I loved blackjack form the first time my dad took me took Vegas; When I turned 21. The first casino I played in was the Lady Luck (circa 1982). What a dump! I put a nickel on the spot and won about three hands in a row, letting the bet ride every time. The dealer asked me if I was a professional gambler. What a joke! I caught some young dealer dealing to me from the bottom of the deck. When I called him on it he showed me the top card and said that I would have busted anyway. I didn’t have a clue how to play the game (which is the case for most people) so I lost. Yet I still had an itchy feeling that this game could be beaten. My first blackjack experience cost me around $300.

So I went off to college and became a Chemical Engineer. For eight years after that I stayed off the tables. The nineties have seen an explosion in the gambling industry and soon it was very easy to find a game. I resumed playing blackjack to kill time on my days off when living on a construction site in Sioux City, Iowa. I played with a basic strategy card that my brother-in-law had given to me for Christmas in front of me on the table. By flat betting about two dollars a hand I soon realized that I was losing about five dollars an hour on average. Although I viewed this as an acceptable entertainment expense I wanted to improve my game. I asked dealers at the Winnevegas

Casino how to improve on basic strategy. One white haired dealer said that he could tell me how to beat the game but that he wouldn’t since it might cost him his job. A much nicer dealer "John", recommended that I buy a book called "Million Dollar Blackjack" by Ken Uston. My eyes were opened. Here was a casino game that could actually be beaten. It takes a math wizard to do it, (with the exception of the system presented in this book) but it can be done. I learned how to count cards in my motel room at night and played in the casino on Sundays. It seemed easy enough, but I had a steady income from my day job and was only ranging my bets from two to ten dollars.

When the construction assignment ended and I got back to Houston I would run blackjack computer simulations for hours and hours. Usually I would set up the simulation before people arrived in the morning and leave the computer running with the monitor turned off while working on my engineering assignment. This was made even easier by the fact that my boss hated computers and I got brownie points for "not using mine".

During this time I developed a playing and betting strategy that was calculated to net me about $60/hour. This was about three times my take-home pay.

I could resist no longer; I quit my job under a convenient pretense and set about my new career as a card counter. Originally I was going to maintain my residence in Houston and commute into Louisiana three to four days a week to play. Things were going well and I was averaging about $40/hour for the first few months. I was ranging my bets from ten dollars to two hands of two hundred dollars and my average bankroll swings were about two thousand dollars. This may not look like a lot on paper but believe me it is aggravating and scary while it is happening. My favorite casino was the "star" boat at Players Island in Lake Charles LA. The cocktail waitresses wore skimpy little purple satin dresses and were very friendly. It is funny how a cocktail waitress can look at what you are betting and think that you could (or should) be spending the money on her.

Anyhow, I started catching on to the reality of the situation. Some of the pit personnel were blackjack players themselves and would root for you to win, while others would get so mad their faces would turn red. The point is its OK to do anything in a casino, drink, and smoke, make noise, etc. as long as you don’t win. With this fact in mind casino managers decided that card counting is cheating and train new dealers that this is the case. Just to set the record straight, card counting is not cheating and this fact has been recognized in courts of law. The pit critters on the swing shift at the Star were getting tired of my action and had a way of showing it.

From the casino manager’s point of view there are three types of blackjack players:

1. The low rolling tourist, generally to be ignored and not given comps (complimentary meals and rooms). These are the people that are going to come in and lose their $100 one red chip (nickel) at a time.
2. The high rolling sucker, this is a VIP to be sucked up to and stroked. Casino managers will encourage addictive behavior in these people by stroking them and encouraging them when they are losing. If by some small chance the high roller goes on a winning streak, a cold stare across the pit shows the "Bosses" disapproval. DO NOT underestimate the psychological power of the well-dressed man or woman standing in the pit behind the dealer. Their phony respect and easy markers have cost many a hardworking individual his retirement nest egg or worse.
3. The professional card counter, this person is a thief and a common criminal to be discovered, discouraged, distracted, shuffled up on and finally ejected if necessary. This is made easy by the fact that most card counters are meek and mild technical computer-nerd types. They lurk in the shadows and try to disguise their skill level by making bad bets and bad plays. The counter shall have his picture taken and posted on the casino manager Internet site for all to see.

Blackjack is a game of statistics, but most people do not want to take the time to learn even the easiest of playing strategies. Enter an author from out east I will call Jimmy Peterson. This clown sells books to the general public claiming that his system will give an edge to the player without counting the cards. What a joke! As in many other pursuits in life without significant effort financial success does not follow. Jimmy’s students are evident in casinos throughout the country. They faithfully practice his principles by:

All of Jimmy’s advice is completely meaningless and will not make or save anybody any money so let the buyer beware.

