Poker tournaments

In 1978, Resorts International opened in Atlantic City, the first legal East Coast casino in the twentieth century. Their four- and six-deck blackjack games offered a new form of surrender, dubbed by card counters as “early surrender,” since the casino allowed players to surrender half a bet even when the dealer showed an ace or 10 up, and before the dealer checked for a blackjack. This rule gave basic strategy players a small edge over the house right off the top, without any card counting whatsoever! And the advantage to card counters was even greater. From opening day, card counters had a field day at Resorts’ tables.

A team of blackjack professionalswhose founders were from Czechoslovakia that had been playing in Las Vegas flew all of their members to Atlantic City to take advantage of this new surrender rule. This team, which later became known in the casino industry as simply the Czech Team, found the Resorts’ game to their liking and stayed for months.

It was also in 1978 that the first MIT blackjack team was started. This team actually consisted of students from MIT, Harvard, and other East Coast colleges. Johnny C.j now a legendary player who joined the team in 1981, plays high-stakes blackjack to this day and continues organizing teams of professional players.

So, here I am, standing near casino machine, playing video poker. I’m feeding the machine and keeping count of the number of times I do and don’t get winning combinations in the pay table. Got me some serious scientific study going on here! My video poker strategy is down pat! You see, to my way of thinking, there’s no such thing as a random sequence. The probability of any one thing happening is set by what went before. The young fellah tells me to just let rip, so now I’m gonna give it to you straight and fast. You don’t like it. Well, you can do the other thing. At my time of life, I got no time for them as thinks they know better unless they’re buying me drinks. Then I reckon they’re buying my time - anyways, people in bars always seem more interesting when free alcohol kicks in.

These poor people live in a dream world. You ever watch a Poker Dealer wash and shuffle a deck of 52 cards fairly. Then the Dealer deals five cards to each player from that shuffled deck. The first card dealt comes with a 1 in 52 chance, the second with a 1 in 51 chance, and so on as the cards are dealt in turn. All the countries licensing video versions of card and dice games have laws. No country wants to kill the golden goose that’s laying all them tax eggs so they all want to see fair games. Players vote with their feet if they think a game’s crooked. That’s in no-one’s interest. So all casinos gotta match the odds of a real card game with a human dealer. Finally, you decide what you’re holding and hit the draw button. You get whatever’s on top of the deck at that precise moment. Wait a fraction of a second longer, and you get different cards. It don’t matter which wy the machines’re set up. The deck has a random distribution of cards.

What these dreamers in a fog never see clearly is the principle of statistical independence. Now sometimes, the slot machines sit with that randomized deck and deal the next cards off the top when you press draw. In others, that ol’ RNG don’t know when to quit. It keeps on notionally shuffling the deck while you’re busy trying to decide what to do with your hand. The longer you take, the more times the RNG has cycled. It’s like tossing a coin.