Chances Are...

It’s all fun and games until the odds aren’t in your favor. Until you lose track of the count. Until you lose track of your mind.

They should ban mathematicians from casinos. Well, they do sometimes – you’ve been kicked out of three casinos in Vegas for counting cards. You didn’t mean it. But how can someone tell a mathematician to stop counting something? It’s like telling a fish not to swim. Especially with an eidetic memory – you, not the fish. Fish have like a three second attention span. And even if they had an eidetic memory, what would they remember? Just a lot of water, maybe the rainbow-colored gravel if it were your goldfish. Wait, we’re getting off track here. 

Here's what happened: a couple of your friends took you to Atlantic City – again, knowing you’re not allowed back in Vegas – for your birthday. Actually, birthday weekend because you couldn’t miss a Stochastic Processes midterm on your actual birthday, and you go to grad school in New York so it’s a quick enough trip. Actually again, you were supposed to spend your birthday with your girlfriend but she’s dumped you four days earlier, so you were kinda down on your luck and therefore your friends decided you needed a pick-me-up consisting of fast money and a lot of drinks to change your luck. Actually to the third power, your friends also wanted to take advantage of your math-y brain to hit a jackpot – they’re both molecular biology PhDs so they needed someone better versed in probabilities than in microbes. 

So here you find yourself among glitter, glitz, and gaudy glamour everywhere. A wave of heat and the strong sting of liquor hits your face as you enter the casino, the revolving door spinning you through like a roulette wheel. Dice rattle on felt, slick cards flutter, and Sinatra’s “Luck be a Lady” plays somewhere – sadly, that makes you think of your recent ex and debate if it would be too desperate to leave her another message. Your friends take advantage of your distraction and order a round of martinis before pulling you over to the first open slot machine. As they feed an endless stream of coins into the machine, you rattle off some statistic about the chances of hitting triple cherries. Eventually, they hit a small jackpot to slightly offset their sunk cost, satisfied enough to move on to the card games, a.k.a., the reason they brought you. 

Blackjack’s your thing. You won a nifty profit several times in Vegas before they caught you, even managed to cash in a couple chips before they threw you out that last time. You’re careful, methodical; your utility function is very concave which is the fancy way an Econ friend told you just means you’re very risk averse; the eidetic memory isn’t necessary but since you’ve tried to teach your friends and they’ve had difficulty catching on to the system, it doesn’t hurt either. 

Your friends sit you down at the table, order you a shot so you don’t lose your nerve, and let you work your magic. A lot of people think card counting is a savant-level skill. Sure, it takes a lot of patience and focus, but the main rule to remember is: high card good, low card bad.

Zen Count – quite a false calm – is your best strategy, with a side count on the aces. Though it’s been a while, your blackjack brain kicks in right as the dealer puts down your first card. 6 card, +2. 8 card, 0. Cards flurry across the felt as your mind sorts them cleanly. 10 card, double down – that increases the expected value. -1 for the ace. This is a no-brainer. Dealer busts and you collect your winnings for the round, your friends cheering you on. 

The small pile of chips steadily grows at your side. You’re subtle in your bets. Per Jersey regulation, you can’t actually get banned, but no reason to get busted too early – ha, busted…get it? A jack and a king subtract four from the count and you stay, another win as the dealer gets 15. Soon your chips start growing exponentially. Your friends start to get daring and tipsy, but you’re cool and level-headed – at least you think so, it’s been a couple of drinks for you too and girl who reminded you way too much of your ex just walked by, but your side count of the aces is clear, which is the harder thing to do. A sequence of -2, -2, -2, +1, 0, 0, +1,+1,+1 – uh oh, did you double count a +1? You should be expecting a low card next, but the dealer puts down a king and busts you. This is not good. 

Quickly, you try to recalibrate the count to the last place you knew it was right and work back up. Should be somewhere around -16, right? Yeah, that seems right. Confident enough, you put down a relatively large bet. First card’s a 9, and there should be an elevated ratio of tens and aces so you double down. 5 card.

That wasn’t supposed to happen. Distracted, you call for another card and it busts the hand again.

You curse in your mind, and your friends peer over curiously at you. Trying to compose yourself, you play the next hand safe, earning back some of your chips. But wait! Ugh, you forgot to keep count! It was -16 last you checked, right? And then the 5…wait, there was something before the 5, what was it? How many cards have passed since then? 

The numbers get tangled in your brain, and you lose badly on your next bet. You just lost 70% of what you earned ten minutes ago, and you mentally kick yourself for keeping track of the 70% but not of the current count. 

That’s it, last round. Last round and salvage what you have left. 

“Hit me,” you say to a 7, getting a 5 on top. “Hit me,” you repeat, hoping to go low to mid range. 

“King – sorry, that’s a bust,” the dealer says, and you hang your head, defeated.

“I’m done,” you tell your friends, getting up from the table without even gathering your chips. "It's all fun and games until you lose it all." Again, trying not to think of her...or the pile of chips you just forfeited.

“Not bad. Kinda lost it there at the end, but not a bad showing,” one of your friends clasps your shoulder and you give him a strange look.

“You’re not serious? That was terrible.”

“Dude, what are you talking about, there’s like $7000 here,” your other friend hands you the chips. “I mean, true, at some point, I think you were at like $45,000 so that stings a bit, but not bad.”

You look at the chips in disbelief, sure you were down to your final $100 or so. You must have lost track of the count and your winnings. 

“We gotta get you back in the game. Play a couple more games like that and we’re set for life,” your friends chatter cheerfully around you, but your mind is already away calculating other things. $7000 is still enough to get you through the end of your lease for the year, and maybe enough for a bouquet of flowers to convince your girl to take you back.