite low. 14,000 hands would be a fairly large sample for blackjack, for live hands. Now if we were talking about something like video poker, then yea, 14k hands would be nothing.

No, you are hugely underestimating variance in blackjack and the amount of hands needed to approach statistical significance.

If you do the math, you should see that after 14,000 hands with 0.25% house edge, the chance of a gain is around 40%.

Re: The Man Who Broke Atlantic City

#53

Post by dsrguru »

vacri wrote: post #47
dsrguru wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

He wouldn't do that. He's playing to win, not to gamble. Streaks aren't a statistical phenomenon in the sense that once you start a streak, you'd be more likely to keep winning. As far as non-card counters are concerned, and as far as all players are concerned if a continuous shuffle machine is in use, each hand of blackjack is an independent event. Once this player wins the casino's money, it becomes "his money," not "their money." By "their money" the article meant if he's up during a game and the odds are still in his favor, he'll continue as long as he feels like it. If the odds are no longer favorable, there's no way an advantage player like him would start gambling $2M for kicks.

Re: The Man Who Broke Atlantic City

#54

Post by corin_ »

gojomo wrote: post #46
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.

That's funny, I much prefer the story of mybiggest loss in an hour of blackjack than any of my winning stories, just seems more entertaining and less boastful perhaps.

Re: The Man Who Broke Atlantic City

#55

Post by gibybo »

dfc wrote: post #24

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,…

The charts are maximizing EV without taking into account the discount he negotiated. With the loss discount, it becomes more profitable to increase short term variance beyond what the chart strategies would lead to.

Re: The Man Who Broke Atlantic City

#56

Post by corin_ »

TylerE wrote: post #19
krschultz wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The negotiation on the rules of the game is key. For example the difference between a 'soft 17' and a 'hard 17' is worth a few percentage points, and those points are valuable.

No it's not. Soft 17 is worth approx. 0.25% on the house edge. Even in Vegas, it's not hard to find 0.50% edge blackjack, even at low stakes.

I've literally never been in a casino where a dealer can hit anything soft, or where a player can't. Admitedly I've never been in a US casino.

Re: The Man Who Broke Atlantic City

#57

Post by dsrguru »

gamble wrote: post #38
ImprovedSilence wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but it appears that while he doesn't "count", He plays a more general "averages" game. Per the article: "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. " Edit: I would guess he's developed some algorithm for keeping track of swings and general variation, so he plays not h…

Probably the best evidence for your argument is the fact that he apparently negotiated a hand-shuffled shoe. I'm amazed anyone would agree to it, since it's pretty much a giant warning sign that the guy is planning to exploit poor shuffles.

The shuffles needn't be poor. The existence of the hand-shuffled shoe just means he has the opportunity to count or shuffle track. The former is impossible if they use a continuous shuffle machine and I imagine the latter is either impossible or too difficult to use effectively. I agree it makes no sense for the casino to agree to that if that's outside their normal rules. I guess they want high rollers to think they've got an edge, but the casinos realize that most high rollers don't actually know how to count fast enough to realize that edge. And until this guy, they've always been able to identify the successful advantage players (not counting group players a la the MIT blackjack team) before losing millions of dollars...

Re: The Man Who Broke Atlantic City

#59

Post by corin_ »

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…

It's not illegal, but how do you define cheating - is it by laws, or by rules set by the game runner?

For example, in football (soccer) it's cheating to punch the ball into the goal... but the associations that decide on the rules could make this perfectly fair play next year, just by deciding that they no longer define it as cheating.

Re: The Man Who Broke Atlantic City

#60

Post by lusr »

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…

Why is it sad? I too am curious about what happened but I'm not interested in reading a long, drawn-out abridged biography of the characters right now. A TL;DR saves me from that pain, and everybody who WANTS to read the full glorious article is more than welcome to. I don't usually find this style of writing to be artful (instead I frequently find it tedious and boring), but neither raldi nor I are asking for the authors to change their style. We both simply appreciate that there's a way to skip the drama and get to the crux of the matter. Thanks OP. (For what it's worth, I really enjoyed "The Eudaemonic Pie", dealing with the same topic of beating the house. That was well written.)
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