This brings up the subject of card eaters. They lurk about the casino looking for hot action and then they jump into the game. A dedicated counter can spend hours counting down shoe after shoe waiting for a betting opportunity. Sure enough as soon as he has a big bet out (say about $200-$400) everybody just happens to want to play at his table. Asking a card eater to wait for a shuffle is often taken as a personal insult. "What, you don’t want to play with me?" or "My money is as good as yours", are the usual replies. A card eater will then proceed to eat all your good cards with nickel bets and then leave at the shuffle. The prudent counter must be careful not to let too many chips build up in front of him on the table since this also draws other players into the game. Sometimes a little rudeness or intimidation can go a long way in protecting a hard earned shoe.

Now back to my story. The nightlife in Houston is great for a bachelor, make no mistake about that. And by the way if you admit to the ladies that you are a professional card counter that is the way you will stay-single! The weekly commutes to Shreveport and Lake Charles were starting to get to me, not to mention the fleabag motels. Some of these places were so bad that I would rather sleep in my car. Louisiana’s casinos are all small riverboats and are very cramped noisy and smoky. Between the cigarette smoke on the boats and the air pollution in Houston, I thought I was going asthmatic. Working the Harrah’s boat in Shreveport I would go from table to table counting down the first two decks of a shoe before entering the game. If many tens and aces came out early, I would move on to another table where the dealer was shuffling. If many low cards were played in the first two decks, I would enter the game and play using my system. AS I found out you can really make a lot of money this way. While briskly walking up to the next table I got a tap on the back, "Excuse me sir, but I am the shift manager here and we would prefer if you didn’t play with us anymore". I looked him straight in the eye and asked him why. He was clearly stunned obviously having been used to meek counters that run out the door. He paused, thought for a second and said, "We just would". So I left. It was going to be hard to resist going back because of the good game available at that boat. The dealers were dealing fast and deep (two things the polished counter looks for). The surrender option is also money in the bank to a counter although it is less than useless to the average player. Most of their action on is high rollers from Dallas and I have seen these guys betting purple and black chips like water. So I went back about three months later wearing a black felt ten gallon hat, a jean jacket, boots, glasses and a fake mustache with that little bit of hair beneath my lower lip for style. I was able to play for hours without harassment. Funny how things work if they think you might have important friends.

One fine mid-September day I thought I would make the drive a little farther and venture to Biloxi. It was incredible! I made $3000 in my first hour at the grand in Gulfport with no heat. The beach was beautiful and it seemed like women were coming on to me everywhere. Two days into the trip I started looking at apartments on the beach. The second one I looked at was on the eighth floor of a Hi-rise overlooking the water with a nice view of the barrier islands. I put down a deposit on the spot.

There are currently eleven casinos in the Biloxi area with the largest on scheduled to open in early 1999. I decided to play on a rotation that would hopefully keep any managers from getting to know me too well. This rotation would put me in each casino about two days out of every six weeks.

A quick note on double deck games: some casinos use a cut card to determine the shuffle point in their double deck games while other casinos allow the dealer to break the deck and shuffle at their discretion. The double deck game without the cut card gives the dealer an incredible amount of power to determine the outcome of the game. The high rolling sucker is the most vulnerable animal to this because he does not track the content of the deck. For example: Mr. H. Roller sits down at a double deck game and starts flat-betting two hands of $500. Luck is on his side and he quickly gets ahead $20,000. Now Mr. Shift Manager calls on his favorite house dealer to get the money back.

Mr. House Dealer now smiles at Mr. H. Roller and wishes him good luck (He is going to need it) and starts dealing the cards. Every time a lot of tens and aces come out of the deck early the dealer deals deep into the pack of remaining cards. Every time many small cards are played early the dealer shuffles up the deck. The effect is devastating and Mr. H. Roller cannot believe his bad luck and has soon tapped out. The reason that this approach does not work on card counters is that counters keep track of the content of the deck and soon realize the dealer is trying to keep from dealing out the tens.

Is this approach cheating? I would have to say no since I don’t believe that it is cheating for the players to count the cards and the same would apply to the house. And now for the good news, If you can find a friendly dealer that enjoys seeing players win or is hungry for tips the same approach can be used against the house. Be sure and ask for the extra round if many small cards have been played and encourage the dealer to shuffle up if the tens and aces come out early, especially if the felt looked like an art gallery on the first few hands. This approach can also be used at most single deck games.

