In a Gambling with an Edge podcast, two card counters—“Joe” and “Semi-Pro”—tell the story of a chop disagreement. I am only a listener to the podcast, with no inside knowledge, so my comments will undoubtedly misstate their positions. Pretend this discussion is based on a fictional incident. My points still apply. Part of the difficulty in running an AP team or real-world relationship is disagreements over money. To recap the fictional scenario: During her play, Semi-Pro had gone to a table where a gambler asked her to wait a few hands before joining. When the gambler’s lucky streak ended, he thanked Semi-Pro by toking her $25. The senior teammate Joe, a grizzled veteran of the EV wars, thinks that the green chip should be part of the team chop. [At that point Marlo Stanfield called in to the show to relate his experience as a rookie counter on Joe’s team: “I wanted it to be one way, but Joe told me it’s the other way.”]
Now comes Semi-Pro, giddy at $25 of UV (unexpected value) derived
from her unique skills (the skills that cause gamblers—especially older males—to
say, “So you’re telling me there’s a chance”), outside the scope of the team
mandate to count cards. By her position, it was only incidental that the $25
even came in a casino, and the profit should accrue to her the same as if a flirtatious
barista had given her a free latte at the coffee shop earlier in the day. That
chip has nothing to do with the team chop.
Sometimes I feel that we should have a forum called The APs’
Court to settle these disputes, or a private AP arbitrator (even a panel of
three AP arbitrators), since we generally don’t have signed agreements, nor the
ability to seek remedy in open court. For now, I don’t mind having these guys
duke it out on GWAE radio. (I admit that I have attended a live taping of The
Jerry Springer Show.)
If I were a trained online influencer, I would now make an ad-loaded,
click-bait slideshow saying “6 Critical Things Joe and Semi-Pro Missed” or “You’ll
Never Guess What Semi-Pro is Doing Now” or “When Joe and Semi-Pro Argued over a
Chip, This is What Happened Next …” I’m an old-school programmer, so I’ll just enumerate
paragraphs.
- Semi-Pro believed that her female, pleasant attractiveness allowed her to get that $25 that another player (like male, surly, and generally foul Joe) could not have. I wasn’t there, so I can’t say that her read of this particular situation was wrong. Maybe the gambler would not have toked a green chip to anyone else. However, I would in general question Semi-Pro’s ability to make an unbiased read. Assuming she’s been an attractive, young female for her entire playing career, she would tend to attribute such tokes to those features, and that would generally be more accurate than not. Ceteris paribus, don’t cute, friendly, female dealers make more in tokes (from a predominantly male customer base) than their male colleagues? Absolutely. BUT … it’s shocking how much and how often that’s NOT the case. I’m here to tell young Semi-Pro that in my decades of playing tables, I’m still amazed how much male players toke even unfriendly male dealers. There is definitely a gambler’s camaraderie that ignores gender, and is not based on flirtation. I myself have been toked a quarter for exactly the same thing—politely waiting while a gambler finished a hot streak. A few months ago, a gambler gave each player at the table a black chip after she hit a Royal Flush (thus adding $200 to my team’s win for the day). On Mississippi Stud a few months ago, a gambler toked me a quarter after I alerted him to a short bet on a lock winner. NHL Hall of Famer Denis Savard once tried to toke me a green chip to NOT split Tens (I declined the toke). A card counter who plays exclusively blackjack won’t see this gambler’s code as much, but it’s there, and very visible in the carnival pit. Gamblers used to regularly toke me for letting them bet my “Pairs Plus” in Three Card Poker. Loosely tossing around chips is part of The Code. We gamblers even lend each other money. Some APs even cultivate the “gambling-buddy” vibe at the table, to create scavenging opportunities. I hate to burst Semi-Pro’s bubble, since she must have felt at least a little bit flattered to have received that chip (“Why else would that guy have given me twenty-five dollars??”), but these are degens we’re dealing with, and those are just chips, not money. Semi-Pro’s feminine appeal is strong, no doubt, but it’s surprising how much we ugly dudes get toked, too.
- The team mandate to count cards is too narrow. Many APs started their career counting cards, not because there is anything special about that method, but because they heard about it, there are many books about it, and it can be objectively taught, tested, and then executed. Upon spending time in casinos, APs realize that opportunities abound. Counting, hole-carding, promotions, comps, machine-play, scavenging, mis-pays, and yes, tokes. Whatever the method, the money spends as well. Counting cards is our primary method, not our purpose. We’re going into a casino to make money, and tokes happen.
