DMFJ - The Player: Secrets of a Vegas Whale

[Hockey Guy]

Title is a little misleading since he won most of his money in Atlantic City but it was an interesting video. I had heard about this guy & did a search but this video has only been out a couple weeks so I'm pretty sure it hasn't been posted yet:



warning: it's 46+ minutes long.

[The Shrink]

I watched this last week and I was a bit confused about how he claimed to ultimately beat the casinos without card counting. It seemed that he did everything you would expect: establish himself as a whale to get the maximum comps and best rules possible, learn basic strategy to minimize the house. But then he said that the house would still have a very small edge. At the end of the program does he suggest that he turns it in his favor by catching mistakes that the dealer makes? I might be missing something because I don't know too much about blackjack but that's what I gleaned from the show. Is his "secret" that he spots mistakes?

[Walter Sobchak]

I watched this last week and I was a bit confused about how he claimed to ultimately beat the casinos without card counting. It seemed that he did everything you would expect: establish himself as a whale to get the maximum comps and best rules possible, learn basic strategy to minimize the house. But then he said that the house would still have a very small edge. At the end of the program does he suggest that he turns it in his favor by catching mistakes that the dealer makes? I might be missing something because I don't know too much about blackjack but that's what I gleaned from the show. Is his "secret" that he spots mistakes?

Apparently he distracts the dealers to increase mistakes. Those in his favor he accepts without comment and those in the house's favor he points out resulting in a reversal and perhaps some sort of compensation? He also gets some free bets in at the beginning. Changing the rules and getting a discount he brought the house edge very low, a few tenths of a %. Still, if he is not counting cards and the house still has an edge then he must lose it back over the long term. Except most of the casinos have banned him so they can't take it back from him. I think either he must be counting or he is doing something else that was not revealed in the show. Overall I found the show to contain about 5 minutes worth of useful/interesting information and the remainder fill.

[cmoney]

I watched this last week and I was a bit confused about how he claimed to ultimately beat the casinos without card counting. It seemed that he did everything you would expect: establish himself as a whale to get the maximum comps and best rules possible, learn basic strategy to minimize the house. But then he said that the house would still have a very small edge. At the end of the program does he suggest that he turns it in his favor by catching mistakes that the dealer makes? I might be missing something because I don't know too much about blackjack but that's what I gleaned from the show. Is his "secret" that he spots mistakes?

Apparently he distracts the dealers to increase mistakes. Those in his favor he accepts without comment and those in the house's favor he points out resulting in a reversal and perhaps some sort of compensation? He also gets some free bets in at the beginning. Changing the rules and getting a discount he brought the house edge very low, a few tenths of a %. Still, if he is not counting cards and the house still has an edge then he must lose it back over the long term. Except most of the casinos have banned him so they can't take it back from him. I think either he must be counting or he is doing something else that was not revealed in the show. Overall I found the show to contain about 5 minutes worth of useful/interesting information and the remainder fill.

Unless I am missing something like he cheated or something, it seems as if 95 percent of his streaks are because he is just running well during those periods. He said he won like 5 million over 12 hours, so even in the event he shifting the odds slightly in his favor, you have to catch cards. He just seems like a lucky degen who negotiated some good terms and then ran well.

[bukowski72]

Good Summary from Marc Desjardins on 2+2:

Cliffs of the video:

He negotiated for himself many advantages that the casino were willing to give him because he was flagged as a mediocre player. But first thing he did was hire a team of math experts to learn to play a perfect strategy, going from mediocre player to expert player. There here's the things he negotiated for himself

1-50k of free chips when he walked in the casino
2-20% discount on his losses (did not give details on when he would get the discount)
3-Change of rules:
-Bigger bets allowed, 25k on 3 hands, 75k total
-dealer stands of soft 17
-double up allowed on any two cards
-split allowed up to 4 times
4-He agreed on some non-standards (seems to me, I'm no expert) hand signal for some actions, hit, stand, surrender. If the dealer missed the signal and made a mistake, it would result in a free win for him.

Seems like he banked on all possible dealer mistakes, especially since he changed some of the rules, that created more opportunities for dealers to make mistake. And that, according to him, really switched the edge in his favor

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...5&postcount=54

[Dan Druff]

This guy is a fraud.

His story is being pushed by the casino industry in order to attract other whales.

