Question

The movie 21 is about a group of MIT students who "count cards" to improve their probability of winning at Blackjack in casinos. Have you ever wondered what card counting is and if it is legal?

Card Counting is not illegal. You cannot get arrested for counting cards in a casino, however the casino (if they suspect you are a card counter) may ask you nicely to leave… Card Counting is the act of keeping track of the Deck Composition of yet-to-be-played cards by keeping track of the ratio of low cards (2-7) to high value cards (Aces and 10s) that have already been played.³

To complete the Discussion activity, please do the following:

Answer each question fully. Use a minimum of 250 words for a complete discussion post.

• Do you think card counting is cheating or simply utilizing one’s brain?
• Should casinos be able to ban suspected card counters? Why or why not?
• Explain your reasoning fully and provide an outside resource supporting this reasoning. Outside resources are considered anything outside of your textbook. An Internet search, for example, will provide numerous online resources for you to review on the topic of card counting. In your post, you could provide the link to a site that supports your reasoning.

Answer 1

Card counting is basically using brain. Counting cards takes skill to be able to learn, it is simply a mental skill that is based on calculating mathematical odds.

All counting cards does is tracking the imbalance of big and little cards in a deck. It’s just one of many strategies one can employ.

Counting cards properly can give the counter an advantage over the casino. Card counters have an advantage of anywhere from 0.5% to 1.5% over the casino. A deck rich with high cards favors the player, and an excess of low cards favors the dealer. When that ratio favors the counting player, they bet more money. When it favors the dealer, the counter bets a lesser amount.

With that in mind, there is no logical way to label counting cards as illegal. The illegality of counting cards would mean penalizing rational, mathematical methods and genius.