Derren Brown banned from casino.

[Jim_MDP]

Of course it gives an advantage when you know what cards are left in the deck, however casinos are always changing things to reduce the advantage, like using more decks, burning cards, reshuffling.

Unlike poker, there ane never any unseen burn cards in Blackjack. Unless that's some relatively new Euro thing or some such.

 

[Jim_MDP]

It's just a bit of fun trivia. I don't know why I should feel anything at all. What do you mean?

I don't see it as "just a bit of fun trivia". I see it as a laughably silly claim and I'm surprised you put it forward as a serious possibility. Serious slur on Antonio's character as well.

 

[Stray Cat]

Most of what he does is traditional magic dressed up as mentalism, but he does have some very impressive memory tricks that I think actually are memory tricks.

Indeed, on one of the occasions I was at the filming of one segment of one of his TV shows, he went down a group of about 30 of us very quickly as we told him our names. As he came back down the line, my friend stepped out infront of him and said "so can you remember what my name was?" (I think she thought he was just being polite and friendly asking and not actually listening to what people's names were). He thought for a second before telling her her name correctly.

That was the most impressive thing I saw him do all afternoon.

 

[Maurice Ledifficile]

You didn't feel the least bit silly posting that? Really?

And yes... I know his nickname.

I was going to let the thread die, but I suppose I should respond.

I don’t know why I mentioned the Esfandiari anecdote. I’m not even sure where I heard it, though I’m pretty sure I did. It also doesn’t help any point I was trying to make, so I have to agree that it was out of place.

I don’t think it warranted the kind of reaction you had and I certainly don’t think it attacks his character in any way. Derren Browne has always loved to say he’s been banned by most casinos and the magicians I know love to play on the “you don’t want to play cards with me” concept. It’s not an insult. And I clearly stated that magicians don’t cheat. That can’t be true for every magician, of course but if Ricky Jay sat at my 20$ buy-in game and said he wouldn’t cheat, I wouldn’t worry about it...

My thoughts at the time were that many known magicians are welcome to play cards in casinos. I wasn’t actually trying to claim that what I mentioned was true. I did hear that as an anecdote. I never really gave it much thought.

A search found nothing on the subject, so I can easily accept that he’s treated the same as everyone else and that my “claim” is not justified. I know this is the JREF forum and that I should be held to a high standard of evidence, but, man, relax. I may have taken this subject too lightly, but you may have taken it too seriously.

 

[IXP]

What sort of advantage does card counting give ?

Can it actually swing the odds into the players favour, rather than the house ?

I tried my hand (pun intended) at counting cards once. So let me clear up a few things.

1. Counting cards is easy. Anyone can do it. All you have to do is keep a count by adding 1 for each low card (2 through 6) and subtracting 1 for each 10 (and face cards). When the count gets large in the plus direction, you change your play and increase your bets. For example. If you have 2 tens you would normally never split them, but on a deck with many 10's splitting them is a winner. Unfortunately, it is also a dead give-away.

2. Counting a shoe is no more difficult than counting a single deck. The problem is that a shoe rarely gets far enough out of whack to give you an advantage, especially when the shuflle it half way through, which is normal.

3. The difficult parf of counting cards is doing without getting caught. The team from MIT that did it so well used a new strategy for this. The counter did not change his (or her) play at all. They had associates who roamed the room goiing from table to table. When they came to a table with a counter, he would signal a good deck, and the associate would sit down and make a few large bets.

4. The next diffculty is finding a single deck game.

5. And the final difficulty is finding one where the dealer is not counting. Yep, you heard it right. The dealers in most single deck games count the cards and shuffle when it becomes a player advantage situation. I have seen this myself.

6. If you can find a single deck game, with good rules, where the dealer does not count, and goes through at least half the deck, and does not count himself. You can win about 1 bet per hour -- until you get thrown out.

IXP

 

[Dissolution]

Brown did a card counting bit and filmed part of it in a casino as part of one of his first TV shows for Channel 4, Mind Control.
No idea how genuine it was.

I don't think that I'm able to post links yet, but if you search for the following, then you'll get a 5 minute clip on Youtube:
Derren Brown Mind Control Casino Channel 4

 

[Monza]

3. The difficult parf of counting cards is doing without getting caught. The team from MIT that did it so well used a new strategy for this. The counter did not change his (or her) play at all. They had associates who roamed the room goiing from table to table. When they came to a table with a counter, he would signal a good deck, and the associate would sit down and make a few large bets.

Just want to point out that this was not a new strategy and was not invented by the MIT team. Ken Uston had already published this technique in a couple of his books by the mid-80s. He had first learned of it when he joined Al Francesco's team in the 70s. To my knowledge, Al Francesco is probably the originator of the Big Player and team play.

5. And the final difficulty is finding one where the dealer is not counting. Yep, you heard it right. The dealers in most single deck games count the cards and shuffle when it becomes a player advantage situation. I have seen this myself.

Dealers counting is pretty rare. The training of Blackjack dealers is woefully minimal. I lived in Reno for 15 years and had several friends who earned some money on the side dealing Blackjack. An example was Harrah's that has their club featuring scantily-clad young women dealing. My friend took a job there on Saturday nights. She was put on the floor after a day of being taught the basics of the game and how to correctly perform payouts. That, and the ability to look good in the "uniform", were all that was required.

 

[Demografix]

I believe Penn and Teller also got banned from a few Casinos back in the day.

 

[IXP]

Dealers counting is pretty rare.\

Yes, but single deck games where the dealer stands on soft 17 are also rare.

IXP

 

[JonWhite]

I wonder why this story would crop up when he's promoting a tour called INFAMOUS? The casino must be gutted by all the publicity as well.

I saw "Infamous" last night. It includes a section where he talks about getting banned from casino's when he was younger and he then does a few card tricks to supposedly show the audience why he was. My guess is that the story was just publicity nonsense too.

Incidentally, it was a fun show and much tighter than than his previous "Svengali" - Nyman's return clearly helped. It also included some nice debunking of psychics, homeopathy and physic surgery.