My rotation first took me to the Isle of Capri Casino Biloxi on graveyard shift. I ended up playing double deck against an older man who was shuffling the deck in my favor without being asked. A young blond dealer was his relief and broke the deck every time I raised my bet. What a bitch! After about my third time in there a younger redheaded floor supervisor recognized me as a counter and wrote the pit boss a little note. All of the sudden the pit personnel were hawking my every move. I played into one more hot deck right in front of the pit boss raising my bet to two hands of $100. I got a blackjack on the first hand and an eleven on the second. I doubled down on the eleven and lost. I think that if I had won that double down they would have barred me on the spot. I have not been back since. The Isle of Capri only has eight deck shoes and hand held games. I recommend avoiding this casino since eight deck games should never be played by anybody and the hand held games are usually shuffled in favor of the house. One final note, I did go back about three months later on a different shift and found pit people I had never seen before watching me with much suspicion. They must have taken my picture and posted it!

Boomtown Casino was next on my rotation. Day shift is very friendly but be careful when playing on swing shift. A bet of $100 or more on a hand of blackjack will entitle the player to be watched by the pit for the rest of the day. One dealer from the Imperial Palace told me that she got out ahead about $900 on day at Boomtown and they started giving her a hard time and even made racist comments. She said that the pit boss went around the casino asking for "Hot" dealers. The dealer they put on her turned out to be a friend and warned her that she should leave with the money.

Boomtown generally does not deal out even half the cards on their double deck games, however they do use a cut card to determine the shuffle point. On the six-deck shoe they cut two decks off from the back which makes the game unbeatable from a counters standpoint.

The funny thing about casino blackjack is the way the good games come and go as management attitude towards the game shifts. Take the New Palace Casino for instance (not to be confused with the Imperial Palace). They had a nice high roller area in the fall and winter of 1997. A change of ownership and management was never publicly announced, but out came the high roller area down came the table limits and up came the heat! I found out later that the management from the Isle of Capri Casino was hired over after the new owner cleaned house by firing the current staff. The result was that a thriving around the clock blackjack business was reduced to a ghost town in about a month. I could go in there around five A.M. and have my choice of five head-up games. Management was quoted as saying "We don’t want to lose any money right now but we will get the big action back after the hotel is opened." Yet and still I highly recommend the New Palace Casino for all blackjack players because it has the best rules in town, but card counters should beware of spotty penetration and heat.

Currently the largest casinos in town are the Grand Casinos Gulfport and Biloxi. Lately I have come to think of the Grand Casino Biloxi as my home away from home. One interesting game they offer is single deck blackjack dealt to the bottom. The dealer burns one card off the top and deals out EVERY card before shuffling the discards and continuing on with the game. More often than not the discards are shuffled in the middle of a hand. The down side to the game is that a blackjack only pays even money. This rule is worth about 2% to the house. This puts the average player at a 4-5% disadvantage, which is huge! However to the professional player this is the best game in the business. I personally like to sit at first base. If the table is not too crowded I can spread form one to three hands. By using a three level count with a side count of aces I generally know the last three or four cards left in the dealers hand. About twice an hour I get to play a round where I know before the cards are dealt that my first card will be an ace or a ten. If a player knows for certain that his first card is an ace then he has a 57% edge on that hand. This is called ace location. Unfortunately the casino uses this game as a kind of counter trap. A friend of mine was recently barred at the Gulfport Grand after playing this game for about two hours, however the average player could get away with counting cards at this game if he limited his betting to 1-6 red chips.

The President Casino makes for an interesting study in the psychology of casino management. Within six months they went from sweating every green chip to accepting big action while dealing almost to the bottom of the deck and then back to sweating the green chips. During the time they threw open their doors to the high rollers the casino was packed every night with most of the tables open. Then without warning they barred two counter friends of mine and went back to their old ways. Recently I tried to play a shoe in there at about ten in the morning. They were changing the cards at the six-deck game. I had previously been suspicious of their shuffle because of the way the cards were coming out. At a full table one hand would be mostly tens and the next would be all low cards. This pattern repeating itself throughout the entire shoe. My suspicions were confirmed that morning when the dealer did not wash the cards prior to shuffling. A wash is where the dealer spreads the cards out on the table and mixes them with a swirling motion. Without a wash, with six decks and with a shuffle designed to leave the cards in clumps the president currently has the worst six-deck game in town regardless of how far down they deal.

