Blackjack Card Counting

Between the cheats and the honest players of online casinos and land-based casinos, there is a grey area inhabited by players who are breaking no laws, but are treated as sworn enemies by the casinos. We look at one UK casino coup that paid off - eventually. Everyone recognizes an honest player - they pay their money, they take their chances and, if they're lucky, they walk off with their winnings. And everyone recognizes a cheat too. But in between the two is a class of gamblers whom the casinos would love to brand as cheats but can't, because the law says they are doing nothing wrong. Until recently the most famous example was the blackjack card counters - gangs of quick-witted mathematicians who reversed the casino's edge by performing complex mental arithmetic around which cards had gone and which were left in the deck.

From the time the first team of baby-faced MIT grad students appeared and started cleaning up in this way, the casinos have been banning them and finding ways of making their lives difficult. But they can't prosecute them, as the law says they're not interfering with the game in any way - they're just using their brains. With cards 'shuffled' after each hand, this is something online casinos do not have to worry about. Card counting is a method that pushes on an open door - of all the casino games, blackjack is about the only one where skilful play can reverse the house edge. But in 2004, the successes of the counters were eclipsed by an audacious coup in the most mathematically unforgiving of all games: roulette.