I'll give you guys a reality check. I have been a blackjack card counter since 2000, and have watched the game tighten up immensely. In the 1990s and even the early 2000s, it was possible to make a living as a blackjack card counter. I got into it too late, as everything was getting much tougher right as I had learned how to do it.

Keep in mind, I was never a huge bettor. My bets at the table ranged from $25-$150 per hand to, at most, $300-$1500 per hand (but the latter was unusual). This might sound like a lot, but it's small compared to whales like this Don Johnson guy.

My point is that the casinos have been EXTREMELY wise (to the point of over-paranoia) about advantage blackjack play for the past decade or so.

You think they're paranoid when I sit down and spread $100-$500 per hand? Imagine how closely a guy like Don Johnson is watched, who can take them for millions if they're not careful.

That by itself is why this guy is BS. There is no way a major casino, let alone multiple casinos, would let some whale come in and beat them with a winning strategy in this day and age. There is no such thing as "distracting" anyone, because there are so many eyes on a guy like that, you will never succeed in any form of distraction.

Of course, the guy had to come up with an explanation as to why he was "winning".

He said he wasn't card counting. Clearly the casino would catch that and change the game to where he could no longer advantageously count, so he had to come up with another story.

He can't just say that he was playing perfect basic strategy, because that's a losing game, and it would equate to him simply getting lucky. Nobody is going to admire you for "beating Vegas" for simply getting lucky, just as nobody envies the skill of lottery winners.

He can't say that he cheated, because that would get him arrested (and money confiscated).

So he had to come up with an explanation that would make sense to the average person, even if it fails when scrutinized by experts.

First, as cmoney pointed out, this wasn't a guy who grinded out big winnings by betting big and exploiting small edges over time. By his own admission, his "winnings" came from some monster win sessions that were clearly the result of an amazingly good run of cards. His explanations as to "edges" he got himself would only give him a small amount of additional winnings over time in the best case, rather than cause staggering wins in a short period of time.

Second, let's analyze the "edges" he negotiated. Here is a cliffs of the video from a 2+2 poster:

1-50k of free chips when he walked in the casino

2-20% discount on his losses (did not give details on when he would get the discount)

3-Change of rules:
-Bigger bets allowed, 25k on 3 hands, 75k total
-dealer stands of soft 17
-double up allowed on any two cards
-split allowed up to 4 times

4-He agreed on some non-standards (seems to me, I'm no expert) hand signal for some actions, hit, stand, surrender. If the dealer missed the signal and made a mistake, it would result in a free win for him.

I'll analyze these 1-by-1.

1) $50,000 freeplay sounds amazing, but if you're betting tens of thousands per hand, it means very little. It would only be meaningful if he ran the $50,000 freeplay, played very little more, and left. He played for a long time each session, so the $50k was relatively meaningless. That's why the casino agreed ot it.

2) 20% discount on losses doesn't mean much if you are paid after a long period of time. This is often wrongly assumed to mean he's getting himself a 20% edge or 20% bonus on all bets, but that's far from the truth. 20% of losses means 20% of OVERALL losses, not 20% back on each hand he loses. If you're playing a game like blackjack without counting cards, it is almost a mathematical certainty that you will lose after a certain number of hands. So if they give him 20% losses back only after a certain large number of hours played, it is meaningless, if those hours are likely to produce losses far greater than 20%. Believe it or not, if I could get someone to play a million hands of blackjack in my casino, and be guaranteed they weren't cheating or card counting, I would give them back 99% losses and still win!

3) The "change of rules" are not what they appear to be. These are very standard rules for high stakes games. Go into Bellagio and look at their high-limit shoe games, and you will see those exact rules already in place.

4) They agreed to the change in hand signals just to pacify a whale. So he thought he was clever because the casino had to pay him if they misunderstood him and made a mistake. However, this clearly happened very infrequently, again resulting in not much edge overall for Johnson. If a dealer had a chronic problem with misunderstanding the new signals, they would put a dealer in place who could do it better. It's not rocket science. Even if he gained a few hundred K in this overall (and that would be best-case), it wouldn't offset expected losses in the millions.


Bottom line is that this guy is just a typical basic strategy whale who got lucky for a few big sessions, but no doubt is an overall loser in blackjack. He won't even disclose how big his losing sessions were, nor will he present proof that he's up overall.

The casinos are promoting this whale as a success story, and he is enjoying it because it makes him look like a genius.

