Examination of the Casino Scene in License to Kill

In my previous newsletter, I mentioned that this would conclude my series on James Bond, focusing on the poker sequences in Casino Royale. However, a thoughtful reader pointed out that I completely overlooked the blackjack scene in License to Kill. He was right to call me out on that. I apologize for forgetting about this particular film, as it's not one of my favorites in the Bond series, and I cringe at how the casino scene is portrayed; it feels very forced and unreal.

For the purposes of this newsletter, I will reference a clip depicting the scene available on the mentioned source. This scene is set in the imaginary Casino de Isthmus City, and there are two elements that I find bothersome right off the bat. YouTube First, has there ever been another Bond film set in a completely fictional location? One of the attractions of Bond films is their ability to transport audiences to real locations across the globe. However, a fictitious city within a made-up nation, namely the Republic of Isthmus, diminishes the experience. They could have easily placed these scenes in Panama, which wouldn't have raised any eyebrows in 1989 when the movie premiered.

Secondly, settle on a language and use it consistently! It irritates me when business names and products alternate between languages, often English and Spanish. In this case, the casino name incorporates the Spanish word 'de' instead of the English 'of,' yet retains English for both 'city' and 'isthmus.' It would have been better to go for a complete Spanish name, perhaps 'Casino de la Ciudad de Istmo.' As a side note, if you search for casino chips on Ebay, these fictional casino chips seem to dominate the results for some peculiar reason. Don't be fooled into spending a lot for them; they are overly abundant.

Thanks for giving me a moment to express my thoughts. Now, back to the casino action. We see Bond playing blackjack alone, managing five hands simultaneously. In the first two hands, he's up against a shoe, while the third hand operates with a single deck. We'll explore this oddity in due time. Here are a few rules we can infer from the game:

In the first hand, the dealer takes a hole card but doesn’t peek at it. Bond finds himself losing with starting hands totaling 17, 16, 18, 19, and another 16, ultimately facing a dealer total of 20. Seen betting $5,000 per hand, his total losses sum up to $25,000. One could wonder why Bond opted not to hit on his two 16s; numerous face cards appeared in that hand, possibly leading him to believe the deck’s count was high. In basic blackjack strategy using the hi-low method, even with a true count of +1, standing on a 16 against a dealer’s 10 would be a prudent choice.

• Dealer stands on soft 17
• The second hand begins at about 1:54 in the video. The sequence of Bond's five hands goes as follows, from first to last: 11, 8-8, 20, 19, 20. The dealer reveals an 8. Bond wisely doubles down on 11 and draws a 10. By splitting his eights, he receives a 10 on one and a king on the other, while he chooses to stand on the remaining three hands. The dealer’s hole card shows a 5, followed by a drawn 10, giving the dealer a bust at 23. Bond wins a total of $70,000 from his initial five hands, each starting at $10,000.

The third hand kicks off around the 3:33 mark, when a new dealer appears without warning. Furthermore, the game shifts from blue cards in a shoe to a red deck. Sensing something amiss, Bond asks, \"Am I going to win or lose?\" The dealer kindly responds, saying, \"lose.\" Following this, she reveals a blackjack that beats the five successful hands Bond had just stayed with. I can distinctly identify hands totaling at least 19, 19, and 18.

What I find particularly unrealistic is the complete absence of small cards—throughout all three hands, we don't see a single 2, 3, or 4. The following table summarizes the counts of every rank I was able to identify across the three hands.

A chi-squared analysis of this distribution yields a p-value of 0.7654%. In simpler terms, if we randomly selected 35 cards with replacement, the likelihood of this skewed distribution occurring is just 1 in 131.

This, however, does not take into account that the ranks with an excess are high cards while the ranks in deficit are the smaller ones.

RANK	OBSERVED
2	0
3	0
4	0
5	2
6	2
7	1
8	4
9	4
10	8
JACK	3
QUEEN	6
KING	4
ACE	1
TOTAL	35

For instance, 29 of the 35 cards fall between the ranks of 8 and king. The odds of that happening, again assuming replacement, are 1 in 138,255. Still, one could argue that I'm overextending my test to highlight unfavorable results.

How about the observation that in 15 played hands, Bond never opts to hit as his first move? Following basic strategy for six decks, considering the dealer stands on soft 17 and has no blackjack, here are the probabilities for each conceivable first action.

The scene does not clarify whether surrender is an option. If it were, the probability of this play would be 4.14%, which factors into the overall probability of standing.

The chance of not hitting is 60.22%. The odds of not hitting even once in 15 hands is 0.6022^15, translating to about 1 in 2015. Granted, you could nitpick this calculation, saying it assumes all decks are fresh for each hand, and that Bond should have hit his 16 against the dealer's 10. Yet, I would argue that playing five hands concurrently makes it even less likely to have all five remain pat, especially with the concept of replacement at play. I don't claim that my figure of 1 in 2015 is perfect, but it should be pretty close. Additionally, it’s worth noting that Bond also skipped hitting on his split hands.

Action	Probability
Stand	43.46%
Hit	39.78%
Double	9.53%
Split	2.48%
Blackjack	4.75%
Total	100.00%

I previously stated something similar regarding Diamonds are Forever, but I must reiterate that this scene stands as one of my least favorites in the entire Bond franchise. In fact, I can comfortably assert that it's my very least favorite casino scene, far worse than Diamonds are Forever, which at least offered some humor.

Unless another memorable Bond casino scene comes to mind, next week we'll be analyzing Casino Royale. Until then, may luck be in your favor.

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Written by: Michael Shackleford