Sort play in Black Jack by Bill Zender

Some might call it cheating, but i would merely call it advantageplay in line with bias wheel play.

Anyway, here it goes. (you can click on the image to get a better view of the pattern)

Sorts are created when a card is not symmetrically cut during the deck’s printing process. All

casino quality playing card decks are printed on 60 card sheets, and are cut from the sheet using

a two-step process. This process, although done with an automatic cutting machine, is not

perfectly symmetrical. The cut may result in all cards of that deck having a very slight pattern

difference on the sides or ends. Since the cards are printed with a full back design of diamonds,

gems, or intersecting lines, sometimes cut pattern differences can be noticed by the trained eye.

Although this is not common, it can happen. If the difference is too great, and the cut patterns

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can be read when sitting within several inches of the dealer held deck, the casino is open for sort

attack.

Sort play occurs when a group of players take over the entire table. After the cards are dealt, the

team of players will position or turn their cards in a particular manner so one of the miss-cut

pattern sides faces in the same direction when the slip their hand under the wagered chips. For

example; the sort players may opt to position the ten value cards with all elongated diamonds on

the back pattern facing to the right when the cards are positioned under the wagered chips. In

this case, all non-ten value cards will be rotated 180 degrees in the opposite direction. The sort

players will continue to keep turning the cards in the same manner throughout the dealing of the

deck. Once the dealer shuffles the cards and begins to deal the next deck, the player will resume

turning the cards until they have a majority of the playing cards positioned so they can be read to

indicate the top card of the deck is either a ten or non-ten value card. In essence, the advantage

player uses the miss-cut sort patterns to gain information just like a cheater uses marked cards.

As you will see, the effect is quite similar, and in this next case, too similar.

Gary’s Message

Over dinner, Gary explained that he had recently responded to an alleged marked card situation

at a Reno casino. Once he arrived at the casino, Gary was informed by management that they

believed a team of players on one of their hand held games was marking the cards and using the

information to bust out the dealer’s hand. When Gary reviewed the video, he noticed that every

player on the table was turning and positioning the cards in their hand in a similar fashion that

Gary recognized as sort play. One player was observed standing up, wagering table minimum on

the first table position. Apparently, his job was to read the sort patterns and try and steer either

ten’s or non-ten cards into the next player’s hand. The next player, seated at the third table

position was playing table limit, and was acting as the team’s “big player”. A third player was

standing at the last position, and wagering table minimum. His job was to read the cards on the

top of the deck and try and steer cards into the dealer’s hand in an attempt to bust the dealer.

After watching the team members turn cards and play sorts for about a half hour, the team

terminated play and left the casino.

Out of curiosity, Gary followed them to another casino just down the street. Once inside the

casino, the players set up on another hand held blackjack game, but after a short period quit.

Why? Because the dealer on the game was utilizing an old technique that severely deterred sort

play known as “the turn”. When the dealer noticed the group of players on his table sorting and

arranging cards, during the next shuffle he simply broke the deck in half and turned one half of

the deck 180 degrees before starting the first riffle shuffle. Once team saw the dealer employ a

turn in the shuffle, they ended play and left the casino. This confirmed Gary’s assumption that

the team was using “sort” information, and although they gained an advantage over the casino

playing in this manner, it was totally legal and of no concern to the Nevada Gaming Control

Board.

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One thing bothered Gary, though. During the review of the video at the first casino, Gary

noticed all the players of the sort team touching the cards in a manner that resembled a marked

card play known as “daubing”. This was quite perplexing. Why would advantage players, using

a legal technique to beat the casino, simulate the motions of cheating card marker? Usually

players utilizing a legitimate technique to gain an advantage would purposely stand clear of any

hand action that might mimic a cheating move. First, they don’t want to draw undue attention to

their play, and second, they wouldn’t want the casino to grab them up for allegedly committing

an act of cheating. Why were these players acting in a manner that might make someone think

they were cheating? In Gary’s words, “It appeared as if they were planting the idea that they

were cheating, since they were so obvious and kept running their finger across the top of the

cards, over and over again.” What would be their motive to attract all this attention?

Zender’s Comment

One thing I understood that Gary didn’t is that there is more than one way to beat the casinos out

of money. The first is over the gaming tables. An advantage team, sorting miss-cut card

patterns, can gain an advantage that will result in wins of several thousand dollars. Second, a

group of players who are arrested by the casino for cheating when all they are doing is using an

unacceptable, but legal technique, stand a chance to make a hundred thousand dollars in a civil

law suit! From Gary’s rendition of the play in Reno, it appears the team was playing sort

information to gain an advantage, and trying to simulate a cheating technique to, shall we say,

“Hedge their bets”.

The following are some suggestions that you may wish to consider if presented with this type of

situation:

• Always take time to analyze any suspicious play; don’t jump to conclusions.

• Watch for players who continually turn and position cards held in their hand. This is the

primary indicator of “sort” play.

