Like all casino games blackjack is vulnerable to real-time modeling and analysis. It’s arguably the biggest chink in the casino’s armor of expected value — it’s already been solved and it turns out that a mushy old human brain is computer enough to give the thinking player edge over the house.

The corporate fascists at the big casino companies call correct play, card counting, cheating. “You’re too smart — no fair!”

What those fascist babies fail to realize is technology democratizes intelligence. When I saw this story about Nevada, at the behest of the casinos, declaring a little +/- stealth iPhone App called “Hi Lo” illegal I realized: Blackjack is on the way out, and a bunch of other casino games may soon follow.

As computers fade into ubiquity the house can no longer rely on the idiocy of the masses. Eventually we’ll all see the virtual light and anti-logic laws will either become impossible to enforce or far more draconian.

Therefore I predict the death of blackjack. It’ll eventually become impossible to play: Either the house will lose too much money from it or they’ll require access to the computer augmenting your vision, which should terrify people away from the game. Some idiots will still give permission, but once they recover from ad-spam blindness they’ll see the writing on the wall: Too few players, too small margins.

Blackjack is dying, slowly, of the cancer of technological obsolescence.

Time to take a much-needed vacation. I’m off to Vegas in seven point five hours.

My uniform for the flight is a beaten fedora, polyester-mix traveling suit, open-collar short-sleeve shirt, aviators: ’70s style, unshaven.

The screenplay is due Friday which means I have a bit of time. Still, I don’t want to be working in Vegas, and I’m leaving the laptop here for various reasons.

This is a convenient time for an all-nighter, apparently the only way I know how to really work.