As early as page 11 of The 21^st-Century CardCounter, Colin Jones mentions the monolithic truth of the universe: “theteam’s performance was consistently lower than the math predicted.” Such hasbeen the experience of every team in the history of AP, and every solo cardcounter, too.

When teams look at their spreadsheet and see the stark gap between AV (Actual Value) and EV (Expected Value), they have a puzzled look like this is some great mystery. The only mystery is why rookie teams ignore the answer that I’m about to explain for the nth time. [PRO TIP FTW: use “nth” the next time you play Hangman.]

There are four answers given for “underperformance.” The firstis the scapegoat given by APs in denial (usually the first three years of acareer, and extending to an entire career for the degen-cum-fake-AP): variance.I would like to make a word cloud of the online posts made by rookies, andcompare it to the word cloud of successful veterans. In the rookie’s wordcloud: “EV”, “one spot or two”, “side count”, “cheating”, “optimal bet ramp”, “6:5”,“side bet”, “VARIANCE”, “3 s.d.”, “facial recognition”. In the veteran’s wordcloud: “exposure”, “BP”, “chip inventory”, “CTR”, “phone call”, “6:5”, “verbals”,“NERSESIAN”.

By aggregating the performance of many players, teams like CJ’scan get a big enough sample size to see that underperformance isn’t just badluck. The AV line on the graph is consistently below the EV line, and the gapjust widens. I have an announcement, my readers: The time has come …

IT’S TIME TO REJECT THE NULL! The “unlucky” players have animplicit null hypothesis (“the null”) that their hourly EV is a certain amount,say, $100/hour. When “bad luck” inevitably occurs (of course, they call this “negativevariance”), they calculate and re-calculate and re-calculate the EV ofdifferent scenarios and game conditions to answer the question “How unlucky wasI?” At this point I can’t say they are mis-using software, because the softwareserves its purpose if the AP now draws the right conclusion from what thesoftware is telling them. The software says, “If your null hypothesis is true—meaningyou really are playing a $100/hour game—then you have apparently suffered a -3s.d. event. You are 3 standard deviations below EV.”

At this moment, a data scientist with no ego in the game wouldsay, “Hmm, I doubt that I happen to have observed a -3 s.d. event. Probably mynull hypothesis isn’t true.” The in-denial “AP” says, “I’m the unluckiestplayer who ever played this game. You guys have no idea what it’s like to bethis unlucky. The software won’t tell me whether I was born unlucky or whetherit’s something I contracted by being around all these losers in the casino.” Willit take a 4-s.d. event for these APs to reject the null? For most purposes,scientists reject the null at 3 s.d. (or 5 s.d. for some applications wherelife-and-death might be in play), and they look for a hypothesis that betterexplains the data, such as: “My EV is $50/hour.”

When you cut the EV in half, suddenly the graph looksperfect! Voila! Mystery solved! TML.

So our question evolves from “Why is our AV so far below EV?”to “Why is our real-world EV so far below the on-paper/computer EV?” This questionis also not a mystery. I promised four sources of underperformance, and wedispatched the first—variance—as bogus. But the next three are real, thoughgenerally unseen (hence “dark matter”).

A real issue facing every team is skimming. Its many formsare rampant in the AP community. I know you may not believe that, and I didn’teither, but when your data sample grows as big as mine, you, too, will acceptskimming as an inconvenient truth. (The response, “That’s why I play solo,” is anoverreaction taken mainly by rationalizing, arrogant, social misfits.) I’llhave much more to say about skimming in later posts, but as far as CJ’s book, Iwish CJ had a chapter about it. Not only do I have a voyeuristic curiosity, butit might benefit all of us to see how a sophisticated AP team deals with the problem.

That said, I understand that CJ wouldn’t want to inflametensions within the AP community (we all know each other here) by publiclyouting ex-teammates who are suspected of skimming. Every author has a vision ofwhat the book should be. If the author’s vision is “uplifting, inspiring docudrama”is that what the Bible is supposed to be?), then we can forgive the omissionof dirty laundry. (But maybe a paragraph or two in the next edition discussingskimming in the abstract? Just throwin’ that out there.)

Anyway, spanning all AP teams, maybe skimming accounts for 10% of real-world underperformance, maybe none if you have a solid crew, maybe more if you’re the West Coast Grinders (who knows? No one talks about WCG.) Let’s get to the bigger causes of underperformance.

Many card counters obsess over bet spreads, findingfavorable rules, and playing with cover. And those are all worthwhile. But veryfew card counters I’ve met consider the massive impact of rounds per hour.

Yeah, I should have put quotation marks around that lastparagraph. It’s from p. 124 of CJ’s book, but he nailed it so hard there, thatI thought plagiarizing it was the move.

APs run sims assuming 100 rounds/hour for blackjack, and perhaps50 rounds/hour for carnival games. Where did those numbers come from? They makethe arithmetic simpler. That’s like saying, “let’s just use 3 for the value ofpi, because it makes the arithmetic simpler. Actually, the value 2 is easierstill.” But those benchmark figures could be way off for the game at hand. Forcarnival games, sometimes only 20 rounds/hour is realistic, with sustained 50-60rounds per hour possible only under the juiciest conditions—a heads-up gamewhere the dealer is maxing out the machine (the hand is over and the dealer hasto wait for the machine to finish shuffling the other deck), with no fills,card changes, or repeated buy-ins from losing. For recurring targets, I like tocount the number of hands in an hour, and use that to inform game selection onfuture trips.

