2min chapter

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Counting Cards & Quantitative Thinking

StarTalk Radio

CHAPTER

Using Quantified Thinking to Improve Your Blackjack Strategy

We were careful not to break the law. You were running computer simulations. So as your Blackjack players would be comfortable and not dazzled by a casino environment. It wasn't those cards here and advanced techniques because those ended up not working most of the time honestly. They only worked in certain situations. At the end of the day, we made the money to do everything the well-known card-comitant techniques have already been written about. But we did it more diligently. I think running simulations to predict how much it should have won in order to kind of track what really happened. Then running these examinations basically where in our own classroom environment,. We would try to distract people.

00:00
Speaker 3
Smith and Wesson, the piece for aces, but not so much in
Speaker 2
the corporate run, public company run Vegas of the night in the Vegas of the 60s and 70s. Yeah, I would have wouldn't have worked very well. And we didn't play a lot internationally. And there were some places where we probably shouldn't have played. But you think the
Speaker 7
stuff
Speaker 3
we did wasn't able to, we didn't, we
Speaker 2
didn't violate any rules to the game. We didn't cheat. That was just important because we didn't get kicked out all the time, caught all the time. So had they done anything illegal, they were prosecuted us, certainly. So we were careful not
Speaker 4
to break the law. You were running computer simulations. You were replicating live casino environments. So as your Blackjack players would be comfortable and not dazzled by a casino environment. I mean, this basically is almost, when you say you analyzed results, you looked at things and you weren't just looking at successes, you were looking at failures. Now, then if you apply quantified thinking, how do you approach this group of data and then bring
Speaker 3
it forward successfully for you? Yeah, that's a really good question. I'm giving an example because that's
Speaker 2
some of the work that actually distinguished us from some of the other groups that were in the successful. It wasn't those cards here and advanced techniques because those ended up not working most of the time honestly. They only worked in certain situations. At the end of the day, we made the money to do everything the well-known card-comitant techniques have already been written about. But we did it more diligently. I think running simulations to predict how much it should have won in order to kind of track what really happened. Then running these examinations basically where in our own classroom environment, we would try to distract people. We would have one person test and another person, but someone else would be distracting them, trying to talk to them, trying to offer them drinks or whatever happens in the real casino. We would track how many
Speaker 3
mistakes people would make.

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