Occasionally, you’ll play a session with no scrutiny, no heat, and no suspicion coming from the dealer, the pit, or surveillance. More often, and especially as you engage in higher-stakes play, your presence will be a source of curiosity amongst casino personnel at best, and a serious source of immediate concern at worst.
You are essentially presenting the casino with a puzzle: who you are, and whether or not you’re a desirable player. Do you want your puzzle to be a children’s jumbo jigsaw, or a 2000-piece borderless jigsaw with no box image and extra pieces?
Much has been said about various tactics to keep casino staff guessing. There are lots of things you can do that make you look less like an AP—drinking alcohol, tipping, talking a lot, not paying attention to the cards, and so on. But there are just as many things you can not do that will also add a little bit of complexity to your puzzle.
1. Phones. If there’s one leak that the entire advantage play community has, it’s gratuitous cell phone usage. Don’t get me wrong—cell phones are crucial in this business; they’re one of the most powerful tools we have. But do you really need to be checking your phone under the table every two minutes?
Look at other gamblers in the casino. How many of them are glued to their phones while playing? Not many, because they’re engrossed in the game they’ve decided to play. They’re there to escape reality, not to indulge in by checking their phone compulsively.
It’s even worse if you have a partner at the table doing the same nonstop phone checking under the table. It looks extremely suspicious, and it helps surveillance put you together.
Oh, and holding your phone at an upright angle and/or covering it with your other hand to hide the screen from surveillance cameras looks stupid, and it’s a 100% guarantee that anyone doing this is an AP. Knock it off.
2. Paying attention. Most civilians aren’t attached to their phones while playing because they’re wrapped up in playing! I know it’s boring as a non-civilian to sit at a table all day and play cards, but you need to at least pretend to care about what’s going on.
Sitting in the same spot for eight hours and spending nearly all of that time staring at the TV and checking your phone tells casino staff that you’re not really there to gamble for fun, and you’re not there to satisfy your craving for action, either. So why are you there? Is that a question you want the pit crew and surveillance to ask themselves?
3. Handling cash. Watch gamblers at the table, especially high rollers. If they’re not playing with a credit line (i.e., using markers), how do they handle buy-ins?
Here’s a hint: they definitely don’t sneakily pull a money belt out of their pants and count money by touch under the table. Counting money under the table is an AP thing. Having money neatly separated into set amounts across several pockets is an AP thing. Using a money belt in view of the cameras is a really ridiculous AP thing.
Pulling out a wad of cash in a rubber band is more “normal.” Pulling it out of your wallet is even more so. Be normal.
4. Blatant dealer-play correlation. We’ve all done it, and many of you are doing it now. You like playing against a particular dealer but not so much against their relief. So when the relief shows up, you immediately take a 15-minute long bathroom break. Or, you drop your bet to 1/10 the size of your standard wager.
Is it really worth the savings here? Could you time your breaks a little more strategically—perhaps leaving a little earlier and sometimes not leaving at all? Could you afford to fade the 0.7% house edge on your standard wager size for 20 minutes so that you can keep it steady with a 5% edge for the next hour? Can you employ some game slowing techniques instead of dropping bets to a comically low level or appearing as if you have a serious drug and/or constipation problem?
If you want to look like a civilian, do things that civilians do. And better yet, don’t do things that APs do. By thinking about this from both perspectives, you create a much more difficult puzzle for the casino to solve, and that’s money.
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Blake Phillips is a professional advantage player and contributing editor to AP Street. Contact him at bp@apstreet.com
April 17, 2017 @ 2:31 pm
Great post, Blake–all excellent points. I’m sure you had more in mind and just chose the most important, but one that I think is worth adding is
5. Having an “act”
In the wise words of Holdaway, “If you ain’t a great actor you’re a bad actor, and bad acting is b***s*** in this job.”
I’m not saying you should completely be yourself at the tables, but a lot of AP wannabes have an “act” that is so over the top or otherwise unbelievable that I think it does more harm than good. Unless you are a truly talented actor, I think it’s better to just turn the volume up (e.g. being outgoing) or down (e.g. being logical) on select aspects of your natural personality rather than try to get too creative.