CJ spent the time to do an experiment tallying blackjackgame speed under different conditions. The results appear in a chart on page 129in the section “The Most Overlooked Way to Increase EV as a Card Counter.”Speed is so important that a spotter in a high-edge game might forgo a marginalsplit if the extra time (dealers can be very slow to re-arrange all the cardsand bets on a cramped layout) would sacrifice another round.

So the underperformance is 10% skim and 40% speed, but whatabout the other 50%? I’ve got bad news for you. Your game needs work, kid. Oh,you’re in the Blackjack Hall of Fame already? Yeah, well, your game needs work,old man.

It’s possible that I’ve seen more APs on a table thananyone, because every time I play there’s another AP at the table! Fromobserving my own teammates over the years, including numerous Hall of Famers, Iknow how common errors are. Errors are rampant. I’d estimate that a rookiemakes some mistake every five minutes, and simple failure of the Raindrop Testwould mean a mistake on every hand.

On page 15, CJ notes: “When we re-tested the entire team,more than half the players couldn’t pass the test they’d previously aced.” Andthat’s on top of the fact that in the wild, there are many ways to screw upthat the at-home test won’t pick up. When there’s actual money on the line, agrumpy suit sweating blood, a toke-hustling dealer, and a vigilante “we-don’t-touch-soft-18or split Tens” degen lynch mob, does the counter make the EV-maximizing move?

The 3-s.d. guys online would say they aren’t makingmistakes, and sometimes even say that they had a friend check them out. That’sall nonsense, of course. There’s a big difference between a test that someoneprepares for, and a pop-quiz. I do pop quizzes. I sneak up on my teammates andwatch them from behind. I count down the card counters who sit at my table. I playwhile other players at the table are trying to HC. I’ve even been at a tableplaying my game while two card counters (who were wonging out of negatives),oblivious to who I am, were standing behind me discussing the book BeyondCounting (a very amusing conversation!).

I can guarantee that every AP out there is making mistakesthey’re not even aware of. We could start with strategy. Does an AP really knowthe strategy for the game at hand? I recently developed some practice softwarefor my crew, for the very games that we play every day. Without extensivepractice on the software, none of us could get a perfect test of merely 33hands. And I’m quite confident that anyone who doesn’t have access to such softwarewould be a disaster.

For a HC player, we could talk about the weak information. I’veranted about Paint blindness for years, but when put to the test, everyone ishorrible. A few teammates of mine did better than the average for attendees ofthe Blackjack Ball, but they’re nowhere close to computer-optimal, and they don’teven know their Paint charts. (I worked hard to make those charts!).

Even for a simple move like counting cards, there are allkinds of possible mistakes, and CJ could talk about it better than I can. Iwish his book would go into detail on HOW the players failed the test. I’m surethat misremembering an index is a common mistake. Dropping the count is areal-world mistake no one admits to. Then there’s chickening out. It goes likethis: There are two tables. The card counter plops down at the first one hesees, because it’s a new shoe ready to deal. That’s a mistake right there,because the table offers 65-70% pen, while the dealer two tables down offers75-80% pen, and the sims assume a game-selection standard of 75%. Real-world EVhas already taken a hit.

Then it turns out that the dealer is semi-sharp, or at leastmakes toke-hustling comments when a bunch of small cards come out. So now thecounter is afraid to jump his bet from $5 to 2 x $150 (you simmed 1:2×30,right?). So he jumps his bet from $5 to 2x$65 (with the classic rookie badge—redon top of the green!), makes a futile comment about having to change it up (youwon the last hand, bozo). Then the dealer makes a snarky comment, at whichpoint the player tosses him a nickel. Now you have an extortionist on thepayroll. Sure, you’re not making any mistakes at all, kid.

Thanks to the magic of the Internet, we can hear the rookie’sexcuse for parking where he played, the excuse for trying to cash out $3400 (shockedthat that would trigger any trouble), the reason for using a player’s card (the“free” buffet!). So, we are to believe that in EVERY aspect where we can auditthe decision-making, we see mistakes, but that in every aspect that we areunable to audit (the actual counting, betting, and hand-playing at the table),the execution is flawless? That’s just untenable.

And sometimes we ARE able to audit those other areas. I’ve seen counters making their bets and playing their hands. They’re betting Lucky Ladies too soon. They’re playing too far into negatives. They’re too slow. (When an apathetic dealer is on auto-pilot, there’s no reason to hem-and-haw on an index play. That doesn’t make you look like a gambler; rather, it just wastes time and draws more attention to the deviation. Your default should be: swift, silent.) They’re over-acting. They’re over-tipping. They’re dropping the count after a big multi-way split and double. They’re physically turning their head to see the discard rack. They’re ignoring the phone call. They’re giving ID for no reason. They’re getting age-checked by going to the more dangerous checkpoint. They’re playing in front of the wrong boss. They’re not picking the best table. They’re not picking the best casino. They’re not fully utilizing free online resources. They’re not driving a car that can go up hills (we didn’t think to put that one on the list, but here we are: 2020 was an eye opener! That one’s for you, John Smith!).

If you don’t believe me, start auditing. You can tallyresults to check skimming, count hands to check game speed, and monitor gameexecution to check skills. I’d enjoy fine-tuning the 10%/40%/50% breakdown withsomeone with additional data, like CJ, but I think we’re on the same page. We havethe explanations for underperformance. All that talk about God working inmysterious ways? Fake news.