- Semi-Pro’s job description is too narrow. Semi-Pro may conceive her role to be a card counter, and earning a toke in a manner having nothing to do with counting may seem like side-gig money. I would argue that her job is to be a member of this AP team, and to that job she brings a variety of skills and assets, her counting being one, and her femaleness also being one. Each member of a team brings a unique skill set. If your skills exactly overlapped an existing team member, then we probably wouldn’t have brought you on board! We once encountered a drunk frat-boy in the lucky seat on a high-value, hole-card target. Needing that seat (easily worth five figures to us), we sent “miss brown” to acquire the seat by sidling up to him, playing with him for a while, flirting, and then inviting him to switch over to the adjacent table with her. The plan worked like a charm. No one else on our team could have acquired that seat, but does that mean we change the chop? Of course not. What if we have chips that require a player’s card to cash out? Does the one BP who has a clean name and ID claim that profit because none of us could have cashed those chips? What if I’m the only one who could have seen a particular hole card? What if I needed an Asian BP for a baccarat game, and we have only one Asian on our crew? Will he say, “I’m the only one who could have bet that.” Practically speaking, will we dissect every chip won in terms of which teammate could have won it? So Semi-Pro might feel that only she could have earned that $25, and I would say, “That’s why we’ve got you on the team! Good work!” She should take satisfaction in her unique contribution, but not an increased share.
- “It’s not the money; it’s the principle.” I’m guessing that at some point, either Joe or Semi-Pro uttered these words, and possibly they both did. I don’t disagree that it’s the principle, but they need to correctly define the principle! I’ll tell you what the principle is. The principle is: “When the amount of money is small, don’t worry about it—flip a coin, or let the finder keep it, or throw it in the chop.” See what I did there? I put the conditional right into the definition of the principle. By this properly defined principle, when a teammate buys the lattes for the team at the Starbucks, he doesn’t submit a bill to the team when it’s time to chop (assuming this is a small team of a few people). Maybe on the Boardwalk I saw a perfect hat for a teammate, and I bought it for him. It was $10 or something. Who cares? So by this principle, the instant Joe saw that Semi-Pro wanted to keep the chip, he should have let her keep it, and—and this point is critical—neither party should have any resentment or lasting irritation over the issue, regardless of the disposition of the chip. Wherever that chips ends up, provided its color was green, neither Joe nor Semi-Pro should feel that they had to concede anything, or that they made a sacrifice. It’s a coin flip. I am concerned that Joe and/or Semi-Pro might still feel some dissatisfaction over the issue (or that I’m now aggravating an old wound), and I’m here to say that the principle itself says that the chip can go either way, and no one has sacrificed anything.
- It is worth considering a catch-all rule that says that any grey area or disagreement (one or both parties will say “this isn’t a grey area—it’s obvious that I should get the chip!”) should always be resolved in favor of the team.
- After the exasperated teammates had to get separated by Steve Wilkos (I mean Bob Dancer), then Jerry Springer (Richard Munchkin) admonished them and all AP teams, “That’s why it’s good to spell everything out.” I disagree. If your goal is to ensure fairness of a one-time chop for a playing trip, then maybe that’s good advice, especially when dealing with people you don’t know, or people you recently teamed up with after meeting at a boot camp. For potential long-term relationships, I prefer to NOT spell everything out. I think it’s naïve to think that you can even do that. My goal would be to work with teammates who won’t screw me over when something unforeseen does pop up. As part of my selection process, I like to give a player some rope. If I see that time after time, a certain player resolves these situations in his own favor, and makes greedy cash grabs at every opportunity, then I’d probably prefer working with someone else. (I’m not saying Semi-Pro’s green chip is a “greedy cash grab”!) To impose a rule and then have team members follow it tells me nothing. I want to see what people do when there is no rule. Instead of saying, “You are required to play four hours per day,” I say nothing about work expectations, and then I see who is the self-motivated go-getter who puts in 18-hour days, and who is the slacker who puts in three hours and says, “No one said we have to put in four hours.” There are two particular scenarios involving bigger money that I think ARE worth spelling out: What happens if one team member has to face legal costs? What happens if a team member physically loses, or has stolen, a bunch of money or a bag of chips?
I’ve worked with a lot of other APs, and there seems to be unanimity in practice on this one. So, if I were the AP arbitrator in The Case of the Chopped Chip, my ruling is: This is a no-brainer, not even a grey area. Tokes are part of the game, not special or rare at all, and they go in the chop. If you’re good at generating those tokes, then we’re glad that that’s a skill you bring to the table for our team. Please generate more such tokes! That said, if Semi-Pro wanted to keep the chip, I’d let her have it, with no hard feelings. I wouldn’t even specify a new rule. Over time, I have every expectation that Semi-Pro will gain the same world-view that we old-timers have: she’s better at generating tokes than most or all of her teammates (and they might be better at certain other things), and she’s happy to throw those tokes into the chop. And that’s a great teammate to have.