• radix
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    41 year ago

    Why would counting cards be forbidden? I feel like it’s the same as using a phone calculator in the grocery store to calculate the best unit price. Is it because it’s a casino and there are vastly different quantities of money at stake? As you can probably tell, I don’t know much about casinos.

    • @KazuyaDarklight
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      121 year ago

      The point of a casino is for the house to get more from player losses, on average, than players get from the casino via wins. Card counting cuts into profits. At small scale it doesn’t really matter too much, and that’s why they discourage it, to make sure it stays small scale.

      • radix
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        51 year ago

        I see, it’s that there’s a direct conflict of interest, whereas a grocery store doesn’t exactly profit from you making a non-optimal choice of yogurt brand.

    • @[email protected]
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      71 year ago

      Companies can set their own policies as long as they’re not actually illegal/unconstitutional.

      If a supermarket wanted to forbid using a phone/calculator or camera, they can almost certainly do so.

      Other side of the world, but I’m pretty sure I heard of someone getting kicked out of a supermarket here in NZ because they worked for the competition and were copying down all the prices. I don’t remember if the competition regulator ended up making a statement on it

      • radix
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        1 year ago

        Oh dear. That goes against the point of capitalism which is that competition makes for allocative efficiency.

    • @[email protected]
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      41 year ago

      Its allowed. Using a tool to help you IS NOT.

      Betting table max, 3 hands, out of nowhere is a big indication you’re counting. It is, after all, a betting strategy.

      And casinos stop it because if they allow it it could shut the whole place down. A business that loses money doesn’t stay open for long.

      I’ve been a shift manager at casinos for years. I can tell the counters a mile away. I can deal a shoe and tell you the count at any point. I don’t kick em out, but I’ll flat bet them. Say the betting spread is $5-$500, right? They’ve played 10 hands at $5, now they bet $500. I’ll walk over and place a new placard on the table, $25-$25. They can only bet $25 a hand, no variation.

      Anyone who’s there to press an advantage will walk immediately. And then we’ll make a dossier on them and it’ll get shared, nationally.

      Yep. It is like that. Would you expect less, c’mon.

    • @[email protected]
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      41 year ago

      If you use a calculator at a store, the store still makes money. No store is gonna sell at a loss regardless of the calculator. A casino deals in odds, and shifting the odds in your favor is not in the best interest of the casino for obvious reasons. They can’t stop you from thinking, but they can decide to stop playing with you at any point.

      • radix
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        21 year ago

        So it’s that the grocery store never risks losing money to a singular customer. That makes sense.