Advanced methods of masking your play.

OK, here is how I would go about masking the fact that I am counting cards like a madman.

• Order a drink. At least it looks like a drink to surveillance. It can be a coke or club soda, of course, the camera cant tell the difference. It's not smell-o-vision.
• Engage the other people at the table. Laugh, smile, fist bump, high five and talk with the other players. Talk with the dealer. Flirt with the cocktail waitress. Be friendly, dont sit there stone faced with a 1000 yard stare watching each card as it is delivered or exposed.  
• Look away from the table once in a while. Especially if the cut card has come out or it is the last hand of a hand held game before the next shuffle. Try to appear relaxed and casual.
• By the way, you should never get caught off guard by a shuffle. Know the house rule, in this case, how deep the dealer should go in to the deck before shuffling. You dont want to put out a bet that is five or ten times your base bet, only to see the dealer start to shuffle the cards. If that does happen, however, you are going to want to take back your large bet and replace it with your base bet for the top of the deck. Don't do it. It is a huge indicator that you are betting with the count. 
• Do everything you can to give the impression that you are not counting. Up your bet by one or two units every once in a while when the running count is negative one or two. Sure, you may lose that hand, but you might win and if that happens often enough then you can throw surveillance off of your scent, so to speak. 
• Along those same lines, if your dealer is professional and shuffles the cards properly, you do not need to bother watching the shuffle, because there will be no clumps for you to track. If your dealer is lazy and not supervised properly by the pit boss, you may catch a break and be able to track a clump of tens or aces through the shuffle.  You should be able to tell the difference between a professional dealer and a crappy one within just a few minutes. If you ddo play with a good dealer, there is no need to hawk-eye the shuffle, so don't do it.
• This last one drives surveillance nuts. Barber pole your bet. This term refers to having multiple colored chips in the same stack. Now any CCTV system that has high resolution cameras and monitors can still determine what your bet is/was, but some places are cheap and they dont have the better cameras. A good surveillance observer can still tell what you bet was by watching where the dealer gets your winning chips from in the tray as they pay off your bet, but if they haven't started watching you closely yet  this might keep anyone just casually watching you from knowing that your last bet was for $135, not $40.

 OK, that's my list, but I am old, and may have forgotten a trick or two. So..... if any of you readers have any further ideas please share them with the group. Any one who contributes will get free blog access for the next month.  That's a joke, of course as I dont charge anything anyway.

See you next week.

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