Over at The American Scene, Jim Manzi, himself a former MIT math whiz and card counter, writes about his reaction to the movie 21:

“Surprisingly, one thing that 21 made clear was that card counting isn’t an IQ test, it’s a character test. A good card-counting system, as executed in the field, might give you a 2% – 3% weighted advantage versus the house, so each hand is very close to a 50/50 proposition; consequently, you can run way down and way up several times even within a single day of play. It looks and feels a lot like luck, and a player can get very spooked when he goes down $8,000 out of a $10,000 bankroll. It is amazingly hard not to deviate from the system when you are on either a hot streak or a cold streak.”

He concludes that:

In a bizarre way, you succeed through classical bourgeois virtues: self-discipline, frugality, ego control and steady work.

It hadn’t occurred to me before reading this, but a card-counting system is a commitment device. Only by committing to the system and placing your faith in it, can you achieve the edge over the house that makes all the difference.

Some Links:

In 2002, Wired magazine published an excerpt from the book that 21 was based on, Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich, that broke down the team’s card counting system.

Freakonomics guru Steven Levitt has also written about the value of committing yourself to a particular course of action, this time in poker tournaments.

Though I didn’t explore them in the context of gambling, I did write a piece for ROB Magazine recently that explored some examples of commitment devices, and how we are turning to them more and more to outsource our self-control.