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Comment by kingkawn | Hacker News Reader

Forgive my ignorance but why is tracking the play of the deck not a legitimate strategy?

It is a legitimate strategy, and I think the casino is not actually allowed to arrest you, accuse you of cheating, take back your winnings, etc for it. They can ban you though; casinos can ban you whenever they want to. I think they can also refuse to give you any comp bonuses. I am not really so sure how it works; I don't gamble in a casino and do not intend to.

> I don't gamble in a casino and do not intend to.

This is the only long term winning strategy I've seen work in practice.

(Former Poker Dealer)

Greetings Professor Falken

Hello

A strange game.

The only winning move is not to play.

How about a nice game of chess?

It is a legitimate strategy, but if you do this well enough, the casino will not allow you to play, since you can turn the game’s odds into your favor.

With face/gant recognition and other means of tracking, once you are barred from play at one casino you are at almost all.

they already had this long before facial recognition came into play. they were called griffin books/black books. when you were "caught" they took a photo and a company called griffin investigations would pass this info around to all the other casinos.

So was there a person who had the job of memorizing hundreds (thousands?) of faces from a book and then watching every person who came to the tables?

These people eventually start winning money at the tables, which will draw attention from casino security. When that happens, yes, someone at security would have to recognize the person there. But once that happens security will also notify the rest of the casinos and its pretty much over by then.

Why don't they just add a lot more cards, like just use 20 decks?

At that point, they should just use a continuous shuffle machine.

I think there is a nice psychological effect of a deck that can truly get “hot”, where the odds actually do temporarily turn towards the players favor. The life is sucked out the game if things are truly random on every deal.

> The life is sucked out the game if things are truly random on every deal.

But .. the game is to play with others and have a great time, no? At least poker is fun, yet everyone knows the odds.

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