Using behavioral skills training and video rehearsal to teach blackjack skills.
BST with video rehearsal turns hobby gamblers into perfect card counters and can do the same for any high-stakes adult skill.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Four recreational gamblers wanted to learn blackjack card counting.
Researchers used Behavioral Skills Training plus video rehearsal.
They met in a lab casino and tracked every bet and count.
What they found
All four players hit a large share counting accuracy after a few short sessions.
Three of them left the lab with real money winnings.
Skills stayed sharp one month later.
How this fits with other research
McMahon et al. (2014) got the same big gains with computer-based BST for men with intellectual disability learning HIV safety.
Gutierrez et al. (2020) seems to clash: they taught staff to run a token economy with only a manual—no live BST.
The difference is depth. Manuals work for simple staff tasks. Card counting needs live practice and video replay to reach perfect speed.
Burrows et al. (2018) also used live role-play instead of video and still beat lecture-only training, showing practice beats talk in any form.
Why it matters
If you need flawless adult skills—money handling, medical steps, safety drills—add video rehearsal to your BST package. Film the learner, show the clip, rehearse again. You will see expert-level accuracy in far fewer trials than with lecture or manuals alone.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
A behavioral skills training procedure that consisted of video instructions, video rehearsal, and video testing was used to teach 4 recreational gamblers a specific skill in playing blackjack (sometimes called card counting). A multiple baseline design was used to evaluate intervention effects on card-counting accuracy and chips won or lost across participants. Before training, no participant counted cards accurately. Each participant completed all phases of the training protocol, counting cards fluently with 100% accuracy during changing speed criterion training exercises. Generalization probes were conducted while participants played blackjack in a mock casino following each training phase. Afterwards, all 4 participants were able to count cards while they played blackjack. In conjunction with count accuracy, total winnings were tracked to determine the monetary advantages associated with counting cards. After losing money during baseline, 3 of 4 participants won a substantial amount of money playing blackjack after the intervention.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 2015 · doi:10.1002/jaba.225