Posted on 10/21/2022 6:29:09 PM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
When a gang of gambling cheats sussed out how to beat the house, they inadvertently highlighted a loophole from a shuffled deck. It took a magician-turned-mathematician to reveal how.
Their company manufactured precision card-shuffling machines for casinos. Thousands of their mechanical shufflers were in operation in Las Vegas and around the world. The rental fees brought in millions of dollars each year, and the company was listed on the New Stock Exchange.
However, the executives had recently discovered that one of their machines had been hacked by a gang of hustlers. The gang used a hidden video camera to record the workings of the card shuffler through a glass window. The images, transmitted to an accomplice outside in the casino parking lot, were played back in slow motion to figure out the sequence of cards in the deck, which was then communicated back to the gamblers inside. The casino lost millions of dollars before the gang were finally caught.
... they needed to be sure that their machine properly shuffled the deck. They needed Persi Diaconis.
Diaconis, a magician-turned-mathematician at Stanford University, is regarded as the world's foremost expert on the mathematics of card shuffling. Throughout the surprisingly large scholarly literature on the topic, his name keeps popping up like the ace of spades in a magician's sleight-of-hand tric
...Diaconis doesn't care for gambling much himself – he says there are better and more interesting ways to make a living. But he doesn't begrudge players who try to get an edge by using their brains.
"Thinking isn't cheating," he says. "Thinking is thinking."
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Interesting. In poker rooms the dealers shuffle the deck of course, but also in-between hands they spread the cards out on the table and circle them around each other before stacking them and shuffling (they also cut the deck a few times as they shuffle). These machines can’t do that, or at least aren’t designed to do that.
> Card counting, is a difficult way to make some money. <
Well, in my 20s I spent considerable time at home practicing card counting. It became a pastime of sorts. Then I took a trip to Atlantic City. I was full of confidence when I first sat down to a blackjack table. I got wiped out.
I don’t think card counting theory was at fault. I just ran into a streak of bad luck. But I learned my lesson. No more trips to the Atlantic City blackjack tables. My gambling money went into index mutual funds instead.
Casinos love gamblers that have a “system “ unless it somewhat works then it is blatant cheating.
The z house always wins
Other than a Right Tackle, it’s hard to think of someone more gay than a ‘serious’ gambler.
> The house always wins <
In the long run, yep. Someone must pay for all those bright lights and flashy signs. And that someone is you.
> Casinos love gamblers that have a “system “ unless it somewhat works then it is blatant cheating. <
So true. I’ve seen people watching the numbers at a roulette wheel. They are waiting for a number that is “due” to come up. But the roulette wheel has no memory. Numbers are never due to come up. Casino employees let such folks be.
On the other hand, card counting at the blackjack table works. So if you are are suspected of card counting, you will be banned from the casino. Out you go!
I promise that I have stopped watching that video after ten viewings.
I am trying to figure out how to make it my background on the screen.
His interest in cards began with a chance encounter in 1958. At age 13, at Tannen's Magic Emporium in New York City's Times Square, Diaconis met Alex Elmsley, a soft-spoken Scottish computer scientist and magician who had mastered the "perfect shuffle". Sometimes called the "faro shuffle" or simply "the technique", the perfect shuffle involves splitting a deck into two stacks of exactly 26 cards each and perfectly weaving them together like a zipper, alternately interleaving one card from each hand. Very few people can do it correctly in less than 10 seconds. Diaconis is one.
The perfect shuffle has been used by gamblers and magicians for centuries because it gives the illusion of randomly shuffling the cards. But it is far from random. In fact, if you perform the same sequence of perfect shuffles eight times in a row, the deck will magically restore its original order.
Diaconis likes to demonstrate the perfect shuffle by taking a new deck of cards and writing the word "RANDOM" in thick black marker on one side. As he performs his sleight of hand with the cards, the letters get mixed up, appearing now and then in ghostly form, like an imperfectly tuned image on an old TV set. Then, after he does the eighth and final shuffle, the word rematerialises on the side of the deck. The cards are in their exact original sequence, from the ace of spades to the ace of hearts.
Back in Tannen's Magic Emporium, Elmsley explained the subtle mathematics behind the trick. Imagine that you number a new deck of cards from one to 52, where one is the card at the top of the deck and 52 is the card at the bottom. As you perform the perfect shuffle, cards move to new positions in the deck. For example, the card originally at position two will move to position three, while the card at position three will move to position five, and the card at position 27 will come back up to position two, and so on.
Prof Diaconis is now 77, and still consulting with casinos and Internet search engine companies.
I am way over 10 as I want to be sure I understand how that scam is done.
If I recall correctly, besides his ability at shuffling cards, Diaconis could also flip a coin and have it come up ‘heads’ 50 times in a row - so if you’re using coin flips to illustrate randomness, you don’t want Diaconis flipping your coin.
I had a fabulous cleaning woman who had been banned from every casino in Vegas. She rearranged a lot of things in my house and told me to call her if I forgot where she’d put them because she absolutely knew. I wasn’t her only client either.
I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the term “earworm” for a song that keeps playing in your head. Well, that video is probably going to be the video version of an earworm for the next few days for all of us who watched it more than twice.
I salute you for your methodical and scientific precision.
—”I am way over 10 as I want to be sure I understand how that scam is done.”
YES!
And I put on my good glasses and watched on my best monitor.
You gotta be dedicated to pull it off, many distractions.
—”No more trips to the Atlantic City blackjack tables. My gambling money went into index mutual funds instead.”
A friend prefers the track.
He says no waiting on the markets, in less than two minutes the results are in.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.