My Floor Staff Knows How to Count Cards, Don’t They?

By Bill Zender

(Article that appeared in Casino Enterprise Management magazine July 2006)
 

Many casino executives in today’s gaming industry do not have an extensive background in live gaming.  Many executives have worked their way up the company ladder through accounting or facility operations, or have entered the industry via an MBA or through experience in business other then gaming.  In most cases these “live-gaming limited” executive function successfully due in part to their ability to manage people and their operation skills.  For crucial gaming information they rely on live game mangers who have years of practical experience, but possess lesser organizational skills.  Many of the more “adventurous” non-live gaming executives may even take time from their busy schedules to learn specific attributes of live gaming such as card counting in blackjack.  Based on their exposure to an abundant number of books, articles, and videos, as well as discussions with various gaming veterans, these executives might draw some very interested conclusions about the casino’s relationship with card counting players and their staff’s abilities to count cards.  Unfortunately, most of these conclusions are far from the true.

The title of this article is, “My floor staff knows how to count cards, don’t they?”  Can you as an executive answer this question correctly?  Do you really know if the floor staff can count cards at a level where they can correctly identify professional card counters, and does your casino floor staff have the ability to correctly judge whether or not a blackjack player is a threat to the casino or whether a customer for future profitable development.  Would you like to find out?  It’s not that hard; it is easier then you think, even if you as an executive do not have a card counting background yourself.  You may also be shocked with what you find out.

Go down to the casino pit and find one of your more competent floor supervisors.  Pull him or her away from the pit and on an empty table give them a complete deck of 52 cards.  Have them riffle shuffle the deck several time and then remove two cards unexposed from the deck and place them face down on the table.  Have the floor supervisor count down the remaining 50 cards in which ever card counting system they feel comfortable using.  Here’s the goal; they must count the deck down in under 40 seconds and accurately tell you the approximately value of the cards sitting unexposed on the table.  In most count systems the only information the count would give you at this point would be whether the two unexposed cards are “small, big, or neutral”.  An answer might be, “a small and a big, or two neutrals”.  If the unexposed cards reveal “a three and a picture card”, or “an eight and a nine”, the answer is correct.  If the answer is “two big cards”, and the pair of unexposed cards reveals “two tens or an ace and a ten”, this is correct, too.  Have the floor person count down several more deck to make sure your test conclusions are correct; some people tend to be nervous the first few times counting through a deck, while other might guess and get lucky if the test is conducted only once.

After you have tested a floor person or two, test your pit manager ability to count cards.  Pit managers usually has a great amount of weight in judging a customers ability to count cards and is very influential in determining whether a customer is professional enough to be ejected from the game.  Now go one step further; test your live game shift manager.  In most situations it’s the shift manager who makes the final decision on whether a customer is excluded from play.  You notice that its your upper floor management staff, pit and shift managers, that need to understand card counting at least close to a professional level if they are given the power eject card counters.

Were the results shocking?  Did you find anyone who could count two or three decks down in 40 seconds or under at 100% accuracy?  One or two staff members, maybe?  Don’t be surprised if floor personnel who can count down a deck accurately are very limited.  Most floor supervisors and managers have a working knowledge of the mechanics of card counting, and usually that’s where it stops.  Counting cards in blackjack is something that needs to be practiced on a regular basis, if not; the person loses the ability to keep an accurate running total of the count.  By the way; for comparison purposes the novice card count will accurately count down 9 out of 10 decks in less than 40 seconds, while the professional will go 10 for 10 in under 20 seconds.  If your card counting test findings turn out to be less then you expected you’re not alone.  Rarely will you find a floor staff that can adequately count cards and know other nuances such as true count conversions and decision indices.

There is good news, though.  First off, your floor supervisors don’t need to know how to count card.  Their spending most of their time tracking customers play, writing markers, handling problems, and cultivating new customers, and rightly so.  They don’t have the time needed to isolate their concentration on one specific game.  Second, they can be trained to look for what is known as “card counter characteristics”.  By knowing a quick set of characteristics a card counter exhibits while playing blackjack in his or her section, the floor supervisor will have the ability to identify and flag certain players who might potentially.  These casual, but some times revealing observations can be communicated to the pit or shift manager, who can elect watch the suspected play himself and/or pass the information along to casino surveillance.  The position of floor supervisor should always be treated as your first line of detection, not your first line of defense.  [Note: It’s a big mistake to expect your dealers to be the first line of detection.  Your dealers need to concentrate on their game accuracy, game pace, and customer service, which is far more important to the successful operation of your live game department.]

 Next question; do your pit and shift manager need to master the art of card counting?  This answer can be either “yes” or “no” depending upon the responsibility and authority management places on them regarding the analysis and possible rejection of the professional card counter.  If either the pit manager or shift manager position is given the authority to eject or “back-off” customers for card counting don’t you feel it would be wise that they know a little more about the technique of card counting then just being able to count down a deck of cards in just less than 40 seconds?  One can’t even fathom the number of stories I have heard over the years about innocent customers getting backed-off blackjack because the shift manager had a “hunch” the customer was counting cards.  This is a perfect example of unnecessary lost revenue (and future revenue) due to management’s paranoia and their pit personnel’s misdiagnosed incompetence.

Many years ago I worked with a pit supervisor who had been hired away from another casino primarily because of his reputed ability to count cards.  He had been the “go to guy” at the old Landmark Casino whenever a player was suspected of counting cards, and was involved heavily in the decision making process as to whether the suspected customer was allowed to gamble at blackjack or sent off the tables.  It didn’t take long to figure out that he was no expert in card counting at all, only possessing a narrow grasp of the basics of counting, mostly limited to counting a deck somewhat accurately.  I was amazed that a pit supervisor of his limited card counting ability was able to convince management he was an “ace” at catching card counters even though he had limited knowledge of extremely important count technique factors such as true count conversion, count decision indices, and bet spread requirements.

Following are a list of analytical tools your floor staff needs to be armed with in order to properly protect and operate your live blackjack games;

Floor Supervisor:

• Knowledge of blackjack basic strategy
• Understanding of the theory of card counting and the different ways this technique is applied by the professional card counter
• Understanding of bet spread requirements for the counter to play profitably on blackjack game based on the house procedure rules and numbers of decks
• Have a good understanding of the correlation of bet amount to playing strategy as applied to card counting (card counting identifying short-cuts)

Management Personnel (involved in the decision making process for ejecting counters)

• Knowledge of blackjack basic strategy
• Understanding of the theory of card counting and the different ways this technique is applied by the professional card counter
• The ability to count a single deck in less than 40 seconds accurately
• An Understanding of how to convert from running count to true count
• Know the eighteen primary decision indices a counter will use in relationship with the count value of the deck
• A professional counters minimum bet spread requirements based on different number of decks, deck shuffle points, and rules.

[Note: In jurisdictions where card counters and advantage players can not be ejected from play this previous list of condition applies to pit personnel who have been assigned the authority to vary shuffle points based on play analysis.]

Remember one last point; based on my experience in the gaming industry and my time spent analyzing live game performance, at least 90% of all revenues lost by the casino to card counter resulting from unnecessarily ejecting customers because of improper play analysis, or through the introduction of game protection procedures (limited deck penetration, no mid-shoe entry, etc.) that cost the casinos enormous amounts of revenue by retarding game speed and hand production.

If you have any questions regarding floor staff card counting evaluation and/or training, please feel free in contacting me; wzender@lastresortconsulting.com or 702-423-5734.