April 27, 2017 @ 1:11 am
To add to your excellent list and David’s addendum:
6.) For some reason AP’s can’t help but shuffle their chips (or do other tricks with them that require a lot of dexterity and hand-eye coordination) like live poker players do while on a play. Squares simply don’t do this while at the table, regardless of their bet size. When I’m out scouting and I come across someone doing this at a table, it seems like 80% of the time I just stumbled upon a play. It can not only out you to the pit, but to your competition as well.
April 17, 2017 @ 2:34 pm
David, I couldn’t agree more. In fact, I agree so much that I already have a longer piece on this exact topic in the pipeline! Stay tuned…
April 17, 2017 @ 7:42 pm
I don’t understand why talking to the pit is never on any of these lists. If you want to blend into the crowd, talk to them. It’s human nature that once you have somebody pegged, pigeonholed, they kinda disappear to you. Once you engage a few pit people, you blend in more.
Last week a pitguy had his hair in a bun. I asked him if he liked it, if he got comments on it, how he gets it cut to make it do that. He enjoyed me asking, people are vain. Talk about them, pay attention to them. Women are the easiest. I ask them if their husband hates them working in a casino, if they used to be dealers, if they miss it.
Once they see you as a person, you disappear as an unknown quantity. They pigeonhole you, it’s a natural instinct. You’re the nice old guy, or whatever.
April 17, 2017 @ 8:11 pm
Good point, and agreed. “Look Like a Civilian” could fill up another article entirely. Step one: slow the game to a crawl with new buy-ins every 10 minutes.
April 17, 2017 @ 10:14 pm
“Step one: slow the game to a crawl with new buy-ins every 10 minutes.”
Make sure it’s all $1’s & $5’s. 😉
April 18, 2017 @ 5:21 pm
Bob,
One potential negative in talking to the pit like you describe is being memorable. Inevetibly, you are going to be unwelcome places you play (if you have an edge, and make money from them more specifically). The less memorable you are, The more likely you can return with a different look at a later date.
Lee
April 17, 2017 @ 10:14 pm
I love the blogs! I’m definitely guilty of some of the “AP tells” lol. I’ll be working on that from now on! Great stuff and keep up the great work!
April 22, 2017 @ 1:35 am
i was playing at Caesars a long time ago and i happened to wander past their gift shop. it offered a baseball jacket with the name and logo of Caesars all over it on the front and back. it was a little bit expensive and i didn’t buy it but i thought to myself ‘what a great piece of clothing for cover. who but a completely idiot would walk around with this jacket blatantly advertising his high regard for this casino?’
April 24, 2017 @ 9:18 pm
“Pulling it out of your wallet is even more so. Be normal.”
Unfortunately, until the government starts printing $1000 bills again, the working bankroll I need won’t fit in a wallet.
But having a big wad or wads of bills in a pocket or pockets is surely an improvement over repeatedly taking bank straps out of a Wong bag right at the table.
April 25, 2017 @ 8:27 am
I carry a slim wallet that can easily fit $3k in large bills with no problem. Ideally, I can pull from this initial buyin and run up a chip stack, but if this amount taps out, I may take a bathroom break to replenish it. Usually when players take a lammer and come back with cash, they’ve been at the ATM. I think this setup looks similar. I agree, though: if you can’t realistically play from your wallet, cash in the pockets is the way to go, with the caveat that APs are notorious for having neatly banded and organized packets of money at the ready, usually in separate pockets to facilitate record-keeping. If you must go the cash in pocket route, I’d suggest keeping it all together, if possible.
May 18, 2017 @ 12:04 pm
If you’re at the casino with a trustworthy girlfriend or wife, you can look like king of the degenerates “borrowing” chips or wads of cash from her purse right at the table. I don’t mean dig into her purse without permission, but make it appear like you’re tapped out and beg her right in front of the pit boss. I did this once because it was difficult to carry more than $30k on my own, just as WRX explained.