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Monday, December 07, 2009
Ind. Courts - "Casino takes card-counting case to Indiana Supreme Court"
A lengthy story today by Vic Ryckaert of the Indianapolis Star begins:
Counting cards in blackjack is so easy, Thomas Donovan says, that a seventh-grader could do it.A side-bar, presumably written to aid 7th-graders, discusses "How it's done"But using the legal technique to try to tilt the odds in the favor of gamblers is unfair, the gaming industry says. Indiana casinos call the practice, dramatized in movies such as "Rain Man" and "21," bad for business, and they want the right to bar card counters from their tables.
Grand Victoria Casino and Resort in Rising Sun, supported by the association that represents 11 of the state's 12 casinos, last week asked the Indiana Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling that forces them to allow Donovan to play blackjack, even though the Indianapolis man admits he is counting cards.
The fight has wider implications for the state's casino industry, which is reeling amid a down economy and increased competition from neighboring states.
Experts say Indiana casinos may feel forced to institute new rules that could slow play and make the game less attractive to all players -- possibly pushing them to casinos in Illinois, Michigan and, soon, Ohio, where voters in November approved a plan to build four casinos.
"The reality is if a casino were not able to ban a blackjack card counter, then they probably would be inclined to change the rules of the game," said William R. Eadington, director of the Institute for the Study of Gambling & Commercial Gaming at the University of Nevada-Reno.
Card counting has been a heated subject for casinos since it emerged as a skill in the 1960s. Counters like Donovan mentally tick off which cards have been played from the deck at a blackjack table. They often place small bets until a deck becomes "hot." That's when they bet big, confident they'll beat the dealer.
Card counters uses their mental prowess to track the number of high and low cards that have come out of the dealer's deck. A card counter sits at a table for hours and usually bets the minimum, say $5, waiting for the times when a lot of low cards have been played. When the deck has a lot of face cards remaining, it becomes "hot," in card-counting parlance. That gives the card counter a mathematical edge over the house.Here is the Court of Appeal's Oct. 30, 2009 opinion in Thomas P. Donovan v. Grand Victoria Casinio & Resort, L.P. Here is an Oct. 14th ILB entry on the oral argument. (Yes, the opinion came out only a few weeks later.)
Posted by Marcia Oddi on December 7, 2009 06:02 AM
Posted to Ind. App.Ct. Decisions