John Lewis: overemphasis by casinos on blackjack counting?

[John Lewis]

Today's papers report that the rapper Nelly was robbed of $1 million worth of jewelry at the Aladdin.

This may or may not have been an inside (casino employee assisted) job. It does cause one to reflect on the general issue of employee theft at casinos, however.

I would suspect that casino losses due to employee theft are several orders of magnitude larger than net losses from advantage play blackjack. Is the attention paid to this problem appropriately proportionate to attention paid to card counting? In other words, if employee theft is 1000 times as large as losses to blackjack counting, are employee theft countermeasures 1000 times larger than anti-counter efforts?

I suspect that anti-counter efforts are irrationally large relative to advantage play losses by casinos.

[college kid]

Yes, casinos are more concerned with inside theft over advantage play. Counters are not their only concern, despite what all of you guys think! :-P

> Today's papers report that the rapper Nelly
> was robbed of $1 million worth of jewelry at
> the Aladdin.

> This may or may not have been an inside
> (casino employee assisted) job. It does
> cause one to reflect on the general issue of
> employee theft at casinos, however.

> I would suspect that casino losses due to
> employee theft are several orders of
> magnitude larger than net losses from
> advantage play blackjack. Is the attention
> paid to this problem appropriately
> proportionate to attention paid to card
> counting? In other words, if employee theft
> is 1000 times as large as losses to
> blackjack counting, are employee theft
> countermeasures 1000 times larger than
> anti-counter efforts?

> I suspect that anti-counter efforts are
> irrationally large relative to advantage
> play losses by casinos.

[Magician]

> I would suspect that casino losses due to
> employee theft are several orders of
> magnitude larger than net losses from
> advantage play blackjack. Is the attention
> paid to this problem appropriately
> proportionate to attention paid to card
> counting? In other words, if employee theft
> is 1000 times as large as losses to
> blackjack counting, are employee theft
> countermeasures 1000 times larger than
> anti-counter efforts?

I would suspect that if you offset casino losses to competent blackjack counters against casino gains from incompetent blackjack counters, that the casinos would wind up in the black.

[ET Fan]