I’ve been playing the Basic Strategy on Hoyle’s Casino game. Mostly using the Basic Strategy, anyway. Every so often I’ll play a hunch. I don’t know how to play poker, so I played 5-card draw and 7-card stud. I lost some money, but the stakes were low. In blackjack, I started out betting $5, then $25, and now I’m betting $100 per hand. I’ve bet $1,000 a few times (once inadvertently, but I won the hand) and it paid off over half the time. I started Casino with $5,000 and I’m at $7,078 now. There are three other (virtual) players in the game.
The Basic Strategy gives rules for when to hit and when to stand. In a nutshell: stand on 17 or higher, stand on anything if the dealer’s up card is 6 or less (aces are higher) unless you have a 12 and the dealer is showing a 2 or 3, and hit everything else unless the dealer shows a 10 card and you have two sevens. I have not been consciously playing (A,6), (A,7), (A,8) strategy, but I seem to have been playing it most of the time. Stand on (A,8), stand on (A,7) unless the dealer shows a 9 or 10, and hit on (A,6). I’ve used the strategies for doubling and splitting when I remember to. This is what I’ve found:
It’s always tough to hit a 12 or higher knowing that there are four times as many 10s in the deck than any other value. Nevertheless, I follow the Basic Strategy. More often than not, I bust. If I don’t bust, it seems the dealer beats my hand more often than I beat his. It’s uncanny how often in this game I’ll have 20 and the dealer will wind up with 21. (This applies no matter how I arrive at 20.) Using the Basic Strategy, I fully expect to bust when I hit a 12 or higher (and am pleasantly surprised when I don’t). My expectations are usually met immediately. But if the dealer is showing more than a 6, I’m supposed to hit until I get to 17 or higher. Sometimes I’ll actually hit three times and not bust. Usually not. The frustrating thing is that often the dealer ends up busting and I should have stood pat with a low hand. So I’m a little dubious. The author of Blackjack For Blood says there are loads of statistics tested over half a century showing that his charts are correct. In this game, hitting a 12 or 13 usually ends with me losing money.
That being said, I am up two grand. Part of that is because I’m not playing with real money and I’ve bet $1,000 a few times and won more often than I lost. I wouldn’t do this in a real game. There are stretches where I have a ‘slow bleed’ and watch my chips disappear. There are other times when I can’t believe how many hands I win in a row. Overall, the Basic Strategy seems to be working more often than it doesn’t; and when I’m not making wild bets, my pot seems to have an overall – but very slow – upward trend. I don’t have the time or disposable funds to go to a casino (In actuality, I do have a C-note left over from the $300 I walked away with from a table in Reno about seven years ago. So I do have that much to play with), but the disinclination to risk real cash has been lessened after trying out the Basic Strategy. I’ll practice and read some more as time permits, and maybe one day I’ll pull off the freeway and try my luck at an actual casino.