[Hockey Guy]

Unless I am missing something like he cheated or something, it seems as if 95 percent of his streaks are because he is just running well during those periods. He said he won like 5 million over 12 hours, so even in the event he shifting the odds slightly in his favor, you have to catch cards. He just seems like a lucky degen who negotiated some good terms and then ran well.

Yup, he ran like GOD. His 5M win in 12 hours would be like winning 5K betting between $5 & $25 as your big bet. It can be done, & I've seen it done, but no amount of rule changes will ever put it in your favor that you'll do it in 12 hours without running like he had pictures of god fucking sheep.

If I were him I'd quit because this 15M win probably puts him up or close to it for his lifetime & be able to live comfortably for the rest of his life, something most of us will never achieve(I mean the part about being up or even on BJ for a lifetime & not the living comfortably).

He's just a lucky whale , like Druff says, that the casinos are trying to promote to make other whales think they can do it too. Why would the casino owners even talk about it, let alone on camera with smiles, if they thought they were at a disadvantage to whales?

[BeerAndPoker]

Watched this last night and the story sure seemed stretched with a bunch of half truths to go with it. He was definitely card counting and the distracting the dealer stuff is complete bullshit.

My take is he got lucky a few times along with having a great system to disguise his card counting but I'm not really a believer for a minute about the distracting dealers part. For the casinos still taking his action you better believe they are watching him and the dealer interaction like a 12 year old boy who finds a peep hole in the girls dressing room. If any dealer screws up they are going to tag him out and put someone else in very quickly. Don might get a couple more hands in if he's lucky but that is it before the the dealer change occurs.

He negotiated some good comps or so he think as even in this show they claim how giving a whale like this $50k is really not that much when they know he has millions to lose.

I don't want to compare poker to blackjack but when you look at Jamie Gold and Jerry Yang winning the WSOP main event it just proves you can get lucky for several days time and they played against tough competition but short term variance can prevail. A 5+ hour session of blackjack certainly favors the casino but still if someone plays 100 hours of as most optimal strategy as possible they can come out a winner without counting since it's really not that big of a sample size although they will be in a tiny percentile that profit. Now in the same scenario with card counting then the person has the ability to crush.

This guy was lucky enough to make his big bucks with no whammys and he shouldn't press his luck again.

[donkdowndonedied]

2) 20% discount on losses doesn't mean much if you are paid after a long period of time. This is often wrongly assumed to mean he's getting himself a 20% edge or 20% bonus on all bets, but that's far from the truth. 20% of losses means 20% of OVERALL losses, not 20% back on each hand he loses. If you're playing a game like blackjack without counting cards, it is almost a mathematical certainty that you will lose after a certain number of hands. So if they give him 20% losses back only after a certain large number of hours played, it is meaningless, if those hours are likely to produce losses far greater than 20%. Believe it or not, if I could get someone to play a million hands of blackjack in my casino, and be guaranteed they weren't cheating or card counting, I would give them back 99% losses and still win!

If however you give me back 20% after every session you will lose your ass. If he was able to socially engineer that his buyback was done at a higher frequency to some math challenged manager, then bingo presto that alone will turn him into a winner. This might be the part you are missing. That was my impression from when I read about this when it first came out. So many people don't get how often one "settles up" can be a huge difference in gambling deals like these. This is a huge hole in the reasoning of a lot of people who have been around gambling for some time. I've seen it exploited more times that I can count, just not on his level.

[Brittney Griner's Clit]

I just watched the whole thing skeptical as shit as to why he would do this interview. And then at the end he's doing full blown seminars. Some whale. hahaha.

[Baron Von Strucker]

I just watched the whole thing skeptical as shit as to why he would do this interview. And then at the end he's doing full blown seminars. Some whale. hahaha.

seminars are toptop jusk ask tony robbins he has run it up to near five hundred mill just doing them. small piece of that would be nice?

[Walter Sobchak]

This guy is a fraud.

His story is being pushed by the casino industry in order to attract other whales.

I'll give you guys a reality check. I have been a blackjack card counter since 2000, and have watched the game tighten up immensely. In the 1990s and even the early 2000s, it was possible to make a living as a blackjack card counter. I got into it too late, as everything was getting much tougher right as I had learned how to do it.