• Be sure the player’s are not using a legal technique before accusing them of cheating.

Sorts emulate marked card play.

• Allow any gaming investigator responding to the case to make his or her decision on

whether there is evidence of cheating. Show them the facts, but don’t give them a

narrative of the event filled with accusations.

• The best methods for preventing sort play is; (a) place a 180 degree turn of half the deck

immediately prior to a riffle shuffle into your shuffle procedure, or (b) consider using

only faded edge cards on your hand dealt blackjack games.

• Remember, losing money across the tables is not the only way to lose money.

[Pl

Team spirit.

An example of a team manual. If someone wanna form a syndicate or a team of players, there must be some guidelines so that everybody knows what to expect. Also, there must be some sort of management of the dayly routines and operating of the money. Each member should have his own function, preferbly what he does best and what the group benefits the best of. I will here first list the advantages of team play and then the manual.

Advantages:

1. A wheel can be tracked constantly by working in shifts.

2. A wheel can be played in shifts, for maximum gain.

3. The bankroll is bigger and the payout is larger.

4. Tracking can be continue with a tracker at the same time a BP is hitting the table (2 people) so the BP don`t have to take notes.

Manual:

• Key names within the team.
• Working area geographicly.
• Member tests. To protect the team bankroll, members should once in a while be skill testet under controlled conditions.
• List of stats: Team members are rated as to their winnings.
• On every casino trip, dealers are rated as A, B, C, and D. D is unplayable.
• Backroom MO if one of the team members is being backroomed.
• Betting system for team members at certain conditions within a dealer shift.
• General policy and procedures.
• Team confidentiality agreement.
• Quality assurance, each team member will be asked to sign a commitment contract.
• Skill requirements for different level of team members.
• Acceptable and non acceptable extra curricular activities for team members.
• Penalties for policy violations.
• Keying guidelines.
• Betting guidelines.
• Accounting, security and quality control.
• Pay ates for team members.
• Scouting work sheet, each casino is scouted to perfection before a team plays the casino.

How to scout key games, including everything from:

1. Ball types

2. Wheel types.

3. Tilt dgree.

4. visual bias.

5. Conditions, +3 - 4 standard deviations only playable.

6. Calling of NMB.

7. Calculation of ROR and bankroll versus possible gain.

• Daily updates on the wheel data.
• Possible recalculation of data if maintenance has taken place.
• Exit point should be fixed, so comparison of data is possible.
• Thumper or other external devices might be a possible must, to ensure equal exits in between members.
• Projecting the possible outcome of an average session, given the specific wheel data and NMB conditions.
• Payout rates and intervals.
• Kelly betting.
• General information.

So do the average AP player has the spirit for this ? VB players tends to be 1 man armys where bias players, how rare they ever are, tends to play in teams since they have to keep an eye on things on a personal basis while accounting for clock and anticlockwise spins.

The problem for VB players is to share identical information. I mentioned using the thumper as a device for getting equal measurements, but i must say i would rather incorporate a proper timer training to the point where we could leave the thumper in the drawer back home.

Well, maybe an inspiration for some to get together and for a syndicate.

London

Just back from London. This month trip took me to London and i can`t say i was disappointed. I managed to find 2 dirty wheels and played them both. The profit kept the lawn green as they say. This time a little greener than normally.

During my tracking i came across an old friend i hadn`t seen since the Holland days. I was standing next to him for 1/2 an hour before we both realized we knew each other, amazing what a change from pony tail hair to skin head does to a mans appearance. The quote Kaisan usually presents: "Wheelwatchers will in nature always meet at the same tables", was in this case correct.

We had a drink at the "Ice bar" at the Galla casino in Tottenham Court Road casino which apparently has opened for 24 hours a day. Later when we enjoyed a nicely cooled Chablis while waiting for the main course at a french restaurant, i learned that life had been hard on the rest of his crew members. But as i learned and saw, he was still managing. We had at one point a closer look at the casino in Bayswater, but i gotta say, thats a no go. They have put screens with max/min bets right in frront of the wheels which makes it impossible to get a good view.

I also think i might need glasses sometimes in the near future, the dealer overheard me saying that i had trouble reading the red numbers and she said; "Don`t worry, you can always find them on the board after the spin"..... Well, thanks a lot, can i still place my bet then .......?

I didn`t manage to meet everybody i had planned, since the play took the better of me. The Tube was on strike on Friday when i had just arrived which makes getting around in inner London extremely slowly.

Cammegh

We have all faced the Cammeghs at some point. Where some of the types is  very nice wheels to look at,  some of them certainly is a bit of a challenge for the advantage player.  

 New technology has made maintenance almost non existent. The new bearings actually only makes the wheel run longer the more it is used, because of a new developed technology.  No more lubrication. And that goes for the wheels entire life time.

