The Saga of Les and Moe
Ma met me, mate. “Eat! Eat!” Ate meat. Tea. A team! Ma -- a tame team-mate! Ta-ta!
Yes, “team” is one of my favorite words. It’s part of the sports metaphor that many use. It describes the phenomenon that has recently become publicly known for playing winning blackjack. Plus, you can write a complete short story, whether it’s about my mom or Jeff Ma (see March/April issue of gambling.com magazine), using words composed only of its four letters. What a word!
Remember, sports fans, there is no “I” in “team.” There, however, is a “me.” Kind of… gotta jumble up the letters a bit first…
Enough about my short story development techniques. I know you’re here to make money.
As we’ve discussed, when the deck gets in your favor you want to raise your bet and when it gets in favor of the house, you want to lower your bet to its minimum. Counters who varied their bets too widely, however, risked being detected. The dealers might then shuffle prematurely, destroying the “hot” deck, or ban the players from playing as “cheaters.”
The drive to develop strategies to avoid this detection led to team blackjack. My proprietary, cryptic, inscrutable development experiences are told here to gambling.com readers for the very first time since this past Saturday’s poker session in my basement. They may or may not soon be the subject of a movie starring a bunch of famous actors with whom I can then hang out and attend Hollywood parties. You can only hope, you know.
The first step in the evolution of team blackjack was to take more than one hand at the table. “End play” refers to taking multiple hands as the last few cards are being dealt. If, for example, many low value cards remain in the deck, this ensures that those cards would remain out of the new deck after the shuffle, providing an immediate advantage in the new deck. “End play” also is valuable when most of the cards remaining in the deck are ten-value cards or Aces. Those cards, then, would remain out of the new deck after the shuffle. When the dealer dealt herself her second card from the new deck, the chances she would not draw a ten-value card or Ace were increased. Taking multiple hands when the deck became especially hot anywhere in the deck would allow the player to get the majority of the high-value cards rather than sharing them with the dealer.
The casinos countered. Placing multiple bets when the deck got hot was a tip-off to the house that you were a counter and the dealers were told to shuffle up at such behavior. The use of “end play” led the casinos to shuffle up long before reaching the last few cards.
Yet, it became clear to me, and I’m sure other counters, that taking multiple hands could be used to hide you were a counter. Playing at more than one position enables you to increase your bet by laying down multiple moderate-sized bets rather than an equivalent larger bet at one position. For example, if you were laying down a 1 unit bet (say $5) and the deck got hot and you wanted to bet 3 units, instead of tripling the bet you could make an excuse why you wanted to play three positions. “Here comes that drunk, again. I’m losing every other hand, maybe if I lay down more than one hand…”
If the deck got even hotter, you could increase your bet on each of the two or three positions. In this way, you could increase your 1 unit bet to 15 units by taking three positions and betting 5 units at each. Raising the bet from 1 to 15 units at one position would be sure to attract casino attention.
Alternatively, you could simply stand behind the table and wait until the deck got hot, and then sit down, putting down bets at two or three positions.
In effect, by playing multiple hands you can become your own “team.” That was the first step to team blackjack. The “me” in “team” (kind of) became “we.” As in … “teaw”, or “we-am”.
Problems, however, exist with both of these camouflage tricks. First, when a new deck is started, you’d either keep the same number of positions, reduce or increase the number of positions, or play at only one position. Now, on the one hand you don’t want to keep all your positions or increase them and lay down a lot of cash when playing with a new, neutral deck. On the other hand, if you play only one position with the new deck, the dealer, pit boss, or guy behind the one-way mirror in the ceiling might get suspicious. If the deck gets hot, you’d want to take several positions again; more suspicious play. Besides those problems with changing the number of positions, betting the same amount at every position, especially when you’re increasing the bet, will surely attract attention.
These problems led me, and I’m sure others, to make a minor but crucial adjustment. I would always play multiple hands, but different bets would be laid down at the different positions. Now, when the deck got hot I would subtly increase the total amount of the bets laid down. For example, say I was playing 4 hands, and my bets were 2, 2, 1, and 1 units for a total bet of 6 units. Say the deck got hot and I wanted to increase my total bet to 9 units. I could do that by changing those bets to 1, 4, 1, and 3. Note that I actually decreased one of my bets and kept another constant. The dealer wouldn’t bother adding up the total amount of the bets you were putting down. That was the second step to team blackjack.
