That is not how counting cards helps. You play safe, low bets long enough to get a good estimate of what is left in the deck and use that knowledge to make more educated bets. Modern casinos hedge against this by re-shuffling more often or even switching decks out more often, but those are relatively new counter-measures.
Modern casinos mostly hedge against this by keeping track of people with a suspicious pattern of winning and disinviting them. The thing about card counting is, the strategy is the same for everyone, so if you know how to count cards, and someone is betting the way you'd want to bet, they're probably also counting cards.
Well that too, but most fantasy settings you are not dealing with (no pun intended) modern style casinos.
Well that too, but most fantasy settings you are not dealing with (no pun intended) modern style casinos.
But there is an active selection going on: Other people playing against someone counting cards, once you get above a certain level, are likely also counting cards.
It's the shark dilemma: You can beat any number of bad players, but eventually you'll run into some who are even better than you. Obviously it'd be unfair for a GM to decide there's someone equally good at every table our Keen Mind PC sits down at. But as the stakes get higher, the chance increases that not some other player - but all other players at that table - are also able to remember what cards have been played already.
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
Well that too, but most fantasy settings you are not dealing with (no pun intended) modern style casinos.
Most fantasy settings also don't have a society with a sophisticated enough understanding of statistics for card counting to be useful. The reason card counting wasn't much of a thing before the 20th century isn't because people before that couldn't count, it's because they didn't know what to count.
Most fantasy settings also don't have a society with a sophisticated enough understanding of statistics for card counting to be useful. The reason card counting wasn't much of a thing before the 20th century isn't because people before that couldn't count, it's because they didn't know what to count.
I checked. And you're ... 'right'. There's even a guy credited with inventing it.
I do reject that as utter nonsense though. If we accept it as true, we invented cheating at games (like blackjack) literal centuries before we invented being good at the game. That's laughable. But I'll grant you that a formalised, dokumented and published method for it wasn't a thing until 1950. Or so.
Anyways, if the method isn't invented, it also isn't available to a PC with Keen Mind. Rendering the discussion kinda moot =)
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
I do reject that as utter nonsense though. If we accept it as true, we invented cheating at games (like blackjack) literal centuries before we invented being good at the game.
I would call that accurate. While there was some foundational work as far back as the 16th century, understanding of probability didn't evolve into something particularly useful for gambling before the 20th century with modern game theory. You can, of course, just let people have an anachronistic understanding of gambling, but if you do, that's going to affect gambling establishments as well.
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Well that too, but most fantasy settings you are not dealing with (no pun intended) modern style casinos.
But there is an active selection going on: Other people playing against someone counting cards, once you get above a certain level, are likely also counting cards.
It's the shark dilemma: You can beat any number of bad players, but eventually you'll run into some who are even better than you. Obviously it'd be unfair for a GM to decide there's someone equally good at every table our Keen Mind PC sits down at. But as the stakes get higher, the chance increases that not some other player - but all other players at that table - are also able to remember what cards have been played already.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
Most fantasy settings also don't have a society with a sophisticated enough understanding of statistics for card counting to be useful. The reason card counting wasn't much of a thing before the 20th century isn't because people before that couldn't count, it's because they didn't know what to count.
I checked. And you're ... 'right'. There's even a guy credited with inventing it.
I do reject that as utter nonsense though. If we accept it as true, we invented cheating at games (like blackjack) literal centuries before we invented being good at the game. That's laughable. But I'll grant you that a formalised, dokumented and published method for it wasn't a thing until 1950. Or so.
Anyways, if the method isn't invented, it also isn't available to a PC with Keen Mind. Rendering the discussion kinda moot =)
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
I would call that accurate. While there was some foundational work as far back as the 16th century, understanding of probability didn't evolve into something particularly useful for gambling before the 20th century with modern game theory. You can, of course, just let people have an anachronistic understanding of gambling, but if you do, that's going to affect gambling establishments as well.