Blackjack player beats 3 Atlantic City Casinos for $15.1M

Quote from The Big D:

That's the only strategy that applies. He can't be martingaling because the min and max bet are too close to permit it. He can't be first basing off the dealer's down card because the house would be instantly suspicious if a multi-hand whale wanted to sit at first base. In theory he could be marking cards, but any high stakes operation worth its salt knows how to spot that.

All the evidence points to one conclusion: he got lucky. Nothing to see here.
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I believe counting cards is the only viable strategy in blackjack. There is no other way to tip the odds in your favor. Assuming he isnt a card counter, then yes, he got lucky.

I would assume they are constantly reshuffling the decks anyway making card counting highly unlikely.


Also, there is a big difference between house "edge" and "hold" for those discussing the small house edge in blackjack.
 
Quote from dunleggin:

I'd say the burden is on you to disprove that it could not be a chance occurrence.
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How about that no other player went on such a "lucky streak" in the last 3 decades? (we are talking about 5 winnings over 1 million in 6 months) If it was just luck, we should expect some players to get lucky from time to time.

Please list such players and their winnings who admittedly just got lucky in blackjack in the last decade. You can't...

Now if we say that he got lucky because he was using an inferior strategy that still worked, I can agree with that.... In a way that people trading long only in the late 90s were lucky.
 
Quote from Pekelo:

How about that no other player went on such a "lucky streak" in the last 3 decades? (we are talking about 5 winnings over 1 million in 6 months) If it was just luck, we should expect some players to get lucky from time to time.

Please list such players and their winnings who admittedly just got lucky in blackjack in the last decade. You can't...
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Agreed, I could not compile such a list. Neither, though, would I draw upon commercial website content as a source of information to argue my opinion in this debate.

You're relying on anecdote and reasoning to support your opinions. This can make for a quite convincing argument, but I prefer to rely on the known probabilities until the evidence proves otherwise.

Apart from one exception (thankfully just deleted by the mods), it's been quite a civilised and interesting debate on this thread.
 
Quote from dunleggin: For those on the other side of the debate, I'd say the burden is on you to disprove that it could not be a chance occurrence.
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-- what I don't understand is, as one other poster said, why would don johnson get barred? I would think if he just got 'lucky' the casinos would want him back, so that they can win the money back from him?

-- hard for it to be a 'chance' occurrence at three different casinos, in a short period of time?

Thanks.
 
Hi,

Excellent discussion. Much more in-depth, with great statistical analysis than anywhere else. There is more to this story than is being told. Everyone agrees on that. Don Johnson is not answering phone/emails. The second high-roller want complete privacy. Rumors aren't facts...

...yet...

... there were enough eye witnesses. The software that detects card counting never blinked and saw nothing suspicious.

Things you may have missed:

*Tropicana CEO Giannantonio, who approved the 20% insurance on losses + 100K/hand when he knew that Johnson was winning consistently was replaced almost instantly. Everyone at Tropicana denies a connection.

*Carl Icahn is positioning Tropicana as a boutique casino for high-rollers. Could be a hell of a promotion where card counting may have been detecting and ignored in order to get into the paper and get action by chumming the waters a bit.

* A number of people claim that Johnson has similar memory as Stu Ungar. Ungar was once bet $100K that he wont be able to know the value and suit of the last card in a 6 deck shoe, after every card (but the last) was dealt in front of him. Stu Won.

* Johnson, in my view, was using a counting system that requires eidetic memory. He most likely focuses on randomizing his play to fool the anti-card counting software. He is a designer of handicapping systems and a very good one. If he had a copy of the card counting detection software used by casinos, with practice he could beat it.

* Carl Icahn personally invited Johnson to come back to Tropicana any time, and play at the limits he's comfortable at.

I will write up this post and mention this thread on http://www.blackjackchamp.com

Have fun!

Nick Meisher
 
I like to solve mysteries, so I like this topic. Here is a very informative thread from a blackjack forum, 6 pages long with lots of math:

http://www.blackjackinfo.com/bb/showthread.php?t=22127

Now here is a website that proves what I mentioned earlier, that the 20% rebate's value is mostly psychological, and it doesn't give such a huge edge to the player.:

http://kiddynamitesworld.com/intuitive-probabilities-blackjack-and-loss-rebates/

It has 91 comments and the first one is from one of the original MIT players featured in the book and movie. Summary:

"a casino can profitably offer a 20% session rebate on blackjack, provided they require the players to play a certain number of hands. KD's post establishes the number of hands required. It's an interesting point that the number of hands per session required is surprisingly low, and the only mathematical question worth debating is whether KD has calculated the number of hands correctly."

"Interestingly, after only 20 hands, the gambler has lost the expected value edge that came from his 20% loss rebate."

---------------------------------------------

It is also mentioned that making 50 times of the max. bet is not such an incredible streak, it happens fairly often. The only difference with Johnson was the size of the max. bet.

P.S.: " ... even with a 50% loss rebate, the casino can break even on a 49.5% payout game in 1000 plays."
 
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