That's right, I kid you not! For about a month, a Las Vegas casino offered a baccarat side bet with a misprinted pay table that gave the player a 10.32% edge over the casino. Just sit at the table, make the side bet and collect your profit.

If you're expecting naked people, pictures of Las Vegas, or paint being removed from a house, this post isn't for you. If you're looking for a good time, read on!

“The advantage in two-handed blackjack, long supposed to lie with the dealer or the house, was converted recently to the profit by Edward O. Thorp, a young assistant professor in the mathematics department of New Mexico State University.”

— The Atlantic Monthly, June, 1962

I am beside myself with disgust at the thought of the IRS using casino player’s cards to track slot winnings.

The question of why advantage players do what they do is answered in the popular media by images of glitz, glamour, parties, piles of chips, cat and mouse, and youth. The motive is greed and the time frame is now. But there is another class of advantage players (APs) who definitely do not fit this Hollywood stereotype. I’m talking about professional APs – the life-timers.

Shuffling cards is a challenging task. It is the one part of the game where we humans directly interact with the randomness of the hands that follow. A hand shuffle never fully randomizes the cards. However, if enough goes right with the shuffle, then it can be considered random enough to effectively defeat shuffle-based advantage play.