Before moving on to a discussion of the next casino, I will take this opportunity to discuss the importance of dealer selection. In recent years casinos have taken steps to break down the dealer-player relationship as much as possible. Two of these stand out in my mind:

1) they put the dealers on a "rubber band" rotation. Previously dealers were assigned to a specific table for an entire shift. A designated dealer would then relieve three tables every hour. Casino managers realized that this allowed players to play their favorite dealers for hours. On the "rubber band" rotation dealers never return to the same table on a given shift and it is nearly impossible to follow your favorite dealer from table to table.

2) They forced dealers to share their tips. Instead of the dealer pocketing his tips to keep for himself he must drop the tips into a toke box. At the end of the shift two dealers (with a master key) go to each toke box and empty the tips into a large canvas bag. This creates a friendly environment for the house dealer since he shares in the goodwill and tips that are directed towards the player-friendly dealers.

The house dealer is a man/woman who has visions of rising up in the casino organization. The average player can spot a house dealer by noticing how far down he deals the deck or shoe. Beware of house dealers in double or single deck games where the cut card is not used to determine the shuffle point. Your entire playing stake could disappear in minutes.

A house dealer will usually cut off (out of play) about two or more decks of a six-deck shoe or more than half of a double deck pack. Unless you are good at reading people this is the best way to gauge dealers since a house dealer will often try to be seen as rooting for the players. There was one house dealer on the Star of Lake Charles boat that I had some fun with. Her name is Sheila and she works the day shift. When she realized I was a professional counter she dealt as fast as she could to try to intimidate and confuse me. She played right into my hands because the more hands a counter can play the faster he can make money. If she wanted to upset me she would have been better advised to deal slowly. When she saw that dealing fast was not working she cut the next shoe in half. I was forced to retreat. One fine day about two months later I got another shot at her. The casino management decided that it would save time to have the dealers at empty tables shuffle the cards, cut them and load them into the shoe prior to any players approaching the table. Sheila did this and only cut a little more than a deck out of play not realizing that I was "in the house". I could see her anger as I approached the table but she was stuck! Without a word I took three hundred dollars off of her and walked away. I turned to see her complaining to the pit boss. I was laughing inside!

In dealing school the casino organization attempts to indoctrinate all the new dealers that card counting is a form of cheating or a "scam". It is not. Card counting is simply skillful blackjack play. Some dealers buy into this philosophy and some do not.

Now back to Biloxi. Treasure Bay Casino has the best double-deck game in town since they deal out between 65-75% of the cards and are very tolerant of large bet swings. They also offer the only four-deck shoe in town. Treasure Bay reminds me of the type of casino you might find further up the Mississippi River with a more laid back attitude an a general acceptance of large action. Showing up too often and jumping your bet will however get you invited to play blackjack with flat bets only. Rumor has it that Treasure Bay gave the Shuffle Master a try but lost a substantial amount of money at the one table they had set up with the machine. Shuffle Master Corp. was not invited back. I would like to stress the importance of the shuffle to not only the card counter but to all players at the table. Card clumping favors the house greatly while a random distribution of cards favors the player. This is why I prefer playing on a table with the shuffle machine if possible.

The Copa Casino in Gulfport is the "Dime joint" of the coast and offers the best low stakes blackjack in a shipyard atmosphere. The casino itself is an old cruise ship of some sort and the pit personnel are dressed for an episode of the "Love Boat". They offer a good $2 shoe game as well as a $3 double deck pitch game with surrender. This does not sit well with the management over at the Gulfport Grand who would prefer a monopoly in Gulfport and have never offered a $3 game. The Grand Casino organization has used all of their political clout to try and get the Copa Casino ejected from the slip it occupies at Gulfport Harbor. The pit personnel at the Copa will tolerate nearly all the action under $100 per hand. I used to be able to play a head up single deck game on day shift with female dealers that would deal me nearly to the bottom of the deck and deal fast. This game was money in the bank since I would not have to bet very high to reach my goal of $60 an hour. This was in part due to the speed of the game and part due to the playing efficiency of playing a single deck game head up.

People often wonder why casinos deal a six-deck game face up and single and double-deck games face down. The reason is simple, for the skilled player the fewer the number of cards in play the more likely that the cards dealt out on any given hand could effect a playing decision. For instance a counter playing at a full single deck game makes a big bet due to the high number of aces and tens remaining in the deck. After the cards are dealt the dealer shows an ace up card and asks for insurance bets. Based on just the cards he has seen the correct strategy play would be to buy insurance, but little does he know that three of the other players at the table have natural twenties in their hands and insurance is not a good bet. The casino feels safe however with the 312 cards in play at a six-deck shoe that the additional advantage available from seeing the cards in the other players hands does not help enough to worry about. The downside to the handheld game is that the casino surveillance personnel have to watch for people marking or bending the cards.

