Conceptually, counting cards is incredibly simple. Take a deck of cards. With a full deck, the count is zero. Deal the cards out one by one. Each time you see a card numbered 2 through 6, add one to the count. Each time you see an ace, a face card, or a ten, subtract one from the count. That’s it. You’re done. You’ve learned the basic high-low counting system, a system that mathematician Edward O. Thorpe developed and proved by winning huge money during a single weekend.
On the technical side, the hardest part of counting cards exists in playing with perfect strategy. There are essentially 250 situations that can occur while playing blackjack, and you need to know how to play your cards in each of them. Memorizing 250 different responses might sound intimidating, but it’s no harder than memorizing the multiplication tables, and you managed to accomplish that before you were nine years old.
Put these two basic techniques together, and you’ve got an edge on the casino. All you need to do is increase the amount of your bet when the count is positive, and over the long haul you’ll win money. Of course, any dealer worth the meager wages the casinos begrudge them can count cards as easily as you – so with a basic high-low system, what you’re doing is completely transparent.
The Film: Ocean’s Eleven
The Song: “69 Police”
The Artist: David Holmes
I saw Ocean’s Eleven (2001) at a special screening in Mission Valley for Qualcomm employees and their friends. I had a roommate who was working on their digital cinema collaboration with Texas Instruments. The film was a fun bit of fluff, obviously as enjoyable for the actors to produce as it was for us to watch. The engineers at Qualcomm were deservedly proud of their work, which was absent of lint, spots, jitter or cigarette burns. It was a fun evening – the Qualcomm folks were still enjoying the tail end of the giddy stock price heights of the 2000 dot-com bubble, and I was on the tail end of my own experience at pilfering money from a Las Vegas casino. (more…)