It was relatively easy to disguise those small bet changes. I could say one of the spots on the table was “lucky”; I could play the Small Martingale system, doubling my bet because I had lost at that spot, or I could tap the table with an extra chip and lay it down as a potential tip for the dealer. After that “tip” hand I would simply keep that large bet at that position. If the deck became colder, I could similarly reduce the total amount of my bets.
You can also provide plausible reasons for increasing or decreasing the number of positions you’re playing. If another player left the table after winning, you could land-grab his “lucky” position. If it became very cold, you can retract one or more of the bets from an “unlucky” position.
Such refinements on the technique of taking multiple hands were effective, but only to an extent. It had a major, major drawback. It was only me, as in “me-am.” You’ll always find some players who routinely play more than one position, but still this technique distinguished me from the vast majority of players.
The need to camouflage being a counter had only been partially solved. My entire insidious western hemisphere operations were in jeopardy of being discovered. My cover could be blown. I was at the edge of a 4000-foot money drop cliff looking down. A herd of crazed Vegas casino security cops were 100 yards away. Flimsily-clad cocktail waitresses were offering me drinks with knock-out drops. Helicopter gunships with one-way mirror bottoms were hovering. My high school English teacher Nina Grace Smith was pushing the (definitive) Oxford English Dictionary into my face showing that “weam” is not a word.
That’s when Harold’s Club in Reno came to the rescue.
The final step in my discovery of team blackjack came from encountering other counters at the tables. I’m sure many teams have formed in the same way. I had begun my card counting career in the early 1970s, about 10 years after Edward Thorp published the first edition of “Beat the Dealer.” With many players now counting, it was inevitable that I would occasionally find a counter at a table where I was playing. Detecting them was usually trivial. When I raised or lowered my bet, I noticed that they would do so as well. They would also tend to be very serious, intent on the cards as they were played.
For a couple years, I found these players dangerous. Our changing our bets synchronously would be a clear giveaway to the pit bosses that we were both counters. Even the dullest of dealers would see the pattern. When I found myself at a table with another counter, I would simply leave.
Then one afternoon in Harold’s Club in Reno I made a startling discovery. I love Harold’s. It’s very understated, lacking the garishness of other casinos. I like the conservative outfits they wear. I even like the simplicity of the artwork of their playing cards. I’m very comfortable there.
The table was fairly crowded and I had been playing only one position. I had a counter playing two seats to the right of me. For a number of hands we were varying our bets in the same pattern, both of us were winning, and I did not want to leave the table as was my usual practice when I found a counter at my table. We were playing with 4 decks in the shoe and the deck would stay hot for many more hands.
Then it hit me. When the deck got even hotter, he doubled his bet, but instead of doubling mine I actually lowered my bet. I simply used the same camouflage trick I had been using when playing multiple positions. When I did that, the other player gave me a surprised look. He had detected that I was counting, too.
I stared at him intently. The deck got hotter on the next deal. He again raised his bet, but I kept mine at my minimum bet. This time, I stared at him, and a realization came over his face. For the next hand, the deck stayed about the same, but he lowered his bet. I followed this by increasing my bet. I looked at him and he smiled slightly.
The pit boss had been watching us both through the early decks, but now, convinced neither of us were counters, he left. At the end of the shift, both Moe and I left the table. He went in one direction and I went in the other, but I watched him as he left the casino, and dashed over to greet him.
We introduced ourselves, and started laughing hysterically at what we had discovered. By sometimes betting out of phase with each other, we both managed to make a moderately good profit while hiding our being counters. Each of us made less than what we would have made if we hadn’t changed our bets contrary to what the system directed, but together we made more than we would have made individually. I was also no longer drawing attention to myself by playing multiple hands. Most importantly, we hid our being counters.
These ideas are the essence of my concept of team blackjack. Instead of being my own team, I now had a team of multiple players.
Moe and I continued to play together in Reno until I had to leave town. From that trip forward, when I encountered another counter I would “recruit” him. It was only natural that sometimes we would encounter additional counters, or the first fellow that I had met would tell me he had found another counter who was playing at a certain casino. I would in the future routinely organize teams of myself and one or two additional players on gambling trips. In rare instances we put together a team of four.
More about my teams next time. Right now, though, I’ve got to get to work on my second book of short stories.
Les tells us that the largest living beings aren’t blue whales, and weren’t the dinosaurs. Trees are earth’s life-support system. Providing food, medicines, clothing, and shelter, they filter out pollutants, prevent erosion, suck in carbon dioxide, produce oxygen, cool the ground, and provide habitat for thousands of species. Save trees from the developers! Questions and comments can be sent to lesgoldencardcounting@yahoo.com.
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