Keep in mind, I was never a huge bettor. My bets at the table ranged from $25-$150 per hand to, at most, $300-$1500 per hand (but the latter was unusual). This might sound like a lot, but it's small compared to whales like this Don Johnson guy.

My point is that the casinos have been EXTREMELY wise (to the point of over-paranoia) about advantage blackjack play for the past decade or so.

You think they're paranoid when I sit down and spread $100-$500 per hand? Imagine how closely a guy like Don Johnson is watched, who can take them for millions if they're not careful.

That by itself is why this guy is BS. There is no way a major casino, let alone multiple casinos, would let some whale come in and beat them with a winning strategy in this day and age. There is no such thing as "distracting" anyone, because there are so many eyes on a guy like that, you will never succeed in any form of distraction.

Of course, the guy had to come up with an explanation as to why he was "winning".

He said he wasn't card counting. Clearly the casino would catch that and change the game to where he could no longer advantageously count, so he had to come up with another story.

He can't just say that he was playing perfect basic strategy, because that's a losing game, and it would equate to him simply getting lucky. Nobody is going to admire you for "beating Vegas" for simply getting lucky, just as nobody envies the skill of lottery winners.

He can't say that he cheated, because that would get him arrested (and money confiscated).

So he had to come up with an explanation that would make sense to the average person, even if it fails when scrutinized by experts.

First, as cmoney pointed out, this wasn't a guy who grinded out big winnings by betting big and exploiting small edges over time. By his own admission, his "winnings" came from some monster win sessions that were clearly the result of an amazingly good run of cards. His explanations as to "edges" he got himself would only give him a small amount of additional winnings over time in the best case, rather than cause staggering wins in a short period of time.

Second, let's analyze the "edges" he negotiated. Here is a cliffs of the video from a 2+2 poster:

1-50k of free chips when he walked in the casino

2-20% discount on his losses (did not give details on when he would get the discount)

3-Change of rules:
-Bigger bets allowed, 25k on 3 hands, 75k total
-dealer stands of soft 17
-double up allowed on any two cards
-split allowed up to 4 times

4-He agreed on some non-standards (seems to me, I'm no expert) hand signal for some actions, hit, stand, surrender. If the dealer missed the signal and made a mistake, it would result in a free win for him.

I'll analyze these 1-by-1.

1) $50,000 freeplay sounds amazing, but if you're betting tens of thousands per hand, it means very little. It would only be meaningful if he ran the $50,000 freeplay, played very little more, and left. He played for a long time each session, so the $50k was relatively meaningless. That's why the casino agreed ot it.

2) 20% discount on losses doesn't mean much if you are paid after a long period of time. This is often wrongly assumed to mean he's getting himself a 20% edge or 20% bonus on all bets, but that's far from the truth. 20% of losses means 20% of OVERALL losses, not 20% back on each hand he loses. If you're playing a game like blackjack without counting cards, it is almost a mathematical certainty that you will lose after a certain number of hands. So if they give him 20% losses back only after a certain large number of hours played, it is meaningless, if those hours are likely to produce losses far greater than 20%. Believe it or not, if I could get someone to play a million hands of blackjack in my casino, and be guaranteed they weren't cheating or card counting, I would give them back 99% losses and still win!

3) The "change of rules" are not what they appear to be. These are very standard rules for high stakes games. Go into Bellagio and look at their high-limit shoe games, and you will see those exact rules already in place.

4) They agreed to the change in hand signals just to pacify a whale. So he thought he was clever because the casino had to pay him if they misunderstood him and made a mistake. However, this clearly happened very infrequently, again resulting in not much edge overall for Johnson. If a dealer had a chronic problem with misunderstanding the new signals, they would put a dealer in place who could do it better. It's not rocket science. Even if he gained a few hundred K in this overall (and that would be best-case), it wouldn't offset expected losses in the millions.


Bottom line is that this guy is just a typical basic strategy whale who got lucky for a few big sessions, but no doubt is an overall loser in blackjack. He won't even disclose how big his losing sessions were, nor will he present proof that he's up overall.

The casinos are promoting this whale as a success story, and he is enjoying it because it makes him look like a genius.

Exactly why I said he's either counting or running great. Must be nice.

