Is card counting as portrayed in Rain Man possible?
In the 1988 movie, Rain Man, starring Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman, Hoffman portrayed an autistic savant, Raymond Babbit. In one segment of the movie Cruise, playing Raymond’s brother Charlie, discovers that Raymond has the ability to determine from a deck composed of six normal decks of cards, 312 cards, the odds of winning the next hand at blackjack. Charlie sets out to make a large sum of money, using Raymond’s ability, at the Las Vegas gaming tables.
Card counting, as this memory exercise is known, is a talent which can be developed or learned. Casinos will, if they suspect you are successfully using this technique and winning, ask you to leave the casino, as it removes their advantage of having the odds in their favor.
Savants have a particular talent, most often memory related, that is beyond the norm. Approximately 49.25% of savants are autistic. Another 49.25% have mental disabilities, brain disease or suffered a brain injury. The remaining 0.50 percent has had no illness or brain injury.
In general, savant’s talents are very narrow and focused. They may do very complex mathematical equations in their head very rapidly or recite with 98.7% accuracy the text of 12,000 books they have read. On the opposite side of their abilities, they may not be able to tell you what they had for breakfast.
Mnemonic is a term used for persons with advanced memorization abilities that use memory enhancement techniques that they have refined by practice. An example of this is a technique that you may have used in high school. You might have remembered the word HOMES to identify the names of the Great Lakes, Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie and Superior.
At the World Memory Championship each year, complex variations of this technique are used. The record for viewing a randomly shuffled deck of cards and repeating the order, suit and value of the cards is 24.97 seconds. In a portion of the contest, contestants are given one hour to view and repeat the order of as many decks of cards as possible. The record is 22 ½ decks or 1180 cards, 19.66 cards per minute.
In conclusion, a savant, focused on the task of counting a deck of 312 cards and calculating the odds, could probably do it. For even the most skilled Mnemonic, it would be impossible to do in the limited time required to play a hand of blackjack.



