Gorilla Practice

The point of the Big Player concept is to avoid barring by using a player that always has the advantage and therefore always bets high instead of heavily varying bets. But it is not foolproof. The casino is going to watch someone betting large and making money. It is not that much work to discover that he keeps showing up at tables with high counts. So, a problem with the Big Player (BP) concept is that the highly trained BP can be burned.

A solution is to hire expendable BPs. That is, instead of the BP being the heart of the team, multiple BPs are hired for short terms. These are called gorillas. Since gorillas take signals from the spotters, they do not need to count and therefore can be trained more quickly.

However, they do have to be trained to know when to take signals for some playing decisions. It is not practical to take signals for every play. This would be far too obvious. Instead, the gorilla learns Basic Strategy and a short list of hands where a signal is required before making a playing decision. These are the hands with indexes. The spotter will signal the actions according to the count for these hands.

Some years ago, I included an option in the Casino Vérité Blackjack Flashcard drills to aid in the training of gorillas. At first the option was hidden and could only be invoked through an undocumented key sequence, as the feature was implemented for a team. In Casino Vérité V5 it was made a public option.

In Gorilla Mode, a new Wait button is displayed in addition to the Hit, Stand, Double, Split and Surrender buttons. If the displayed hand has an index, Wait is the correct response. Click Wait and you will be told how to play. Then play according to the signal. In this manner, gorillas can be more quickly trained and tested.

 © 2009 Norman Wattenberger