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All sexually active characters in this work are 18 years of age or older.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover Design: D.B. Story

Advantage Player © 2009 D.B. Story

eXcessica publishing

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Advantage Player

By D.B. Story

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A special thanks to Ian, Noren, VW, and Mulligan for their excellent and much appreciated proofreading.

Chapter 1

I'm an Advantage Player. At least, that's what the casinos would label me if they realized what I'm doing.

An Advantage Player is different than a gambler. Gamblers rely on luck. Advantage Players rely on having an Edge. An Edge, while never guaranteed for every single play, is consistent. As such, it beats luck every time.

Don't confuse an Advantage Player with a Cheat. An Advantage Player plays by the rules.

For example, in Roulette an Advantage Player might be one who has determined a wheel's bias and plays accordingly. Or one who has a tiny computer that can perform a real-time computation of ball speed verses wheel rotation and give you the probable wheel octet of the final ball drop in time to get your bets down. This is possible. It's been done. And the casinos know it. But if they change the rules too much to prevent this, even the gamblers won't come out any more to play. Then they're out of business.

A cheat, on the other hand, will pass-post his bets. That means using sleight-of-hand to increase the amount wagered on a winning bet after the outcome is known. Or use a Savannah move on the Roulette table to switch out a large bet for a small one on a losing wager, while leaving the large one to be paid off without suspicion when it wins. Or pull cards out of play at the card tables, waiting to reinsert them at a more profitable moment.

That is against the rules, although a good cheat can be surprisingly difficult to catch in any of these maneuvers. That's why casinos have TV cameras everywhere, along with pit bosses, undercover agents, outside detective agencies, and a few other specialists in their employ that they don't like to even mention by name. All of them employed to ensure that The House makes an "honest profit"—if there is such a thing.

The best way to beat a casino is when you're playing something that they don't believe can be beaten. If they don't believe it's possible to control the results of a dice toss in Craps, they won't stop you when you do exactly that. That's been done too—very successfully!

I play Blackjack. This is where my Edge resides.

* * * *

Blackjack is a strange game for a casino. Sometimes I wonder why they have it at all. It's not like Poker or Baccarat, where you play against other players while The House collects a safe percentage. Nor is it like Craps, where you hold control of your own fate by how you toss the dice. It isn't essentially random chance like a slot machine, video poker, Keno, or Roulette, just to name a few games that strive their best to be truly random.

Blackjack has a history. As the cards are dealt they are removed from future hands until the entire deck—or multiple-deck shoe—is reshuffled. It features some of the best odds for even a moderately skilled player who can follow simple instructions.

Just by playing Basic Strategy a player can cut the casino's edge to less than one percent. And then there are ways—legal and not—to improve that further.

Card counting in your head is not illegal, although the casinos would like you to believe otherwise. Try it on your iPhone and it may be a felony depending on the jurisdiction. Although that's not my Edge, card counting can give a skillful player an advantage better than the House has normally. A good counter can spank the casino virtually every time. Card counting teams often have had takes of over a hundred thousand on a single weekend. As a result, casinos both make it hard for counters to start with, and are expert at spotting their particular style of play.

And then there are the cheats: swapping cards in and out, marking cards, manipulating bets after the results are known, and even stacking decks and entire shoes—although these options often require a crooked dealer working for you.

The casinos have fought back. First they tried changing the rules, but the players left in droves. Even committed or recreational gamblers know a truly bad deal when they see it.

The next step was the introduction of six and eight deck shoes to make counting difficult, automatic shuffle machines, dealing all cards except the dealer's hole card face up without allowing the players to ever touch them, and intense surveillance of anyone who seems to be winning too much. A casino can always win too much, but a player had better not. If you think the casino is your friend who is simply interested in you having a good time, you are wrong.

Recently casinos have tried the continuously shuffling shoe. In this innovation, the shuffle machine and shoe are combined, with four decks in play. One deck is stacked waiting to be dealt, while the other three continuously shuffle themselves, adding cards to the ready deck as they are removed. Played cards are immediately placed back in the machine.

Despite the fact that there is no interruption of play now at all, these have proven immensely unpopular even compared to the traditional eight deck regular shoe, and lately they are being removed as fast as they were initially introduced.

Despite all this, Blackjack continues to succeed for the casino. The game is simple to understand, it's quick to play, and most players won't learn even Basic Strategy. Casinos continue to make a lot of money offering Blackjack—but not from me.

* * * *

When I play I do everything to convince them I'm not an Advantage Player. Because my Edge doesn't come from counting cards, I don't play like a card counter does. From the first hand of a newly shuffled shoe to the last hand dealt out of it my bet is exactly the same. A card counter varies their bet when the count favors them, or even has members of their team only enter the game when the count is highly favorable.

I don't play the minimum bet for long, like the counting member of a team does, waiting for the count to go positive and the big players to suddenly enter.

I never put my hands near the cards, or anywhere near my bet unless increasing it once play has started. I don't want to give any signals that I'm a cheat attempting to manipulate any aspect of the play. And I never bet with more than one color of chip at a time. That might raise suspicion of past-posting or Savanna setups.

I make sure that I never carry my cell phone—even when it's turned off—or anything else electronic on my person. Even my wristwatch is an old mechanical model—when I wear one at all. More than once the House Geek has sidled up against me, electronically sniffing to see if I have anything at all electronic on my person.

