Blackjack
Advantage to the Player
I vividly recall an incident where a friend of mine was barred at a club in Reno , one of the biggest casinos there. Not only was he told to leave, though he was winning just few dollars at that time, but he was publicly humiliated. He was asked for his name and proper identification, which he really didn't have to furnish, and he was forced to leave a table where he was doing nothing but idly chatting with a female dealer in hopes of getting a date with her that night.
He knew something about blackjack and knew a simple count to enable him to win at the game, but all he was doing was playing as any intelligent player would. Blackjack, after all, is a game of skill, and the measures this casino took were extreme.
Casinos have been taken to court by barred players, and until recently the casinos had won their cases against the players, hiding behind the legal charade of claiming to be private clubs, since they don't charge admission to the general public.
However, on December 1, 1979 , the Casino Control Commission of New Jersey , in a surprise move, ordered the Atlantic City casinos to permit card counters to play blackjack. At the same time, the rules were modified to make it more difficult for card counters to maintain their edge over the casinos.
In order to weaken the counters, the new rules allowed the casinos to reshuffle their four to six decks more often by lacing the plastic insert about halfway into the decks instead of the more normal two-thirds and three-quarters in. The rule lasted only thirteen days before it was rescinded by the commission chairman. Card counters are again barred in Atlantic City .