 The almost invisible built in sensors jn the rim makes sure that NMB is called automaticly before the critical stage where advantage players are making the bets. Thanks god, not all dealers respect the bill board when NMB is being announced.  Hamburg for example.  Some of the dealers let it go, but then again, its Connosieurs so the bounce is terrible. Garnite Track as standard. I have danced with the Connosieurs quite successfully somewhere else where I as a result “have a problem with my membership card”. Im not barred as such. I just can`t get in. Smart move.

 The AR1 is coming with the ultra low profile double radius separator ring frets as standard.  I would love to hear from someone who has done any analysis on these. They should be the ultimate deterrent to advantage players.  They seems extremely low  and I would suspect that the ball would simply roll over the pockets until it found it nessecary to stop.  I would love to see the bounce/roll  on one of these.

 The Starlight wheel has a rotor of some sort of acrylic material and changes from white “glow” to red “glow” when no more bets is called.  What a theatre…………

Steve Forte

Steve Forte is considered a gaming specialist in almost all kind of gaming. Also roulette. I ran over the chapter on Roulette in his book  Casino Game Protection  where he describes a very basic VB tecknick using a simple head count for establishing the key revolution.  It works very well on a nicely tilted wheel but the way he analyses the scatter is directly misleading.  "watch ten spins and add up the ball scatter, then divide with 10 to get an average". So what if there is 5 spins with a bounce of 9 and 5 spins with a bounce of  3, is the average bounce then 6 ?? Obviously we would get a better hit rate by considering the most frequent bounce and obviously we need more than 10 spins for that.

Never the less, he has managed to direct the Casinos to the vital parts of our play.  A feather in our hats is that Forte was indicted in a Poker scam a while ago. Hopefully that has put him "on hold" with the casinos. Fortunately, Forte does not tell about the tecknicks used to visually beat semi tilted wheels, after all, its the kind of wheels we face today. The most usual will be a 3 pin wheel (drop zone on 75% of the rim) if we are lucky maybe a 2 pin game.  Playing Fortes type of VB would drasticly reduce the hit rate compared to the more sophisticated methods. Fortes play would yield an advantage, no doubt about that,  but lets all try to keep the finer details of modern VB amongst ourselves. I cannot emphazise it enough : Be carefull with WHICH knowledge you share with WHO.  

There are disguised wolwes walking amongst us.

Use of devices.

The big thing on the scene appears to be the use of Roulette computers. The ones of you who monitors the inter net from time to time will know that there are 3 main sellers on the market. Then there is a small underworld of home developers that keeps their work a little more secretive. Personally I have never used a computer for prediction and when I read about the trouble people go through using them, I am pretty sure I never will.  I just learned that an old friend from the AP world, “G”,  sad to to say, but is now barred in the entire Germany because he was caught with a device. Being barred is putting everything you ever learned about roulette secondary, because you can`t play anymore. So whats it worth then ?Another thing I always wondered about is,  how can it be applied without surveillance noticing if you are a 1 man army ? A friend of mine working on security in a Danish casino, says that a late sector better that stares in the wheel and tapping his foot, maybe keeping a hand in the pocket during each spin, or any other action that none of the ordinary players is doing is raising  a red flag if he is also winning. So unless you can actually build a device, implant it  under your skin or, and maybe do the clicking with a mouth device, I would say the road to wealth with  a device is a dead end.There is also the possibility of using another player to do the clicking and transfer the results to an earpiece so the one who places the bets only needs to listen to the earpiece. Maybe one man only does the clicking, transfer the clicks to a partner with a computer in a car on the outside, then sending results to the player with the earpiece is another possibility.  But again, getting caught will get you barred either permanently or for maybe 10 years.  Is that a possibility you wanna challenge ?  Considering all the other obstacles like carrying your bankroll in the socks….:-)), finding good wheels, getting a good place at the table, keeping the good place at the table even when grand ma is pushing her way through for a late zero bet, and all the other hazzles we face, I would say that adding more tension and fear of getting caught only adds inaccuracy to the play.

 If you ask me if its worth it, then I will answer No Its Not Worth It. 

New Age

Just back from Berlin after meeting up with a fellow wheelwatcher.  I was sad to hear that the "veterans" were losing ground and money. They still manage to pull out 100 K out of their socks, (yeah out of their socks !!),  after losing 20 K. Puts a whole new dimension to the phrase "the smell of money".I understood that they were almost betting 1/2 a wheel and i think that is a reaction for not hitting as precise as they used to.  They also refuse to alter their play. Most of them play as if the wheels were from 1980.

I was happy to hear that the new breed of wheelwatchers were forming new teams across the countries.  I know it will be a tough nut to swallow, but the veterans would do them selfs a favour by asking the young ones for advice. Even though they were old enough to be their daddys. Todays wheels calls for new measures and the young wheelwatchers has the advantage to never have seen nor played an easy wheel as they were some places 10 years ago. They are used to tough conditions and it calls for more thorough analysis.  The new breed is doing exactly that. 

It seems like the cards has been reshuffled and dealt again.  The ones who knows when to hold and when to fold is the ones who will survive.