There's an app for that: Casinos on alert for card counters using iPhones

Casinos are money losing places since you are not allowed to look at the actual odds. The only way to make money in a casino is to own one and not be Donald Trump.

It's not my own Matrix Moment, but by dad works for a federal loan guarantor, and was at a conference where a speaker was talking about how people shouldn't invest in federal bonds. My dad remembered reading something about how Warren Buffet said federal bonds are a good thing to be investing in, so he did a Google search, found the article and asked a question.

After the talk, the speaker read the article on my dad's iPhone.

My matrix moment was this: I found someone's backpack in the college café, so I looked for a notebook, got the name, looked him up on the Facebook app, took down his AIM, popped open that app, and shot him an IM letting him know that his back was there. Got a thank you reply, he got his bag, and I was mildly freaked out by how "plugged in" the entire operation was.

Also had a great one Sunday at a family wedding -- as the bride and groom had their first dance to a lovely acoustic version of "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" mashed up with "What A Wonderful World", my brother and I got curious who the singer on the recording was. I pulled out the iPhone, opened Shazam and a few seconds later we had our answer -- Israel "IZ" Kamakawiwo'ole from the Meet Joe Black soundtrack. Almost spooky watching it work!

I had a great one this past sunday - was at a really popular brunch location in dc - no tables, no reservations - they were turning everyone away. I whipped out my iphone and looked at the OpenTable app, and saw a reservation available for 2pm (it was 1pm at the time).

we went back up to the host, said we had a reservation for 2pm, but there early - he we were at our table in less than 5 min! YAY IPHONE!

"Guns. Lots of guns."

-K

What a joke.

As was pointed out in the above comments, you have a very small margin if you are counting BJ. Even with digital assistance, you will still have to vary your bet widely to really take advantage of the information you have. This is totally obvious to a competent security person. If you aren't varying your bet enough to be detected, you probably aren't making enough money for them to care.

So I would be really surprised if they are really worried about this.

The other thing is that it would be really really hard to actually use these apps to gain an advantage, and thats before you have to put it in your pocket to hide it from the casino people.

The cards come really fast, and your fingers would have to be tapping the different buttons on the screen just as fast, and not make mistakes to get it to work. Now try to do that without looking at the screen.

Its probably a lot easier just to learn to count cards.

That purple book in the background was my pre-calc book from last semester (I'm in 10th grade)

Here is how

http://www.ucubd.com/Index.aspx?id=1111&cid=x0100009

Sure the iPhone can do all that, but you still need a landline to get OUT of the Matrix.