Part of defeating Trump is understand how he and his gang of thieving magpies think. Many come from the Casino Industry so here is a portrait into the warped thinking of that group.
On the surface, it might seem that card counting is a bad thing for Las Vegas. After all, if correctly practiced counting cards at a Blackjack table really slants the odds toward the player. When mastered, counting cards is like an 'I Win Button' and teams of card counters have been known to make millions of dollars in a single night or grid out a living over a long period of time. With that said, you would be surprised to know that card counting is actually good for Vegas and many casinos produce or sell books on how to beat Vegas.
When the first card counting books came out in the 1960s, the Vegas casino industry collectively panicked. Those crafty math elites had found a way of beating the house and figuring the odds on a very complicated set of probabilities. With card counting, players could essentially scam the game and turn the odds against the house. Casinos were shocked; the only people who should be able to use the odds in Vegas were the casinos and not the players. Responding shrewdly, casinos banned card counters, in a mob-run Las Vegas this meant that you were worked over in an alley by former cops after you got thrown on the street. It also meant that you would be put in a black book and banned from other establishments in town. But these efforts did little to stop card counters. Over the next years, so many card counters showed up that a number of casino owners thought that blackjack would disappear as a game entirely. But something strange started to happen.
Instead of hurting, card counting seemed to be helping and in terms of total revenue earned. Profits from the blackjack tables rose and rose. No one could figure it out. Then gradually casino managers started paying attention, a lot of the card counters they were catching were not the sophisticated professional crooks that had been expected. Instead, many were just normal people who had come to Vegas looking to make a score. What was stranger was that most of these players were losing when they counted and not winning. It turned out that a lot of Americans could read but had no ability to do complex math. They came to Vegas thinking they could count cards but when they could not they lost their shirt. They had read the books but had chosen to ignore the key fact that the card counters were the top math minds in the country and that they, average men, were not. The card counting books got more people interested in blackjack in general, something that raised revenue.
It is a common misconception that Las Vegas does not like it when players win jackpots. Again, on the surface it might seem that it’s bad for business to give away ten or twenty million dollars at a pop, but if you look at the numbers, jackpots are actually the best thing that can happen to a casino. When a player wins a jackpot, they screams loudly, tells his boss to muck off and ditches his woman for a better one. Amidst this ballyhoo, he gets onto the news and tells the world how happy he is and how amazing the casino he went to is. He walks into the sunset, and as he does, 1000 times as many people walk right back into the casino. A casino jackpot may cost a lot, but it’s immediate and free advertising for the casino. It perpetuates the myth that a player can actually win big when playing games that have horrific odds. Odds on winning a three-wheel jackpot are 262,144 to one. They get worse from there. For smaller winnings, slot machines have a 75%-98% payout, aka if you spend $100 you should get at least 75%, if that’s the payout rate. This is the bread and butter of a casino, and if you don’t understand it, just imagine how much money you would have if every time you gave someone $75 they gave you $100 back. Moreover, if you’re at the slots, foolishly trying to win a jackpot, you’re in the building, which is overwhelmingly what casinos want.
If you’re in the casino, you are buying overpriced drinks and tipping skanky-looking waitresses. You’re probably staying in the hotel or buying cute little souvenirs, like books on how to count cards. When you get bored with slots, you go play Keno, roulette, craps, all games that are very heavily slanted toward the house. You also will probably try some cards games, either failing to count cards properly or getting worked over by poker sharks. I am sure of this, and the only people who are more sure of this are the casinos. Why else do you think they advertise their slot machine jackpots with great alacrity?
A final word to Las Vegas: When reading this, casino leaders and lawyers will naturally think that this article is bad for business and that I am some shape-shifting incarnation of Loki, the Norse god of mischief and destruction. Or they’ll that I am just a disgruntled former player: I went to a casino once, my mom won $300 on a one-penny investment, and I lost $20 of my dad’s money when I bluffed some strange bearded man on a 10/2 poker hand. Meanwhile, Craig was fighting in the parking lot with State Troopers when they ticketed his blimp for illegal parking. Anyway, if you look past your anger, casino owners, you will realize that this article will actually increase your business. People will read this and think they can beat Vegas, or can count cards, or will get confused and think getting seventy-five cents on your dollar is a good thing. So please reward me accordingly.
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