Everybody wants to be successful at the casino and wants to bring down the house. Bill Kaplan, who is the co-founder of the MIT blackjack team that took Vegas for millions, has a few nice tricks for casino lovers. In this article players will find some special tips for, probably, winning more money than they did before.
How to play blackjack the best way!
Players should always hit a soft 17 (i.e. ace-6), split aces and 8s, double down on 11, and stand on a hard 17 or even greater. Players should never split 5’s or 10’s and never stand on 12 through 16 if the dealer is showing a 7 or higher. Never play cards when drinking, never believe that you are on a winning streak and never over-bet or make foolish plays. A player should never play for extended periods of time without taking a break. Getting a drink of water, eating a snack or simply stretch of the legs is very important. In Blackjack, there is no such thing as a ‘’ hot’’ or ‘’cold’’ table or a ‘’ hot ‘’ or ‘’cold’’ dealer. A player should only tip the dealer if he feels like tipping. Unless dealers are doing something dishonest—and there are hundreds of cameras in the room to make sure they are not—they can not do anything that will affect a players game.
A 6- or 8- deck game is slightly more disadvantageous to a player but there is more potential for a player to be cheated in a handled single-deck game although this rarely happens at good casinos. For a professional player, an automatic shuffler makes tracking specific packets of cards or specific cards through a shuffle theoretically impossible. Most handheld shuffles are not perfectly random and therefore can be beaten by simulating the shuffle on a computer and then devising a system to exploit their non-random nature. A player should never take an insurance. Unless he is keeping track of the ratio of aces and 10-cards remaining in the stack of cards still to be played (i.e. the shoe), the odds are against him. All seats at the table are the same. Cards have no preference for particular seats, only superstitious people do. There is no way to bet progressively to maximize the winnings. Progressive betting does not change the probabilities of the game. If a player plays with a 1%disadvantage, he will lose an average 1% of all the money he is betting at the table. Only progressive betting will force players to bet more than they might bet otherwise and therefore the customers will lose more in the long run. Never get emotional about cards. Emotions are distractions and might cause a customer for making excessive bets or to play strategy errors that will cost a lot of money. Do always have a ‘’basic strategy’’ in mind.
This image shows an one-page chart that specifies every hit, stand, double down, and split decision to be made at the table for every possible combination of cards in hand and the dealer’s “up” card. Players can find this online or in countless Blackjack books. Once they have learned basic strategy, their disadvantage at the game will be 5%, which makes Blackjack the best game to play in the casinos.