Most pit personnel think that they know how to play blackjack but really belong behind the table. A quick example- James was shift manager at the Copa Casino and suspected me of being a skilled card counter. He felt better however after watching me buy insurance on a big bet. The dealer did not have a blackjack and collected my insurance bet. I the turned over a hard fifteen and announced "surrender". James was immediately relieved at my obvious error and pointed out to me that I should not have bought insurance if I intended to surrender the hand anyway. I tried to look pensive and then said "Gee you’re right, I never thought of it that way". Letting James think I did not know what I was doing is known as cheap cover. Actually the insurance bet and the surrender bet are completely independent of one another and both of the plays I made were correct. The idea is to make the pit people feel superior and confident that you will lose in the long run. Even if they think you are counting cards they will leave you alone if they feel that you are no good at it. One additional point is on bet sizing for the first hand after the shuffle. Obviously the counting player will want to bet as little as he can get away with. The important thing is to not rub anybody’s nose in it if you just won a mountain of money on the previous shoe. Even if the floor supervisor knows that you are counting, a token bet of $25-$50 on the first hand will keep him from looking bad if anybody else is watching.

Many times while playing against less experienced floor supervisors (usually female) and getting away with murder as far as betting levels, the floor supervisor from further down the pit will notice my extreme bet swings and chew out the supervisor supposed to be watching my table.

One quick note on safety; always try to keep from showing a lot of money at the tables or at the cage because the local fleabags tend to scout the casinos for potential victims. If you make a big score and are not sure about some of the characters that might have seen your bankroll do not be shy about asking for a security escort to your car. Casinos do not ever inform patrons of recent muggings in their parking areas, however us locals see it on the ten o’clock news all the time.

Imperial Palace is the latest casino to open in town and makes for interesting conversation. When they first opened up not only were the slots tight, but the house hit soft seventeen at the Blackjack tables. This made them the only casino in town to do so. The security guards were actually dressed like cops and carried loaded pistols. Well that sort of behavior may play in Vegas but not in B.F. Mississippi. The locals stayed away in droves even though at the time the prettiest girls in town were serving cocktails in little blue satin outfits that had to be seen to be believed. After about three months with a nearly empty casino the IP advertised that now they would stay on soft seventeen.

Some of the worst floor supervisors in town work at the Imperial Palace casino. This is the only place I have seen the pit personnel actually stand over players and recommend bad plays such as doubling down on an eight versus a dealers three. I even saw a "Pit Executive" tell a high roller to split tens against a face card. The player was not amused and I never saw him in there again. I personally went on a bad losing streak over there and have had these guys laughing and grinning while stuffing my hard earned hundred dollar bills down the slot in the table like lettuce. If I ever have a significant win I am sure that they will be rather hostile. Lately the guards have stopped carrying guns at the request of the casino’s insurance carrier.

One night I met an interesting character at the President. He was a greasy young kid in his mid twenties and was drunk as a skunk. He sat down at third base at the table I was playing at and started talking to the woman next to me without actually playing himself. If the count went up he would yell out "Send it in!!" This immediately got the attention of the pit critters and I was forced into not raising my bet. Later the three of us went upstairs and found an empty snack bar were we could sit and talk.

He said that he had been a professional counter for about two years and was doing quite well thank you. When I mentioned that I was using the Uston APC card counting system he said that most professional players had switched over to the Wong Halves Count. I took this with a grain of salt at the time, however I have now made the switch myself. The Uston count (actually developed by a man named Griffin) is the optimum count for the play of the hands whereas the Wong count is the optimum for the sizing of bets. Although I miss the accuracy of the insurance betting and play deviations I once enjoyed with the Uston count, the Wong count is easier to use and has incredible betting efficiency.

Anyhow I began running into the kid all over town and we became fast friends. He was excited because a friend of his from out east was coming in to town and they were going to play to a common $20,000 bankroll until it was doubled. Playing to a joint bank has the advantage of smoothing out the fluctuations of luck that are so devastating to the professional blackjack player, especially a manic-depressive such as myself.

