Blackjack

Years ago I used to play blackjack. As with strip clubs there was a regular group of people who played every night.

Blackjack is a house game unless a player count cards.

Therefore, I learned how to count cards so the advantage would be in my favor. I also learned a great deal about the theory of the game to verify the accuracy of the card counters games. I wrote computer program to run simulations to verify the accuracy of card counting (in case it was all an elaboare sham). The claims were accurate. All the number checked out.

I was easily the most knowledge blackjack player at the table.

But a strange thing would happen: When I would play correctly, other players would lecture me on how my play was wrong (and screwing things up for them).

They had all kinds of nutty ideas none of which could stand up to 20 second of logical analysis.

And they were losing players. I would ask them if they made money and they said that of course they did. All of them. None of them ever admitted to losing money or not understanding the game. How did the house make money if they were all winning players?

I would try everything in my power to explain to them how they were wrong. I would make the explainations as simple as possible. I would explain how I had studied the game and they would just laugh. "Those books are all nosense and just written by the casinos to dupe suckers into thinking they can make money". (To be fair there are indeed some books on how to beat Blackjack that are indeed non-sense, but these can spotted if you understand math and can program a computer.)

I would explain that I had run simulations to prove the accuracy of the claims in the books and they would tell me that there was probably a bug in my program.

Ultimately I just stopped trying to explain and justify myself to these people. I was in the right and I knew it. I had real world evidence to back it up, and no explanation would be good enough for them. I should have known better. Ultimately there was more at stake than them trying to get a true understanding of the game.

They didn't want to admit that some young kid could figure this stuff out when their "25 years of experience" were obviously superior.

Superior my ass! What they ultimately wanted was to indulge in their addiction and have no contact with reality.

So ultimately, when they would tell me how I did not understand the game, instead of trying to explain it to them, I would just say "I don't care". That they understood that.

My TUSCL account expires on 1/14/2006. I will not be renewing.