A.P Heat

On April 28, the indefatigable Howard Schwartz, an institution in the Las Vegas gambling book business, interviewed me for a podcast at the Gambler's Book Club (800 S. Main Street, Las Vegas). This was his 141'st such podcast, dating back over six years. It was a lot of fun, with Howard asking some great questions.

When an advantage player looks at opportunities, two competing factors pull him in opposite directions. The first is the profitability of the opportunity, also known as expected value (EV). The greater the profitability, the more the AP wants to play the game.  In the other direction is volatility, also known as the standard deviation (SD).

My discussion of the Phil Ivey edge sorting case at Borgata starts at 28:23

In considering the accomplishment of Phil Ivey at Crockfords Casino (see this post), it is worth considering the full breadth of the problem of ill-designed cards and edge sorting. Phil Ivey did not get lucky by finding an especially rare card in a far-away location that could be sorted.

Today I was the interviewee on Casino Enterprise Management's (CEM) "Audio Edge" Internet radio broad/pod-cast. Here is the interview:  

The final approved written judgment by Mr. Justice Mitting in the case Phillip Ivey vs. Genting Casinos UK Limited has been released.

The primary directive of surveillance is to protect the casino’s assets. Because of this, surveillance must educate itself on as many different aspects of operations as possible. This continuing education is not rough around the edges: they’ve got to know it all. Identifying that something is funny means knowing the boundaries of normal and reasonable outcomes.

Three Card Poker (3CP) is a tough game to beat for the hole-carding AP. As this post shows, a near perfect read of one hole-card is not enough to gain a reliable edge. Ten years ago, APs found opportunities to view multiple hole-cards. There were a lot of good times.

People collect many different types of casino memorabilia. Casino chips are the most common collectible. It follows that there should be a national organization of casino chip collectors.

One for the Money (OM) is a successful new casino game developed by a complete newcomer to the industry. The story of the quick rise of OM, from development, through licensing by SHFL (Shuffle Master), to success on the casino floor, is necessary reading if you have even a passing interest in creating and marketing your own casino table game.

In December 1990, a newsletter by the name of "21 News" first appeared.  The newsletter was a compilation of articles posted on the old Usenet group rec.gambling.blackjack. Its editor, Michael Hall, stated "The big advantage of the current nonprofit format is that there are no legal hassles with redistributing articles originally posted on computer news groups.

As mentioned in this survey, I recently purchased a collection of 750 individual cards. In that survey, I first sorted the cards by design. I then found 15 unique designs with 4 or more cards each. For this post, I went through the cards pertaining to those 15 designs to find the card that had the worst overall security.

"Nothing could be smarter, more splendid, more brilliant, better drawn up than two armies. Trumpets, fifes, hautboys, drums, cannons, formed a harmony such as never been heard in hell." -- Voltaire, Candide, Chapter 3

I just received an email from an AP in which he told me about a play he has against Mississippi Stud (MS) that is almost beyond belief. He told me that the dealer does not collect his Ante bet if he folds pre-Flop. The dealer does collect the Ante if the AP makes a Flop wager, so from the Flop on, it's just MS played the normal way. But, there's more.