Ben Affleck Card Counts: Whoops, He Did It Again

Posted on: June 16, 2014, 05:30h. 

Last updated on: June 14, 2014, 09:30h.

Casino.org Staff Writer Read More

Expertise: Commercial Gaming.

Oh, Ben Affleck, you lil ol’ so-and-so, you! Looks like Batman – AKA our Hollywood mega-star Ben – is going to need his Batmobile at the ready if he wants to keep on counting cards at blackjack in every casino he sets foot in. Yes, he’s been caught at it yet again, this time up north in Canada.

Let’s back track for a moment: the skill of a card-counter is not just in the ability to track a dealer’s deck with devastating accuracy – simple techniques can be mastered by almost anyone with a certain amount of patience and determination. No, the real skill comes from avoiding detection and increasing your bets without arousing suspicion; it’s about the art of disguise and diversion, creeping across the casino floor like a kind of blackjack ninja. Something which you might expect a well-known actor who plays a superhero might be a natural at – but no.

Second Time, Same as the First

Yes, just over a month after he was unceremoniously dismissed from the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas for being “way too obvious” about his advantage play, the Oscar winner and poker enthusiast was back at the tables, this time in the high-stakes section of the Caesar Windsor Hotel and Casino in Ontario, where he lasted all of 20 minutes, playing $8k per hand, before being asked to leave.

As reported by STAR magazine, his one concession to a disguise may have been his disheveled appearance. According to a “source” for the notoriously untrustworthy celebrity gossip rag, “his hair was a disaster, and he looked like a mess.”

“It took me a minute to realize it was Ben Affleck,” continued the wide-eyed source. “He looked disheveled and upset while sitting there gambling. He seemed really frazzled like he had just lost a ton of money. He was smoking a cigarette and his head was down in his arms. When he sat up his eyes looked bloodshot, like he’d been there all night!”

That’s got to be a tough proposition when you’re one of the most recognizable people in the world. Yes, we reckon a card-counter has his work cut out for him if every time he enters a casino, it’s all over the newspapers the next morning. And if he plans to keep this up, his new nickname could soon be Blackjack Argo-Go!

Daredevil

At this point we must express our admiration for a man whose “gamble” is so heroic that, having been the subject of recent surveillance alerts in Las Vegas (the Vegas casinos share information on a network database of known “suspicious characters”), he decided to travel to Canada for a few rounds of his favorite game. Forgetting that it’s not 1849, and computers are everywhere – particularly among American casino companies that are Las Vegas-based.

Unsurprisingly, considering the amount of travel involved, Affleck was reportedly “pretty mad,” when security cottoned on to his presence at the Caesar Windsor and told the dealers to stop what they were doing before asking him to leave.

Of course, STAR is suggesting that Affleck’s impossibly glamorous wife, Jennifer Garner, is distraught about his gambling habits and was “absolutely mortified about the Las Vegas incident,” adding that “everything has really gone downhill since then.” Well, STAR would say that, that’s its job, but we’re not sure there’s any evidence of this. In fact, we fail to see why anyone would be too bothered about their handsome, talented, millionaire movie-star husband letting off steam occasionally by employing advantage techniques in a casino at stakes he can well afford. But maybe that’s just us.