Advantage Play

In this post, I am going to offer my opinion on the top five opportunities APs will be seeking out in 2014. First, I offer a disclaimer. APs are continuously scouting, researching and innovating. They exploit one-time opportunities. They burn out games. They negotiate special circumstances.

How can a player legally beat a casino? When this question is asked of the typical gambler-in-the-street, the answer is almost universally “card counting blackjack.” When asked about card counting, this gambler talks about how smart you have to be and mentions the MIT team, but has no idea of what is actually involved in being a card counter.

One of my long time clients knows a lot about California card rooms (see this post and this post).

Earlier this week I met at length with executives from one of the corporations that back wagers in California card rooms.  In anticipation of these meetings, I wrote this blog article. The main topic of these meetings was advantage play: what is possible and what they can do about it.

California has two types of entities that offer casino table games. There are the Native American casinos that operate Las Vegas-style games. The gambler who visits these casinos will find a full slate of card-based table games that play in every way like the same games in Las Vegas and elsewhere.

Once a year, in preparation for G2E (the Global Gaming Exposition), I take a walk through a host of Las Vegas casinos. I have two primary objectives for this walk. The first is to survey the changing landscape of proprietary table games and electronic versions.  The second is to consider security and advantage play issues for these variants.

When I heard Don Johnson (DJ) speak at the World Game Protection Conference in 2013, it became clear that DJ was an advantage player playing at the highest level.