I’m heading to the local Indian Casino on Saturday 'cuz a friend is in town and wants to play. I know that there are some fairly easy ways to improve BJ odds. I can probably count two ranks of cards (highs v. lows or 10+ vs. everything else). When is the deck at my advantage? Which is the better way to count (7’s and less vs. 8 or more – Or – 9 or less and 10+)? Any other tips on how to beat the house in BJ? I’m about to start reading that chapter in a book.
I take it that they are playing single deck? If they use a six deck shoe, don’t bother counting. It only increases the odds a tiny bit, because they chop off about a full deck of cards at the end of the shoe that could be chock-full of aces and tens.
My advice? Play solid, fundamental blackjack and be disciplined about betting. Don’t jump your bets around (e.g. $10 one hand, $30 the next), and never ever “chase”. Chasing is increasing your bet in order to make back what you lost the previous hand or hands (e.g. lost $5, bet $10, lost $10, bet $20, lose $20, bet your last $50 to make it all back in one hand). Just when you think “I’ve lost the last four hands in a row, I can’t lose the next one…” you will. If you flip a coin nine times, and it comes up heads each of the nine times, the odds are still 50%-50% on the tenth toss. It’s the easiest way to bust your bank roll.
Human nature is your greatest enemy. No matter how many small advantages you piece together, the casino can still out-bank you. This is how casinos make money off of a seemingly insubstantial advantage. If you budget $500 to gamble, and you go through it, you stop, and they keep your money. If you go up $500, you try to turn it into $600. Then you start losing. The casino doesn’t have the same barrier you do, it can go down hundreds of thousands of dollars in the hole to wait you out until the statistics turn around.
Don’t obsess upon being a big winner. Just have fun and try to hold off the losses as long as possible.
Oh yeah - always split aces and eights, and never make a bet when you can’t afford to double down on it.
I think I’ll be plying a six deck shoe.
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Too funny. I recall an episode of Family Ties where Michael J. Fox’s (Michael P. Keaton) character keeps telling his mom to always splt 8’s and ACE’s.
I guess my question is - assuming 6 decks - is it worth the effort to keep a count, and if not, do I just follow the standard “stay on 14 if the dealer has 12” philosophy? And am I bound to lose under that scenario?
Others may disagree, but my card-counting friends have experience no objective advantage counting against a six-deck shoe.
You are not “bound to lose”. Played correctly, and cycling a fixed amount of money though a session of play, you have (depending on specific table rules) around a 49.32% chance of having more money than you started with. The casino has about a 50.68% of taking some of your money. That’s almost 50%-50% for any given cycle. If you quit while you are ahead, you win. I have only had a dozen or so experiences out of hundreds of gambling sessions where I lost from dollar one and never ralied up close to where I started. The problem is quitting when I get ahead, which I never seem to do either.
By the way, watch the table rules at casinos where you are a captive consumer. I have seen “dealer wins all ties” tables at non-mainstream casinos, and if you play those, the odds drop to something like 40.32% to 59.68%. I won’t even play those.
Well, most of what Houlihan said was wrong. First, the fact that the casino ‘out-banks you’ has absolutely nothing to do with how much profit they make. The casino will make the house edge X the amount of money wagered, no matter if it’s waged by one billionaire or ten thousand regular people.
And you CAN make money at blackjack, and I know a number of people that make a living at it. However, before you even consider counting, you should know basic strategy perfectly. In my experience, lots of people who consider themselves good players don’t even know basic strategy.
If you do know basic strategy perfectly, the most effective count to use in a shoe game is a simple hi-lo, wherein 2’s through 6’s are +1, face cards and aces are -1, and 7,8,9 are neutral. Using perfect basic strategy, this count, and the top 18 strategy variations by count, a player can get an edge over the house. But the most important thing is bet spread - to beat the house you have to bet a lot more money when you have the advantage - 8:1 or more.
Ok, let’s start here then. I don’t disagree with your statement at all, but I fail to see how it conflicts with mine. We are both in agreement that the casino makes money based upon the volume of money that is played. But in relation to one particular player, that player has to quit when he runs out of money- a limitation that a casino rarely finds itself in. When a player is up, and continues playing, he continues to expose that money to the same house edge you mention. Eventually, because of that edge, he will lose it back. Where’s the conflict in the statements?
I never said you couldn’t make money at blackjack. Read my post carefully. “You are not ‘bound to lose’”… I fully support the remainder of your statement.
I’m not willing to send a first time gambler into a casino with advice to increase his bet by 8 times toward the end of a shoe under the presumption that he has counted accurately through a six-deck shoe. Apparently you are. I don’t have any stats on the odds increase you get with a hi-lo count, so I can only resort to anectodal observation in response. I have consistently done better playing basic strategy with vanilla betting than my buddies who sit around for two weeks before we head to vegas practicing their counts. And I have more fun, because while they’re doing math, I’m getting drunk and talking to the folks at my table.
What else I said is wrong?
Thanks guys. I’m heading out. I think have the basics down from a book I borrowed.
I have played the game before, but without any real strategy. If I have to increase my bet by x8 in order to get the advantage of counting, I think I’ll pass though.