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I Expect to Win with 20

Max is not what one would call a "computer person" but he does use them at work occasionally so the thrill of the Internet was bound to get him sooner or later. Just the other day, he called:

"Ace", he said (all my gambling friends who know what I do call me 'Ace'), "my computer arrived and now I need help".

"Glad to help, Max", I replied. "I'm on my way."

Max lives not too far from me over in Illinois, so it was just a 15-minute drive and I was there. Like I said, Max isn't Mr. Computer, but he is a damn good poker player (mostly Hold 'Em) and he has a good working knowledge of both Blackjack and Video Poker. Like so many poker players, it's tough to bluff Max because he's not one to take on a fight for the sake of the fight itself. If the odds favor folding the hand, he doesn't let pride get in the way...he folds. But, give him the 'nuts' in a game and you're going to think you're playing against a bulldog with a case of lockjaw, because Max can be tenacious. You might think that these traits would make Max rather easy to read at the table, but they don't. Just when you think the fight is out of him, the bulldog shows up. Max isn't easy to read, but Max is cool and I'm glad he's my friend.

It didn't take long to get Max's computer configured and, naturally, I set up this site as his 'home' page. The topic turned to Internet gambling:

"Max, I found a great Blackjack game at a 'Net casino with incredibly favorable rules....."

"And the catch is?", he said.

"Well, the rules are really great for the 'play-money' game and I'm curious to see if their 'real-money' game is the same. But, since I live in Missouri, it appears that it's illegal for me to gamble for real money at an Internet casino, so..."

He interrupted: "What a wimp state. You can drive five minutes from your house and gamble yourself into a stupor at a Missouri casino, but you can't do it on the 'Net?"

"Looks that way", I replied.

Max went on: "So, because I live in the land of the free, I can, is that it?"

"Yep."

"What's the deal on this?", Max asked.

I told Max about the game at "Bet2Win.cc" (see my article on this in "The Edge" series at the GameMaster's Casino Directory) and we went there to play the 'free' game.

"No way that game is available for real money", Max declared after a few minutes of playing it.

"Only one way to find out", I replied.

"Well, you're right about that", Max said as he pulled out his Visa.

The casino is Java-based so it didn't take long for Max to set up an account and deposit some $$$. I showed him how to turn off his sound card, which appears to be necessary to stop computers from "locking up" at Java-based casinos. (It had happened to me when I was playing the play-money game.) We chose the $1 four-deck game and went in to play.

The first thing we noticed is that the vast majority of all the very favorable rules in the play-money game were missing from the real-money game. For example, there's no double after split in the real-money game and little quirks like split Aces which are hit with a 10 paying 3 to 2 were gone. There is no Help section at this operation, so we had to discover all this by playing.

"Basically", Max said, "these guys have set up a 'carrot' in the free game and you get the 'stick' when you come inside."

"Sure looks that way", I said, "but there's one thing I want to check before we give this up." It happened a few hands later. Max was dealt an 8 and a 3 and the dealer had a 6 showing. We doubled, caught a 10 and the dealer flipped up another 6 and stopped playing. Max was paid his win and then the "Deal" button lit up.

"Did I just see what I thought I saw?", asked Max.

"Yep. I saw this in the play-money game", I replied, " and it appears to be a flaw in the programming of the game. A doubled 21 is an automatic winner."

This "flaw" worked only when a bet was doubled. If the player hit a hand and got a 21, it played normally. But, as we discovered, if the bet was doubled it would win, even against a dealer's "Blackjack".

"What's that little twist to the game worth, Ace?", Max asked.

"Something, that's for sure", I replied, "but I haven't really figured it out yet. I wanted to see if it still existed in the real-money game, first."

