Don’t be put off by my seeming new here(I was registered a long time ago-many email addresses ago and have forgotten my password)
Anyways my question is this-With all the online casinos on the net how can they offer blackjack since it’s possible to count cards at home and potentially win all the time?
Two reasons spring to mind. One is that counting cards just gives you a better chance of winning – it’s not guaranteed to let you win every time. The other is that not everybody knows enough to count cards. I suspect casinos make most of their money off those who enjoy gambling, rather than those who know how to work the system.
There are a number of books and wbesites out there about “surefire” ways to beat the house. Some of these sources even have a grain of truth to them. Good luck!
If you email me or TubaDiva (lynnbodoni@hotmail.com or Tubadiva@aol.com) with your old name, we can retrieve your password. We will need to de-activate one or another of your usernames, as you’re not allowed to have two at once.
Well, they could use an “infinite” deck of cards. Pull cards out by odds alone. 6-deck like in a casino isn’t too different from this, but an infinite deck is by definition uncountable.
Or they could just cheat. It’s not like you could tell.
I would like to some of the math whizes I’ve seen on this site comment on how odds are created and programmed in an on-line casino.
I count cards in blackjack in real life, and it’s not fun. It’s boring. And the best strategy that I can master makes me a whopping 1.8% over the long term. Which, based on my statistics, works out to be about $8.00/hour with a $25 base bet.
Now, if you could find an honest game of blackjack, and if they used up to 8 decks, and you had absolutely nothing better to do with your life, and you had a good $50000 laying around that you could afford to lose, go for it. Note that the $8/hour doesn’t include the perks that the casino gives me, which is the only reason I even bother (i.e. get a free room and meals) in Lake Tahoe for skiing, etc.
I’m sure some smart guy could make a program to autoplay online blackjack, but I’m sure that in the fine print that kind of thing is prohibited.
You only got 1.8%! I’ve done almost 15% just playing basic strategy and using up and pull betting. What count system are you using? I’ll try to avoid it.
Even with a simple one level count (like Hi-Lo or Ace-5) you have a 19 out of 20 chance (with a good betting strategy)of doubling your bank before you go broke.
As far as online casinos go, I’m just starting to look into it seareusly. Most of them “shuffle” after every hand. So, counting cards won’t work. They use a random number generator. If you wanted to really work at it you might be able to figure out the series and predict which cards will come up next. But, that would be hard. You won’t find this info at your fav BJ web site. You’ll have to look into code breaking.
There might be a better way… Lot’s of the online casinos offer to give you some money for gambling with them. It’s not much, something like $25.00 for each $1000.00 you bet (not lose), but if your able to play at close to even odds with the house it could make you a small profit that would add up over time. You might even be surprized at how fast you can bet that much money!
Another thing you could do is put one of their ads on your web site and join thru that. Many of them pay you a small percentage of the money you lost back to you for the ad. Plus, if anybody else joins thru your site, you’ll get a cut off their loses as well!
soccerhooligan wrote:
I’m not sure what you’re asking, they don’t explicitly program the odds, the games simulate playing from a real deck, and just like in a real casino, there are probabilities associated with the game itself.
Now the online casino could easily cheat, and make it more likely for you to get cards that would bust you, but I suspect most don’t do this for two reasons: 1) If it ever leaked out that they were doing this, they would be out of business, and 2) they can make plenty of money without cheating.
xeqter, I don’t believe your claim of 15%. Are you saying that you can get 15% on average, or that you did this once and saw a 15% return? If card counting could give a 15% return on average, then the casinos would go out of business. And as sethdallob said, it’s boring, and the payback is not that good. One point that he missed is that you get the ideal payback only if you never make strategy mistakes. Add a few mistakes which are bound to happen after sitting at a table for hours, and you will take a serious bite out of your expected return.
This is pretty lame. I’d think they would simulate the way real blackjack is played, by actually using a such-and-such-deck-shoe. If its just random numbers, your odds are just going way down. Online casinos have been drawing the ire of politicians for some years now, and while I don’t know the current situation, I bet the gubment will put a stop to them in time.
First of all, my 1.8% is on every dollar I bet, long term. For every $ I put out there, I get $1.018 back, eventually. You cannot win playing against an infinite deck.
To expand on CurtC’s point, if I make 1 mistake per 10,000 hands, my expectation goes down to .5% ($1.005). It’s just not worth doing.
Sorry, I misunderstood, I was talking talking about 15% return on my investment. For example, I sit down with $100.00 and leave with $115.00. Sometimes a littel less, sometimes a little more. If I lose 3 hands in a row, I move to another table. I won’t sit at one table for hours at a time. That is boring!
About the Gov and online casinos, it is a crime to use telephone lines for gambling in this country. So, all of the casinos are outside of the USA. For that mater, they could be on a ship in international waters. Who’s going to control them?
OK the infinite deck and shuffling the cards after ever hand are both nice theories but I was kind of hoping for a definitive answer from someone out there who really knew what the online casinos actually do to prevent card counters.
And while I have no problem accepting that 1.8% is the odds in the players’ favor when counting I do have a problem with the notion that it isn’t that big of a deal in the long run. If that were so then why do casinos go nutso keeping card counters out of their casinos? Why do they increase the number of decks to lessen the chances of a counter? And why do they ban players from their casino when they are caught counting? And why do players keep trying to get back in with disguises and such to keep playing? Something isn’t adding up here.
They all shuffle after every hand (of course as soon as I as ALL, someone will find one that doesn’t!). I don’t think infinite decks is as common. Of course the result is almost identical, since you don’t go through much of even a single deck with one hand.
1.8% is more like the MAX realistic odds for the player. As others have pointed out, a mistake or two an hour can really hurt your percentage. The arguments that the casino shouldn’t really be worried about counters because a) the player percentage is very small compared to the house advantage on other games, b) the number of people willing and able to count cards on a consistent basis is pretty small, and c) the number of players who THINK they can count effectively is much higher 
have been made for decades, but the casinos won’t listen. In fact, the publicity counting has brought blackjack made it much more popular among the losing masses.
AFAIK, casinos are afraid of being fleeced by big-time team players that come in to town with a group of dozen or more coordinated players, counting and signaling to each other. This paranoia trickles down to any counter. Also, they are traditionally hyper-paranoid about actual cheating, which in their minds is closely related to card counting.
There are several good blackjack pages and boards out there with more information by actual counters, as well as a few people on this board that seem to have first-hand experience (unlike me). I can dig up some links if someone’s interested.
Arjuna34