[FRANKRIZZO]

I watched this last week and I was a bit confused about how he claimed to ultimately beat the casinos without card counting. It seemed that he did everything you would expect: establish himself as a whale to get the maximum comps and best rules possible, learn basic strategy to minimize the house. But then he said that the house would still have a very small edge. At the end of the program does he suggest that he turns it in his favor by catching mistakes that the dealer makes? I might be missing something because I don't know too much about blackjack but that's what I gleaned from the show. Is his "secret" that he spots mistakes?

I saw this the other day , was going to post until I saw someone beat me to it. One of the ways he got dealers to make mistakes was by distracting them with porn type women he used to cheer him on. He would make a hand motion which indicated he was surrendering , and dealers wouldn't notice so he got freebets like that. I think it was all bullshit and he was card counting plain and simple. The casinos gave him 50k in free bets which gave him a huge advantage. Interesting part of the piece was that the casinos he hit including borgata as well as tropicana in nj are suffering to that degree in giving him that kind of inducement to get him to come in. In one session he got a huge hand by splitting cards for an 800k win in one hand to get him rolling for a huge win. He lives right across the Parx and used to be a manager in horsing track there . He is banned from a lot of properties due to his undoubted card counting.

[IAmProfessionalTalk]

The rebate alone gave him a disgusting edge. Anything else was gravy.

[Dan Druff]

I discussed this on another forum, and I think I believe now that the guy was legit.

Here is a better article on him: http://apheat.net/2013/05/02/don-joh...eat-blackjack/

He seems to have used specific math-based "stop-loss / stop-win" strategies centered around his freeplay and loss rebate, which resulted in +EV play. Interestingly, this strategy isn't too different from optimal strategy for existing "we cover your first $100 of losses" slot promotions that exist around Vegas for new players.

He also was artificially obnoxious/distracting during his blackjack play, which confused dealers and sometimes caused errors in his favor. I'm not sure I believe he won 3 bets per session from these errors, but it probably helped at least a little.

And finally, he was indeed counting cards! That was also notably absent from previous reports/interviews of Johnson. He wasn't doing traditional bet sizing related to the count, but he was abandoning ship during highly negative count shoes, throwing phony tantrums and getting up from the table. Then he would have secret partners come to the table (pretending to not be associated with him), and either play out the remainder of the bad shoe (with lower bets) or convincing the dealer to reshuffle. Had Johnson simply asked for a reshuffle, they would obviously know what he was doing, and deny his request.

With these details, now I believe that Johnson was an effective advantage player, and I have respect for what he did.

[Hozer11]

Druff or other blackjack experts please chime in.

I would be interested to know how much of the house edge can be taken away by card counting without the bet sizing component.
Some edges I can think of:

-the normal card counter's adjustments from basic strategy
-leaving during a bad shoe (bathroom break, phone call, etc. need other players though)
-working with a partner to play a second spot (may be too obvious for high rollers)
-I think the 20% kickback on losses does have some value if you have it at multiple casinos, you would get 20% discount where you run bad, all your winnings where you run good.

I am guessing you can get the house edge pretty close to zero doing this.

Peace,

Hozer 11

[GrenadaRoger]

Druff or other blackjack experts please chime in.

I would be interested to know how much of the house edge can be taken away by card counting without the bet sizing component.
Some edges I can think of:

-the normal card counter's adjustments from basic strategy
-leaving during a bad shoe (bathroom break, phone call, etc. need other players though)
-working with a partner to play a second spot (may be too obvious for high rollers)
-I think the 20% kickback on losses does have some value if you have it at multiple casinos, you would get 20% discount where you run bad, all your winnings where you run good.

I am guessing you can get the house edge pretty close to zero doing this.

Peace

Hozer 11

the house edge for the game described above (S17, 6 deck, DAS, LS, RSA) is about 0.26%...this is very typical of the game offered by high limit rooms in Vegas...presuming the penetration of 4.5 decks, i believe just play variations for HI-LO would cut the edge to .16% if you used the top 16 play variations other than splitting 10s v 6 or 5...i thought i saw your same question asked at BJ21.com on the free page, but i can't find the post (maybe it was on another forum where the question was asked)...anyway, just play variations alone won't work....heads up to get to even would take spreading at least 1 to 4 i believe...ways to camo the spread would be starting with 3 hands off the top, dropping to 2 or 1 when the shoe goes deeply negative as well as decreasing bet, or doubling up on the 3 hands when count goes positive...if the casino let one spread like that, the edges although positive are still slim and the fluctuations wild, so it would take a lot of money and nerve to make this work