Let me explain the rules of the real-money game here. It is, as I mentioned earlier, a four-deck game (a six-deck version is also available), the dealer stands on A-6, you may double on any first two cards, early surrender is available against all dealer up cards, no double after split, but Aces may be resplit AND re-hit, insurance is also available. The dealer doesn't "peek" under 10s or Aces, so both bets are lost if you double or split pairs and the dealer has a "natural". If you figure that re-hitting Aces is worth about 0.14% to the player, then Stanford Wong's "BJ Edge" software calculates a player advantage of 0.21% for this game. To that, the value of the "automatic win" has to be added and I guesstimated that it's worth maybe 0.20%, so the player has about a 0.40% edge over the casino. Since a doubled 21 won even against a dealer's natural, it somewhat negates the casinos' edge from the "European no-hole card" rule, though I only felt comfortable in advising Max to double 11 against a 10, but not against an Ace. That proved to be prophetic.

Up to this point, Max had played maybe 50 hands and he was down 2 or 3 bets. Nothing unusual about that and the software was really zipping along. I estimated that Max was playing at a rate of about 300 hands per hour and that's as fast as it gets. Players who are used to playing at a rate of 60 hands per hour (typical rate at a table with 6 or 7 players) in a brick-and-mortar casino often feel like they've been cheated when they move to a table by themselves and begin playing at a rate of 200 or 250 hands per hour. Since they're now making 3 or 4 times the bets in the same time frame, any losses are magnified and that 10-bet bankroll disappears rapidly. The easiest conclusion to draw is that the dealer cheats, but it's more likely the fact that they went from betting $300 an hour to betting $1000 an hour or more.

So, at the rate Max was playing, whatever was going to happen was going to happen fast. And, sure enough, the losses started to mount.

"These guys cheat", declared Max, after having one more 20 get beat by the dealer's 5-card 21.

"I don't know, Max", I answered, "I've had that happen plenty of times in 'real' casinos".

"Maybe I'm spoiled, Ace", he replied, "but I expect to win with 20. Whether a20 was dealt to me, or I doubled to get it or I hit to it, I expect to win".

He went on: "Sure, I don't expect a lot out of 17 and I know that 18 isn't all that good a hand. Nineteens are pretty good and I know for a fact that I'll win most of my Blackjacks, but let me tell you...I expect to win with 20 and that's not happening here."

Like I said earlier, Max calls 'em as he sees 'em and it was difficult to argue with him. Over the course of the next several hours we saw some pretty amazing things, yet there was no way I could prove they were cheating.

"Look, Ace", Max said at one point, "if you were in a 'real' casino and the dealer was pulling cards like this, would you still be sitting at the table?"

"Max", I replied, "I never let superstition or feelings or intuition or any of that emotional BS get into my game. If the table's not crowded, the pit critters aren't paying any attention to me and the dealer's not hustling tips, then I'd stay. If losing in a short period of time made me change tables, all my time would be spent walking and not playing. So, to answer your question: no, I wouldn't leave."

"I would", he said.

"Let me ask you, Ace" Max continued, "Is this the only casino on the Internet? I already know it's not, so don't answer. Sure, the rules are good here and the software plays like a dream, but there are just too many Aces under the dealer's sixes and too many dealer 20s when I have one for me to want to stay here."

I tried to explain to Max about probability and variance (not like he didn't already understand them), but as I said, the guy is part bulldog.

"Hey, I understand all that, but I have a bad feeling about this place, mostly because I have never seen cards like this before in my life. I think they cheat. Add it up: they have an obviously-rigged game in the play-money part, so what makes you think they can't rig this part?"

It was hard to argue with that, but I also know that I have had terrible losing sessions at brick-and-mortar casinos that I knew were honest. I did a quick mental calculation of Max's play and came to the conclusion that he was losing at a rate of about 4%. That is very much within the realm of possibility for an honest game. In fact, the worst you're likely to do is lose at a rate of about 15%, so Max was just approaching what we call the "two standard deviation" level and our sample size was only about 1000 hands.

I had to go, but Max wouldn't let me pay off his losses.

"No need for that, man", he said. "Plus, I'm going to stay after these guys and see if this straightens out. After all, you could be right. I'll let you know."

Max called me yesterday and said that he had played about 4000 hands total, all with the same bet and lost 150 bets.

"Lost too many of those 20s, Ace", he said.

Like I said, it can happen in an honest game, so I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

See you here next time.

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