Sports Poker

The craze for sports poker, which became fashionable in 2007-2010, was preceded by attempts by Moscow casino management to arrange battlefields for fans of this game in their establishments. One of the first to try out sports poker was the casino "Old World" - in accordance with the concept of offering guests the newest and most interesting. A gaming table was allocated in the Silver Hall especially for this purpose. It rarely happened that there was a full load: due to the addition of two additional decks, the blackjack tables were empty. This innovation complicated the life of the "counters", bringing the game to a zero value of the expectation of winning. According to the management, it is better to have zero than minus. And it is difficult to disagree with this opinion. After all, it was at this time that the book by Dmitry Lesnoy and Lev Natanson captured the minds of the general public visiting Moscow casinos. It became a kind of "key to wealth": both players and employees of gambling establishments began to practice the card counting system described in detail by the authors everywhere. According to many professional players, this book did a disservice to those who had figured out earlier that by bringing a certain balance of cards out of play, you can get a mathematical advantage at a specific moment of the game. Thanks to its publication, what was secret for many became clear to everyone, including the casino management - an immediate reaction to the craze for counting was required. And only the lazy did not practice it: the number of guests with a gift for mathematics simply went off the scale, forcing the owners of the gambling business to block their access to the trough, adding unwanted visitors to the blacklist. In the well-known film "21", dedicated to the peculiarities of the game of blackjack, a university professor from the Department of Applied Mathematics creates a company of advanced students in order to win large sums of money in Las Vegas casinos with their help. They are shown training, defining code phrases or signals, and then using it in practice. This film is the most realistic of those devoted to the casino theme, clearly demonstrating how, in the author's opinion, the team of "counters" works, and the ways of combating this phenomenon by the management of the establishment. Everything looks ideal, if it were not for the traditional elementary ignorance of the general public of the aspects and nuances of the casino's work. We are asked to believe that, "walking" through an American-style casino - a kind of oriental bazaar-train station (in Moscow, such was "London on Vorobyovy Gory"), a person called to win sees his accomplices sitting at various gaming tables and, reacting to conventional signs or key phrases, makes large bets, in accordance with the balance of the cards dealt. Quite truthful, if not for some nuances: 1) in order to wait for the desired ratio, sometimes you have to spend at the table not an hour or two, but much more; 2) the card counting that was shown in the film and according to which the bet was increased is fabulously desirable for anyone, even a beginner "counter". In fact, in order to "go on the attack", a good mathematician needs a number two or three times smaller than shown, while the numbers mentioned in the film are actually unattainable in real play - they appear, like a poker royal flush, about once every hundred years; 3) using an analytical mind is not a crime and is not punishable by law, much less is it considered a method of fraud; 4) the casino security service cannot charge such a player with absolutely nothing, because there is no real evidence, just as there is no crime itself: the player uses mathematical miscalculations in the rules of the game to achieve victory over the casino; 5) to figure out a professional "counter", you need to carefully monitor his entire game from A to Z, paying attention to the decisions made when doubling or splitting the bet. Analysts with the same deep knowledge in the field of mathematics are called to do this. Only “they” could a smart African American figure out in a matter of seconds people who use this type of “intellectual property” to win. In fact, to understand that a person is counting cards, you need to do the same thing with him, but being at the monitor screen, from the very beginning of the distribution (shuffle). And having seen an increase in the bet with the corresponding ratio of the cards dealt, immediately inform the shift supervisor so that he, in turn, notifies the manager of the analytics-video surveillance department about this. He, in turn, is obliged to report a potentially dangerous and smart player to the casino manager so that he has weighty and completely legal grounds, admiring the mathematical talent of the guest, to impose restrictions on the use of any concessions in the game or prohibit him from playing it at all. This is how “counters” are identified, and not thanks to the vigilance of the head of the security service and the use of a mythical “face scanner” that does not exist in the casino. The ending of the film makes you think about a more worthy way of making money, condemning both the teacher and the students who have taken the path of "easy money". According to the established stereotype, winning at a casino is an easy, but "wrong" way of making money. Even if it is based on the use of additional knowledge. Although what can be reprehensible in the fact that a person changes the balance of power in the confrontation between the casino machine and a person in his favor, using his intellect? And why can't you ensure a comfortable life in this way? After all, it is thanks to this way of making money that many players have become casino owners, and the "Old World" is the best and most obvious example of this. Sports Poker But let's return to the empty blackjack tables. One of them, in the back of the room, was allocated for sports poker. And in order to inform the gaming world about the opportunity to indulge in this fun in a pleasant and comfortable way, a man whose name is well known to both managers and players, a legendary man, Nikolai Sadulovich, was invited to the role of organizer. By the way, as a "great guru of blackjack", he was banned from this game in the "Old World", although he never demonstrated any such special mathematical knowledge, and, having a good cash reserve and knowledge of basic strategy, demonstrated, for the time being, grandiose results, terrifying the management teams of Moscow casinos, until he left all the "money trophies" won in a fair fight with Michael Bottcher. Many of those who previously chose other places to spend their leisure time, changed their "registration" and "settled" in the "Old World". Among them were our old acquaintances: Rashid and Gogol. They came as a support group for their more financially rich comrades. The world of players is small: many know each other, played together at the same table. Some pooled their capital and knowledge to achieve positive results in the game. There are many, many such communities of players: Armenians, Gypsies, and Chechens play according to this principle, delegating one to the game, while those remaining in the support group help him with advice and joyful cries, designed to "get" the player going and raise his fighting spirit. Among those who regularly visited the "Old World" were also friends of Rashid and Gogol - a fat man in glasses nicknamed Bison and the owner of a silver card Boris. It cannot be said that they spent day and night in the casino by analogy with the "house spirits", but three times a week, especially during the hours of stimulating drawings of cash prizes, they were always present. Meanwhile, Nikolai Sadulovich's success in the field of playmaking (organizing the game) was neither here nor there: people gathered in small groups and sat quietly in the corner, winning little by little from each other. But there was no full house. And there shouldn't have been: the task was to give the other guests the opportunity to see that there was such an option. So that a person could participate in the game under the auspices of the casino, knowing that he would not be cheated. Nikolai Sadulovich served as the guarantor of fair play. One Friday evening, information appeared on the computer monitor that Boris, who was previously modest and careful in the game, had gone wild today and was one of the leaders in the Silver Hall in terms of the amount of money played. The "yellow jersey of the leader" testified to the fact that the stars were not in favor of the player, forcing him to change again and again. While tracking his hold (the amount of money currently in hand), the pit boss noticed that Boris, having taken the rest of the "cartridges", headed to the herd and took the place of one of the players. An hour later, he returned to the Russian poker table and, having exchanged a couple of chips for 500 USD, began to play with stakes of 25-100 in ante. The music did not play for long, and Boris was forced to go to Nikolai Sadulovich again. After some time, he returned and began to punch Russian poker again. His trips from the herd to Russian poker and back continued all night. Having lost faith in the possibility of winning a game new to all of Moscow, Boris went to punto banco, the general meaning of which comes down to guessing: punto or banco, player or casino. But the day was clearly not his, and there, too, he managed to leave everything he brought from the herd. This is where people who are aware of the rules of the sports poker table will try to catch me by the tongue and accuse me of taking advantage of the illiteracy of most ordinary people in matters of game regulations, conveying deliberately false information to readers. After all, according to the code of sports poker, a person who has decided to finish the game and leave with a win cannot return to the game for at least a couple of hours. That's it! That's exactly how it was! And Boris really did approach the herd five or six times and return to the game with the casino. That evening turned out to be extremely unsuccessful for Boris: in the end, the loss exceeded 10,000 USD, of which only 4,000 were brought in money, and the rest came from the sports poker table. During the count, when the casino's work for the day is summed up and when most of the tables were already closed (counted), to get the final result it was necessary to calculate only the rake (commission) of the stud poker table, a leisurely game continued behind it - Nikolai Sadulovich, surrounded by his acquaintances and friends, indulged in fun. As it turned out later, the company at stud poker did not disperse only because they were waiting for the money that Boris was supposed to bring. Having lost the cash, he did not fail to take advantage of his old friendly relations with Nikolai Sadulovich and asked him for a loan. But the only thing he could offer was their chip equivalent, taken from the fleet entrusted to him as a stud poker manager. Having lost the loan, Boris turns to him again, promising that as soon as he gets into the black, he will immediately work off the "skate jump" and pay. And he gets more. Having lost this money too, he asks again. But now it is not only his problem, but also Nikolai Sadulovich’s problem: after all, he is the financially responsible person in the casino’s service. And in order to save his friend and put out the looming fire in his domain, he sponsors him again and again. The story that Arkady told about Arif, a regular at the Gosudarynya casino, immediately comes to mind. On those days when he could not win the minimum necessary to stop the game – 500 dollars – right away, and when he ran out of cash, he, in order not to go home, would borrow a certain amount in rubles from an employee of the currency exchange office, located inside the building, but in front of the entrance to the casino, on her “word of honor” and with an “oral guarantee” that he would return every last kopeck before her shift change. A sign “No rubles” would immediately appear on the exchange office, and Arif would run to win it back. To his credit, it must be admitted that he never let down the employees who trusted him, always returning the money on time. And he was never stingy with gratitude, adding a couple of banknotes on top. That's why all the cashiers from the exchange office were friends with him... and they took risks, exposing their asses. Fools! After all, one fine day, Arif, according to Volodya Mazist, "put his soul in the ground." That day, Boris did not bring any money. When Nikolai Sadulovich's "philanthropy" was revealed, they hastened to part with him that same day, banning not only playing blackjack, but also being in the complex as a whole. How he managed to settle the money issue - there is no information on this, but the shortage of 6,000 thousand U.S. dollars did not become a stumbling block. Perhaps he paid them off from his personal funds, and then received a debt from Boris, because in the world of gamblers, it is customary to pay off debts on time. Or maybe Boris himself brought the entire amount to the casino cashier so as not to force the disgraced stud poker table manager to come to the place from which he was expelled. One way or another, the saga with sports poker in the "Old World" ended there, and no further attempts were made to revive the game in light of its growing popularity.