The Geeky Asian Guy Blog

With the recent release of the Hollywood feature “21,” Geeky Asian Guys everywhere are locking themselves in the bathroom for hours at a time.  No, it’s not what you think.  (Or maybe it is what you think…)

They’re all practicing the art of card-counting — you know, that thing where you keep track of the cards at blackjack so that you can Beat the House, thereby (1) proving you’re not a loser, (2) pissing off your parents, and (3) becoming sexually irresistible, all at the same time.  (Well, two out of three isn’t so bad…)

Here are my own thoughts about blackjack and card-counting:

1. If you play too much blackjack, you may turn into a white person.  At least that’s what happened to the guy in ”21″ — he started out life as Chinese American Jeff Ma, and then he morphed into British-born Jim Sturgess.  Rumor has it that Ma wasn’t unduly perturbed by the part going to a Caucasian actor — in his view, it would have been way worse to have been portrayed by some Korean guy.
2. The best way to avoid getting barred at a casino is to lose a lot of money.  Casinos love bad card counters.  Heck, if you’re a bad card counter, they’ll let you sit at the table with a Cray supercomputer.
3. The correlative to No. 2 is that you don’t have to count cards at all to get barred.  Just split some tens, vary your bets between $5 and $500, and win a couple of thousand dollars — you’ll be on your way out the door in no time.
4. The difference between being a good card counter and a bad card counter is surprisingly small — one or two mistakes per hundred hands will totally wipe out any edge you may have over the house.  But at least they’ll comp your room after you blow all your gas money.
5. Let’s say you have a 1 percent edge over the house.  That means that, if your average bet is $25 per hand (that’s the green chips), you expect to win, on the average, 25 cents per hand.  At that rate, you might as well (gaak) apply yourself at college and become a CPA.
6. The standard deviation is disturbingly high.  Come on — we all know some idiot playing a no-bust strategy who leaves winners at the end of the night, despite giving a 5+ percent edge to the house.
7. In fact, the standard deviation is so high that, without unbelievable discipline, you will have no idea on any given night how much of your success (or failure) is due to luck or to your card-counting skills (or lack thereof).
8. Don’t use your fingers or your chips to help you keep count.  Oh, and avoid talking to yourself.
9. Further to No. 8 — if you flame out, don’t explain to everyone else at the table how come you should have won and they should have lost.
10. Finally, if you manage to win a million dollars, give a couple of bucks to the guy next to you for gas money — it may be me.