Dear Motherfuckers:
All of our cell phones have cameras. We will walk into pits to get intelligence. Why make it so damn easy? We’ll plain stroll in there, goddamnit.
Josh
(photo courtesy of anonymous)

12/28 – 12/29/00
Las Vegas Hilton, +$1,955
Stardust, +$42,076
Blue color contacts. Beard dyed using Just For Men.  Bandanna covers hairline and the tops of the eyebrows.
*

12/30/00 – 1/1/01
Mandalay Bay, -$19,840
Venetian, +$20,900
Frontier, +$32,425
Similar – eyebrows fully hidden. Frontier (an utter toilet) had conveniently raised their maxes to $3K just ahead of New Year’s. For a short [...]

The key, as I explained to Jay Thomas, is the act:
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
(Click to play excerpt.)
*
UPDATE: The term ‘mongoloid’ is wildly offensive as an insult in ways I managed to reach age 35 billion without ever learning. So: sorry. I’m leaving the headline unchanged as a reminder of my ignorance.

In an article in Centerstage, the entertainment zine of the Chicago Sun-Times, a certain blackjack professional/author argues for playing hard and getting barred in the Indiana toilets before the state Supreme Court strips casinos of the right to exclude skilled players:
Let’s face it: casinos are dumps. And the Northern Indiana dumps take dumpdom to [...]

Notes:

Pechanga: Barring followed an all-night losing session, something close to 20K or even worse than that. I note this only because journalists have been asking, “So, you win money, and then they throw you out?” and the truth is annoyingly different. Casinos (should) consider the expected value of your play, not just the result. (They [...]

People keep finding this weblog by googling “the card counting book in The Hangover,” something I haven’t ever written about. (There’s a lot of card counting and a lot of book stuff, though.) Disappointment being impermissible and all, I’ll note that the card counting book appearing in the movie ‘The Hangover’ is The World’s Greatest [...]

Damon Agnos at Seattle Weekly has a highly readable profile of a professional gambler called Noah, a card counter turned sports bettor who built a seven-figure bankroll from scratch. That’s a rare feat.
Noah started out as a part-time grinder, betting very small. Counting cards for low stakes like that is difficult because table minimums [...]

I discourage counting cards because the phenomenon of counting overall benefits the casinos: blackjack’s reputation for fairness – for being a fair game, a good gamble, “best wager in the house,” all of that – derives, directly, from the mythology of counting. From the stories and the books about it. Prior to the publication of [...]

‘The Hangover,’ the film, has card counting in it. Supposedly. Our heroes run into trouble and need fast money to the tune of 80 G’s. It’s a situation I’m familiar with in Vegas.
There are a lot of things you can’t do when you need 80 G’s in a hurry in town. Among them is [...]

Months having passed since I thought about Las Vegas Hilton’s magnificent Twitter feed, I decided I should think about it. This was a mistake.
They’ve barred me from their goddamn Twitter.
No joke:

It was bad enough when they re-86′d me from their casino via Twitter last June.
I doubted any card counter had [...]

In the context of a blackjack trip your goal is obvious — to beat the fuckers out of the money — and life is unproblematic. You know what you want. Your energy down to the lees is used for the kicking of ass. Period. The End.
You get to feeling exalted. You are a baller [...]

Among other things: It’s a good way for degenerate card counters and loathsome Mississippi shithole casinos to keep in touch over the years.

UPDATE: @ipbiloxi has since deleted the tweet above. Some senior person must have ordered the marketing team in charge of their Twitter not to correspond with card counters. Advantage play is always [...]

Fuck the casinos. Excuse me. My throat is clear, now, except not literally. I have an ache and mucus in the back of it after tramping through three Midwestern states in a petite rental Kia in the dead of the blizzard of ‘09. I like to be in Kansas in December.
Who doesn’t? I scouted [...]

Some Canadian paper (doesn’t matter) has a bizarre profile today of self-described “world’s best limit hold ‘em player,” John Turmel:
He’s a professional gambler, former casino owner and operator, card-counter [sic], accordion player and poet.
I’m smitten. Of course! Turmel is a complicated hombre who also happens to hold the Guinness records for most elections contested and [...]

for thomas donovan it’s victory. the indiana court of appeals ruled last week that grand victoria casino in rising sun, in. had no legal grounds for barring the admitted card counter from its premises or its blackjack games on the basis of his skill. but a victory for donovan may represent a loss for counters [...]

24 october 2009
from the monessen valley independent:
Gambling caught their interest at the time Dr. Edward Thorpe released his book, “Beat the Dealer,” about a system designed to beat blackjack.
An MIT math professor, Thorpe persuaded a small group of students to help him cash in on a math-based card counting system he developed that routinely beat [...]

15 october 2009

card counter thomas p. donovan asked an indiana court of appeals yesterday to overturn his 2006 barring from the grand victoria rising sun. casinos in most states (with new jersey the major exception) are permitted to exclude skilled gamblers from their premises, but the legal situation in indiana has long been in doubt. [...]

12 october 2009

getting thrown out of a casino on the grounds you’re too good of a player is an honor, a joy, and it makes for good stories and for taut, atmospheric memoirs. it’s part of the attraction of learning to count. at least, it was for me. and whenever the subject of blackjack comes [...]

When formally trespassed (meaning: officially read a legalistic advisory of your non grata status by authorized personnel) from a Nevada casino, you may legally return. Morally, you may be obliged to; that’s a separate point. From a legal perspective the relevant precedent is the Wilkinson case. Money quote:
2. The evidence produced at the trial is [...]

Lovable, cloying blackjack commentator John Stathis cites an inglourious period in MIT history in continuing his long-running argument that the Hi-Lo count is a fraud.
Stathis is wrong. There is no decades-old conspiracy between Vegas casinos and millionaire MIT mathematicians to defraud the susceptible public. I used to have a big boxful of money I could [...]

In general you shouldn’t count cards. Nothing very meaningful will come of it. If you want to try learning, Snyder’s board is recommended; any post by Arnold Snyder himself you can trust. Wong also has good info on some basic points. With both of their message boards, the quality of posts and of posters varies [...]