Since the late Seventies, a few players have taken wearable computers into casinos concealed on their bodies. Even when they're legal under the gaming laws, most casinos will Backroom you over this, and even get you arrested although the charges have been dropped every time. Others have smuggled in small TV cameras to photograph the cards to track play, or try to see the dealer's hole card. These methods are less legal.

Most such electronic devices can be detected by something as simple as an AM radio, and require bulky clothes to hide. I'm completely clean, and dress with as little an amount of room to conceal anything as I possibly can just so they'll realize that.

Sometimes when I'm on a streak they'll send the Coolers over as well. What's a Cooler? Someone with such bad luck—or karma, if you prefer that term—that they can chill a hot streak from ten feet away.

Yes, casinos actually believe this kind of thing. Or at least they won't take any chance that it might actually be true that some people are naturally lucky. This is all part of their Edge. But Coolers don't bother me. They can't touch my Edge. And I do feel sorry for them. They are some of the saddest people I've ever met.

One acquaintance of mine has his own system for deciding when to play. He's built himself a battery powered random event generator egg like those used in the Global Consciousness Project. He asserts that the bias in random values tells him when things are good, neutral, or very bad. He also swears that a Cooler anywhere nearby will knock it for a loop every time.

I never play at the same table with him, just in case he's ever busted and the goons are suspicious of anyone who might have been working with him. His device is completely legal and has nothing to do with the game itself. But casinos are renowned for being technologically illiterate Luddites and exceptionally small-minded over absolutely everything they don't understand.

In fact, I make it a point to never sit down and play with anybody I recognize from my past play. I don't want to look like part of any Blackjack team.

* * * *

I drink at the table, because I can play with several drinks in me. They're free because that's part of the casino's Edge. Drunk players make stupid mistakes—like increasing their bets when they're losing on the theory that you can't lose them all. And continuing to play when they should have left with their winnings long since. Casinos love to see gamblers drink, so I indulge them. It doesn't measurably affect my advantage.

And speaking of that theory that says you can't lose them all, it may be true, but playing even perfect Basic Strategy will lose you more hands than you win in the long run. The casino's Edge is about one half of a percent in a six-deck game where the dealer stands on all seventeens—and about two-tenths better when the dealer hits soft seventeens. This doesn't mean they win one more hand than the player out of every two hundred dealt. That percentage is measured in money. They'll win a number more hands than you will on average for every two hundred hands played.

The dealer will make his point (any seventeen or greater) four out of five times. And because they play by a fixed set of rules on when to hit, they don't make stupid player mistakes. Even when they do bust, you may have already busted first and gain nothing by their bust. And anyone who plays a consistent No Bust, or no split or double down, strategies will lose their money quite quickly.

A player's advantage comes in using his available options at the right moment. Splitting pairs under the right circumstances; doubling down on a good hand when the dealer's up card is hard for them to make; and blackjacks paying off at three to two.

Some casinos offer hand-dealt single-deck games that limit, or eliminate entirely, some or all of these advantages for the privilege of playing with a single deck the way the game once was played. Again, only a fool would give away that much of his advantage back to The House. But I see fools at those tables every time I play.

Over the long run a skilled player loses money much more slowly than an unskilled, impulsive gambler who is more remembered for having a short, hot streak. Still, an advantage player can take all of them to the cleaners. I typically win fifty-four percent of my hands—and far more than that money-wise. I could up that winning percentage by several percent, but above a certain point even the slowest casino will eventually realize I'm winning too often for even a good hot streak to explain. When you bleed them slowly, you can bleed them for a whole lot more in the long run.

* * * *

I don't try to act—or play—too stupid. Nobody's going to buy that act, or believe I'm having this much Beginner's Luck, forever. As a result, it helps to speak the language.

Just for your information, casinos are in the "gaming"—not "gambling"—business.

And when I say "I keep a stack of nickel checks as drink tokes on the table” the translation is, "I keep a stack of five dollar gaming chips as tips for the waitresses who bring me the 'free' drinks." While most states forbid using gaming chips for any other purchases (something about avoiding taxes on your winnings, I'm guessing), waitresses and dealers have no trouble taking them as tokes.

Why gambling is gaming, chips are checks, and tips are called tokes is something I may never understand. Fortunately you don't need to know this answer to play the game—and to take their money.

* * * *

Despite the fact that I'm welcome back at every casino I've taken at least once on the apparent theory that I'll simply lose it back to them the next visit, I don't repeat. I'm not going to lose it back to them next time, and I know eventually they'll figure that out.

Win too often one place and you can find yourself banned at all the casinos. Find yourself in the Griffin Detective Agency book of known cheats and it won't matter that no court has ever proven you've broken the rules. The casinos just won't let you play again.

Because the biggest corporations back the Strip casinos in Las Vegas, that's the place to play. They still make a profit even on the rare nights when I do play. I'll never break Las Vegas with the amount that one person can win playing Blackjack a few nights a year, but that's good. It's the ones that are on a mission to "Break Vegas" that get themselves caught. Along with those who bring in stupid accomplices who always seem to manage to trip them up in the end. That won't happen to me. I play alone.