The Kid did a lot to improve my game aside from converting me to the latest counting system. He had me buy six decks of cards and practice counting them down until I could do it accurately in less than two minutes. I had previously practiced very little if at all thinking that my casino play was practice enough. One more important thing I learned was the importance of the depth of penetration and ratio. I was instructed by the Kid to ask the dealer to deal deep, something that most timid counters fail to do and most books fail to recommend. Another thing that he drummed into my head was the foolishness of cover betting. Most blackjack books recommend this strategy to reduce heat from the pit but it is expensive to place a large bet after the shuffle just because you happened to be betting large at the end of the last shoe. Most often when at home in Biloxi I just leave the casino if I have been betting my maximum level of two hands of $200. However when on the road I am more apt to misbehave and bet just five dollars after the shuffle.

The day finally arrived when the Kid’s friend from out East arrived. I learned that within Blackjack circles he is known as the Wolf. This brings me to the story of "The Kid and the Wolf".

The Wolf is about my age (late thirties) and has been playing professionally for about ten years and his resume includes some of the biggest Blackjack teams in the business. This story will show the reader that although some strategies are soundly rooted in statistical mathematics things do not always work out as planned. The Kid is a pot smoker and this is not the best practice for a professional gambler.

The professional gambler must have his wits about him at all times since just keeping count of the cards does not assure victory. Anyhow days turned into weeks and the Wolf and the Kid were well on their way to doubling the $20,000 bank when the Kids luck took a turn for the worse. He lost over $4,000 in one night at the President. Well I personally feel that if he had not been a pot smoker he may have noticed the clumping of tens that is encouraged by the lack of sufficient shuffling. All he could see was that the shoe was dealt down nearly to the end. After this disaster the shift supervisor informed the Kid that he was no longer welcome to play Blackjack at the President Casino. Unfortunately the Wolf had been seen playing at the same table with the Kid and was also told at a later time that his action was also no longer welcome.

The problem with playing to a joint bank is that the player on the winning streak starts trying to look for reasons his fellow player(s) are not bringing home the bacon. The statistical reality is that it can take 5,000 hours or more to reach a result in line with mathematical expectation. Well the Wolf was now out ahead of the Kid by over $10,000 and was not looking forward to paying up. However if the situation was reversed I am sure he would accept payment from the Kid.

I could see the end was near. The Wolf had stopped talking to the Kid as the resentment was building, even though they were sharing a house. When I asked him if he was going to pay up he started attacking the Kid on a personal level. "That Kid picks his nose and farts all the time". "Besides he is a pot-head and that’s why he is losing". Well the fact of the matter is that he just did not want to part with the money.

One fine day the Kid woke up and the Wolf was gone owing him $3000. After a couple of weeks the Kid’s luck turned and he went on to win about $50,000 that year. Upon later phone conversations with the wolf up in Atlantic City he gave the Kid his new name: "That Boogie Kid". This name derived from one of the Kid’s nastier habits.

Both of these guys are eastern seaboard Italian wiseguys and are very outspoken. When the count goes up they can be heard yelling such epithets as "Sink this toilet", and "Kaboom". Both use bribery in the form of tips to entice the dealers to deal extra rounds or shuffle early as the case may be. The Kid is the only counter I know with enough moxie to buy insurance on someone else’s hand.

For the first time today I was confronted by an unfriendly counter sitting at my table. He was trying to act like the bon vivant high roller and bet a minimum of $25 on every hand. We were playing double deck pitch and he got up when the first deck became unfavorable. This left me to eat the rest of the cards before the shuffle. I did not think that he was really going to try and screw me. However he kept doing the same thing over and over. This guy actually had the nerve to ask me not to spread to two hands in favorable situations because I was eating his cards. He said that he had more money than I did. Twice he jumped his bet when I had a neutral count. This made me think that he really didn’t know what he was doing. We were at the Casino Magic, which currently has a very lenient attitude toward card counters. Next time I see this guy I am going to jump into his game just as he is making a big bet and see how he likes it.

THE TOURIST CARD COUNTER

What most of the average blackjack players that I encounter in the casino don’t realize is the importance of getting tens and aces in their hands. When a deck or shoe is ten and ace deficient the chances of a player winning become very small. Instead of memorizing and quoting perfect basic strategy it would do the average player more good to learn to track tens and aces through the deck. However most of the average players that I have run across would rather rely on luck. One movie I have seen recently even suggests that a "real" gambler prefers to cast his fate to the wind by ignoring the true odds of the game in favor of random chance.

Well to those of you in this crowd (which includes most blackjack dealers) I say good luck! I will happily be one of those "Nasty Card Counters" that have ruined the game for everyone else.