If you have been counting cards and know that the odds are favorable to hit rather than stand (the normal play), you better think twice because the systems from NICE are watching, and you could be booted from the casino for making too smart a play. Look carefully at the photo on the right. The system from NICE is analyzing a blackjack game using video recognition technologies. It can identify the cards that you have, and it tracks how the game is going and how everyone is playing and betting. If you cheat or play too well, the NICE system will send an alarm to the casino staff e.g., "there is a card counter in seat 3 and table 20," and you will be out of luck.
Here is a tip from the guys at NICE, while most people think that an 18 is a good blackjack hand it turns out to lose more than 60% of the time based on their actual observations of millions of blackjack games. I have not checked their math. The only thing that NiceVision is missing is pattern recognition on the players’ faces, and they expect to have this soon.
Such amazing and ubiquitous video recognition has only been made possible recently through advances in computer hardware and software. The implications of such technology are staggering. Currently, systems like NiceVision are being used to at airports to scan for unattended baggage. But there is nothing to prevent this technology from being used in stores to identify you as a shopper and learn your patterns. I won't be surprised to walk into, for example, a Safeway that I have never been to before one day in 2015 and hear, "Welcome, Vidal. How have you been? You look well. We haven't seen you in a while...." How will the automated supermarket of the future know who I am? Because I walked into another Safeway five years ago in another state and the cameras captured and remembered everything. Everyone will be famous. How nice.
Posted over 4 years ago
nice site! perhaps one should not think at all. i'm no gambler, as you know, but i've heard that gut reaction is sometimes best. in malcolm gladwell's book "blink" he investigates how people's gut reaction in the first nanosecond (ok, maybe millisecond) of processing often correctly reaches a conclusion, but we are often sabbotaged by our own "thinking it through". ex. - a savant card counter, poker-virgin, went to vegas as a test case. he tried counting for the first sleeve (5-deck) and lost overwhelmingly. for the 2nd sleeve, he gave up counting and went by gut. this led him to split two 7's and then split another 7 when it was turned on a 7. all thought he was a big do-do. he hit 21 on all three 3's. go figure. when NICE starts reading patterns on faces, we'll all need more than just "poker" faces. -karen
Posted over 4 years ago
Nice system, nice photos and nice models! Didn't know you had started your own website. I guessed correctly from your email. So you are a recovering engineer... YIKES! I guess with a PhD in this shit, that makes me a complete loser :( Remember that if you want to throw in your hat for the internal competition here where I work, you'd better do it before October 7 Phi Alpha