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 Enough people have emailed me about the iPhone blackjack card counting app news story that I ought to write a little bit about it here. Here's the background: (This ended up being a lot longer than I had planned.)
Someone wrote a little app for the iPhone/iPod Touch that supposedly helps you count cards. At least, that's what the California Bureau of Gambling Control and the Nevada Gaming Control Board believe (and that's what the owner of the app wants people to believe so more apps are sold). The Nevada GCB thinks it's such a big threat that they sent a letter to casinos informing them of the program. Maybe they ought to set up metal detectors at the entrance to casinos.
This whole thing reminds me of two things. First, about 30 years ago, when I was too young to even set foot in a casino, I remember watching an episode of the old TV series, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, where Buck was sent to the outerspace gambling ship outpost called "Sinaloa" to rescue a kidnapped woman and save the universe. But first, before being allowed to enter Sinaloa, he had to go through a detector to make sure he wasn't carrying a computing device that he could use to beat the (computer-dealt) blackjack. However, Buck, being from the 20th century, could do simple math in his head and count cards. He did, and won easily, quickly getting backroomed. (That, of course, was all part of his plan to gain access to other parts of the ship.)
Second, just over 10 years ago, I was arrested in Niagara Falls, Canada, presumably because the casino thought I was using my PDA to help me count cards. My PDA was back in my hotel room, so why did we believe that? Well, the casino seems to have been in cahoots with both the Canadian and U.S. border police. After losing in our first session, we decided to cross back to the US to get some more funds, and were "randomly" stopped on our way back in by the Canadian border police. They searched us and took special interest in my PalmPilot, which coincidentally happened to have a blackjack strategy chart open when I turned it on for them. Luckily, when we got back to the casino, I decided to drop my Palm off in my room since it was a little big in my pocket. (This was a first or second generation Palm, huge compared to the modern iPhone.) When we went back to play, they arrested us (for "cheat at play"), handcuffed us, and took us down to the on-site police substation for a partial strip-search and questioning. They even had us remove our shoes to check for a computer there. This was all pretty ridiculous since it would have been impossible to use a regular PalmPilot for surreptitiously counting cards. But, in Canada a blackjack team had once been prosecuted for cheating using a string of beads, so I felt a lot better having left the Palm back in my room. Once they realized we weren't using a computer, they let us go, and the casino comped us a meal. No hard feelings? (On the way back to the US, we were "randomly" stopped again, this time by the US border police, and I had to explain to them how we could beat the casino without cheating. Luckily, I had a copy of a recent article about me from the Hartford Courant, which helped speed the educational process.)
Back to the present....
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