If you have an interest in card counting, you may be wondering how casinos catch card counters. There are several ways that casinos catch card counters, including hiring professional card counters or a so-called eye in the sky.
Casino management uses sophisticated software to monitor larger bets and alert dealers of favorable counts. In addition, players rarely change their average bet size when a favorable count occurs. A good strategy is to increase your bet size gradually and vary it throughout your game.
What is card counting?
Card counting is a strategy used in blackjack that lets players alter decisions to their benefit. The concept involves keeping a running tally of the cards on the table and making an educated guess as to what will be dealt with next. It does increase a player’s odds of winning by about 1 percent. In addition, if practiced over a long time, card counting can eventually shift the odds in a player’s favor.
The technique involves assigning values to the cards and keeping track of those values as they are dealt. Then, the player places bets according to that information throughout the game.
All casinos are well aware that card counters have such a unique advantage and try to prevent them from doing so by various methods. Some of the most common ones include shuffling decks more often, adding more decks, and flat betting (the player cannot change the bet amount). But first and foremost they try to detect these players and prevent them from playing.
Hiring professionals
Keeping an eye on these players has become as important as catching them with your cards. Keeping tabs on these players is not a simple task, but hiring a professional to catch card counters is a great way to ensure that your casino remains profitable.
Casinos use former card counters as undercover surveillance to keep a close eye on players. These employees sit in security booths and monitor players through security cameras. They send drinks to players to slow them down and sometimes even ask them to leave. They also hire private investigators to go undercover to spy on the team of players. They look for the signs that they are members of the card-counting group.
Eye in the sky
Surveillance cameras are a good first line of defense against card counters. Casinos have security personnel who watch videos in real-time. These cameras allow the casino to see who is trying to count cards.
These camera systems are often called Eye in the Sky and are not just used to catch card counters. Due to their high resolution, these cameras are also capable of catching various chip cheats such as late betting in roulette, where a player places a bet after the betting has finished.
Face recognition system
The use of biometric face recognition technology is becoming increasingly common in casinos around the world. This new technology enables casinos to identify unwanted guests and prevent crime, cheating, and advantage gambling. The technology can identify a person based on thousands of points on their face.
There is a common practice that if a casino finds a cheater or card counter, it puts its face into the shared database so other casinos can also identify the individual.
The facial recognition system is also very often linked to an advanced database of contacts and acquaintances. It allows the casino too, for example, to link a newcomer to an employee based on the fact that they live on the same street or that they went to school together. Similar databases are used by security agencies such as the FBI and CIA.
Counting cards online casino
Nowadays, however, you can play blackjack online. Virtually all mobile, online and even the best bitcoin casinos offer it. So counting cards could be very simple. By playing the bets from home, the casino cannot find the counters using facial recognition nor can they distract them.
However, electronic online blackjack has the advantage of being able to shuffle the decks after each round of play. This will quite effectively prevent anyone from counting the cards and gaining an advantage over the casino. Some online casinos also offer such disadvantageous blackjack rules that even if players counted cards, they would not gain the required mathematical advantage that would allow them to win in the long run.
