Concerning deck penetration: In many places that use multiple decks, it would be to your advantage to hook up with a pretty girl/cute guy (depending on the dealer’s preferences, not yours), as it is the custom in some places to let a player mark the cut. The player chosen for this is often the one the dealer finds most attractive. Advise your Cute Person on where to cut the deck based on your observations of the dealer. Be wary of the Magician’s Force trick, which dealers use to make players think they’ve chosen the penetration–if the dealer leaves a shallow cut alone, but reverses a deep cut (that is, takes the back of the stack and moves it to the front of the shoe), tell your Cute Person to cut in the middle and hope for the best.
A side tip: If you plan to try counting, always watch the dealer through at least one or two shoes before you start betting. If you pick a table that’s full and wait for someone to leave, you get time to watch without looking too conspicuous.
I have never, in many casinos all over the country, seen the penetration determined by the player’s cut. The dealer always gives the cards to the chosen player to put in the plastic cut card, then he completes the cut and replaces the cut card wherever he wants the penetration to be.
So while hooking up with a pretty girl/cute guy at the table is always a good idea, it won’t help much with your counting.
Actually, almost every “expert” I’ve read recommends against progressive betting. There are 2 problems: (1) Correct strategy requires splitting and doubling down, so you could conceivably lose your bankroll faster than 8 hands, and (2) Tables have limits in order to prevent this strategy, so if you have a losing streak, you can’t keep doubling your bet indefinitely, since you would exceed the table limit.
I love that game, and I count cards in it, too, but remembering distances between cards in a game that just cycles through a deck of cards or two is worlds different from being able to successfully count cards in casinos.
we should play then- I didn’t mean i was going to a casino to try, just when i play cards with my sister. do you play double deck egyptian butt fuck? aside of gauging the distance we also know who has what royalty and where it is, which sucks for the people who aer just learning how to play. My only shame is being beat by my 7 year old niece on her second game. The horror
I’ll grant that I’ve never seen it in a large casino, but I’ve seen it in the riverboats quite a few times. Of course, it may have been inexperienced or poorly instructed dealers at the time, as the riverboat casinos were rather new and many were fresh-trained locals. Even so, most of them knew enough to pick the side of the cut most advantageous to the house. I haven’t played in one of them in years–they may have corrected this by now. That’s one of the reasons I recommend watching the dealer beforehand. You sometimes get a tiny bit more of an edge (and all card-counting edges are tiny percentages) with an inexperienced dealer.
The cute partner, as you noted, is generally worthwhile anyway.
We play with multiple decks if there are many people in the game. One time we had ten people in one game. It was insanely violent.
There are some interesting phenomena about that game. For example, tens are usually preceded by either a Jack or a seven. Did you ever notice anything like that?
One well-known strategy that won’t win you any money but will keep you at the tables all night: bring a ton of cash. Double your bet every time you lose. If you’re playing small stakes and bring enough cash, eventually you’ll win a hand and all your money back and start over. At a $10 table, you would need a $1,300 bankroll. To get knocked out of the game, you would have to lose eight hands in a row, 255 to 1 odds against if you’re a good player. Increase your bankroll to $5200 (yeah, I know) and the odds improve to 1011 to 1 against a knockout. Course, you probably won’t make any money playing this strategy–it’s just about survival.
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Actually, this “strategy” is a commonly held fallacy about gambling. First, like blowero said, you can’t double indefinitely. Second, the expected value of your winnings using this strategy is exactly the same. Sure, you only lose 1 in 256 times. But you’ve just lost 256 times your base bet. If you really want to stay at the tables all night, find a table with a small minimum bet and bet the minimum. If you play well, odds are you won’t lose very much at all.
If you do want to maximize your winnings, there is a betting strategy that works… sort of. If you can determine the percentage advantage you have over the house (ie, if you have a 51% chance of winning, your advantage over the house is 51-49 = 2%), you should bet that percentage of your total bankroll. In this way, as you get more money, you will bet slightly more. In the long run, you will get the biggest payoff for this (This formula was mathematically proven by somebody or other). However, since in most games the house has the advantage, you should not bet at all (duh).
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*Originally posted by iamthewalrus(:3= *
“Actually, this “strategy” is a commonly held fallacy about gambling. First, like blowero said, you can’t double indefinitely.”
One doesn’t have to double indefinitely, just enough until the player wins a hand without exceeding the table limit.
“Second, the expected value of your winnings using this strategy is exactly the same. Sure, you only lose 1 in 256 times. But you’ve just lost 256 times your base bet.”
As stated, twice, in my post, this strategy is not about winning money.
There are two serious errors in my post. The bankroll required for eight progressive hands at a $10 table is not $1,300 but $2,600. Ten hands is $10,400.
Some of the assumptions of this strategy may not be too realistic: Will a $10 table allow you to bet $1,300 on one hand?
What about a $500.00 bet at a $10 table? If yes, you can play seven hands with 127 to 1 odds against a blowout, assuming you are a good player.
If you are a good player, with this strategy you have a small chance of losing a lot of money and a very good chance of winning nothing. If that sounds like you’re idea of a good time, go for it.
Double-until-you-win is called the “Martingale progression”, by the way. It sounds good, but I wouldn’t risk it, either, for all the reasons previously posted.
I see a lot of tables where I play (mostly Reno, NV) with a $5 - $500 min-max spread. This would give you 8 consecutive losses (fewer, if you double down or split) before a disaster. I know I’ve lost 8 hands in a row, many times–and I’m an excellent player. In the course of a weekend where you play several hundred hands, it’s almost inevitable.
