• Home
  • Art and Science and Bringing Down the House

  • 31 MAR 2008

    Art and Science and Bringing Down the House

    A post by Sean Fenlon as Call Centers, Hot Transfers, Industries, Lead Generation, Marketing, Technology

    Post By
    Sean Fenlon

    I’ve had many friends recommend that I read the book “Bringing Down the House” – a story about M.I.T. students that found a way to beat the casino system in Las Vegas and win millions of dollars at the Blackjack table.  I admit, I never read the book, but I did see the movie “21” this past weekend, which was loosely based on the real events in the book.

    What intrigued me most about the storyline was the notion of using science to gain an advantage in a game of probability.  Also, M.I.T. certainly has no shortage of young brilliant scientists, so this added to the intrigue. 

    At its core, the “system” was counting cards in the game of Blackjack.  Like many, I was first introduced to the concept of counting cards in the movie Rain Man, but I had presumed that all card-counting was in the Rain-Man-esque sense of the word – literally memorizing EVERY card that had been played in a multi-deck shoe, and thereby establishing greater certainty as to what specific cards are still remaining in a deck.  What I did not realize until I saw the movie was that most card-counting was NOT memorizing every individual card, but rather assigning a single composite score to the deck of remaining cards based upon the score of each individual card that has already been played.  While challenging, keeping track of a score in a card-by-card linear sense (referred to as “the count” in the book and the movie) is much easier than memorizing every card that has been played.  The cards remaining in a deck with a score of +18 would have a much better chance at producing winning cards to the gambler than a deck with a score of 4 or zero or -9.  

    Apparently, card counting has been taking place for a long time, and with a little practice, can be performed even by ambitious gamblers who are not M.I.T. whiz kids and who are not Rain Man.  However, it was always easy for Casinos to spot these troublemakers since their betting patterns would change erratically based upon the “score” of the remaining deck.  In other words, card counters would bet the table minimum sometimes for hours and then all of a sudden begin betting huge amounts once the “score” of the deck tipped substantially in their favor.  This is apparently not naturally-occurring behavior patterns of most gamblers, so it was almost a sure sign of card counting.  Casinos in Las Vegas could simply ask the clever card counter to leave the Casino (and perhaps ask them “firmly” to never return).  Casinos in Atlantic City do not ask gamblers to leave, but could easily frustrate the process by throwing new decks into the shoe, changing dealers, insisting upon a change of table, etc.

    What made the “system” of the M.I.T. students so unique was actually NOT the SCIENCE of counting cards in order to shift the odds of probability in their favor, but rather it was the ART of how they engineered the process for the most profitable results.

    Knowing the casinos could easily spot any one individual performing all the functions themselves, they bifurcated the process amongst two team players.  The first player essentially acted as a scout and constantly played a table minimum at all times in order to establish the score of a deck (“the count”).  Once a deck was scored above a certain threshold, the scout would signal the big-better to come over to the table and begin betting heavy.  The big-better raised no eyebrows as they appeared to casinos as a lucky high-roller on a lucky run.  The scout raised no eyebrows as they never changed their habit of betting the table minimum.

    The card-counting is pure science, but the engineering of this process was pure creative art.

    Einstein gives credit to many of his greatest scientific breakthroughs (including the theory of relativity) to the creative and artistic part of his mind, as opposed to the mathematical side, hence his famous quote, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

    I see a literal correlation to this them in the world of lead generation.  As of 2008, the lead buying and lead selling industries are buzzing with new methods for scientifically analyzing data – lead scoring, lead segmenting, lead data appending, multivariate regression analysis, etc.  Many of these new concepts have yielded significant value to both buyers and sellers, much like counting cards provided more of an advantage to the gambler than not counting cards.  However, whether it’s counting cards or scoring leads, new problems tend to replace old problems when science alone is applied to a problem without a creative fresh perspective and artful imagination.

    In the world of Internet leads, more and more science will continue to yield frustrating results as there are inherent limitations to pure data.  Lead buyers are spending their money on the bet that they can sell something and make more money (hopefully a lot more money) than they bet, but they can’t SELL anything to data.  To sell something a lead buyer needs a consumer to be live on the phone.  This is where the Art of Leads and Lead Generation (read: DoublePositive – notice the title of this blog, BTW) comes in.

    Like the M.I.T. team in Vegas, DoublePositive has creatively bifurcated a process into discrete teams.  But rather than using scouts and big-betters, DoublePositive lets the Internet lead generation teams establish interest and capture consumer data, and then DoublePositive applies high-science to identify those consumers with the highest likelihood of converting into a sale, establishes LIVE contact with those consumers, double-confirms their qualifications and interest and then transfers the consumer LIVE to the lead buyer.

    The net-net of the M.I.T. team was a scaleable system that allowed them to profit millions (what they did was entirely legal, BTW), and the net-net of DoublePositive is that the sale reps in lead-buying organizations can spend 100% of their time selling (instead of 20% of their time selling and the other 80% of the time spent chasing down consumers, scheduling call-backs, sending emails, leaving voice mail messages, etc.).

    I think DoublePositive is Bringing Down the House with the Art of Leads and Lead Generation.  But then again, I’m biased. ;-)

    You just read:

    Art and Science and Bringing Down the House by Sean Fenlon

0

Add your comments