Speaker: Yi Wang

Abstract: Most of the time, you are throwing money away by playing anything at a casino, where you are expected to lose money in the long run. However, through card counting in blackjack, someone who has done enough research and practice can flip the script and actually have a theoretical advantage over the casino. This has been popularized by a (pretty bad) movie, although the portrait of card counting is not super accurate, as one would expect from a bad film. In this talk I will go over the rules of blackjack, the basics of card counting, optimal betting specific to the rules of blackjack, and other aspects of this deceptively simple casino game. (Disclaimer: gamble responsibly please.)