Archive for October, 2010

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Easiest Ways to Hit the House’s Edge

Tuesday, October 12th, 2010

Being successful at blackjack is about strategy. You have to have one. The whole purpose of strategy in blackjack is to lower the house’s edge. Lowering the house’s edge decreases their chances of winning money from you; and the lower the house edge goes, the more your own blackjack odds go up.

Odds in blackjack are about opportunities to make money. If you have more opportunities to win money or opportunities to win more money than normal, your blackjack odds will increase. Strategy is supposed to decrease the house’s odds and increase your own.

The game of blackjack actually has a couple of parts built into the rules that can increase your blackjack odds and hit the house’s edge: doubling down and splitting pairs.

Doubling down is when you double the amount of your wager and only take one more card. This play can usually only be made at the beginning of your turn. If you win the round, you receive double what you would have made normally off of winning one hand.

Doubling down hits the house edge for 1.6%. This is because this play opens up the opportunity for you to make more money off of the house in one turn than normal.

Another play built into blackjack that will hit the house’s edge is pair splitting. This can happen when you are dealt two of the same card, such as two 3s. You can double your wager and the two cards will be split and each will receive a new second card. This gives you two hands to play in one round.

While not as advantageous—because you can win one hand and lose the other causing a draw—as doubling down, pair splitting can hit the house edge for 0.06%.

Both plays are useful when playing blackjack because of the increase in your chances to win money from the casino. Using them when playing blackjack is important to your blackjack strategy because of the opportunities they give you in terms of decreasing the houses edge.

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Of All the Casino Games, Why Online Blackjack?

Tuesday, October 12th, 2010

Of all of the online casino games why is online blackjack better?

It really comes down to odds, and blackjack online offers better odds than the other online casino games.

This is because basic strategy can be used in online blackjack just like the blackjack that is played in a brick and mortar casino. The impact on your blackjack odds is still the same because the rules of online blackjack is the same as casino blackjack, therefore you still have a 48% chance of winning and a 52% chance of losing each round.

Because the odds are roughly the same to begin with and because the rules of online blackjack are the same as its brick and mortar counterpart, you can use the same strategy—except for card counting. Because of the actual creation and functioning of what is now a computer game, playing online blackjack is like playing at a blackjack table with a continuous shuffle machine which makes card counting impossible.

But other than no card counting, your blackjack strategy should transfer to being used in online blackjack just fine.

In fact, basic strategy will still reduce the house edge to 0.5%. So it is possible to play online blackjack and achieve the same blackjack odds that you would have in casino blackjack.

In terms of all of the online casino games out there, online blackjack is the one capable, if basic strategy is played perfectly, casino game in which the lowest house edge is achievable. While online slots and online poker might be the most popular casino games found in online casinos, online blackjack will give the best odds when playing with basic strategy.

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Card Counting Practice Helps Your Math

Monday, October 11th, 2010

You hear often enough that practicing blackjack and blackjack strategy will improve you blackjack game and skills. This is very true. The only way you become better at something is to do it.

This truly applies to card counting when you are first learning the skill. Card counting, while it can greatly benefit your blackjack odds and your profits, it does require a lot of practice and time to make the skill a profitable one.

This is especially important if math is not your strong point. Even the most basic counting system, Hi Lo, involves adding positive and negative numbers together in your head quietly and quickly. It is important for you to be able to do your math in your head quickly and quietly with no outward appearance of doing so.

It is just as important as making sure to vary your wagers a bit when counting cards. Casino staff will watch players’ faces when they suspect them of card counting to look for signs of concentration. They will often try to engage players they suspect of card counting.

Because of the distractions they might try to throw at you, it is important to practice your math and that is easily done if you take the time to practice your card counting.

Here are some tips for practicing your card counting:

-Take a deck or two and shuffle it to mix all the cards up. Then work on counting quickly and quietly in your head. Time yourself to see how long it takes you. Work on decreasing the amount of time it takes. Try to reach a point where you are not stopping to think about the math, but rather are looking at the card you flip over and can instantly do the math.

-When practicing turn some music on, or the TV, or even both. Casinos are full of noise and noise can be distracting. Practice doing your card counting math with such distractions.

-This one might start out being a bit difficult. But have a friend sit down and try to count while talking to them. You do not have to have an in depth conversation, but talk about something like the weather or a sports team. Stick to light conversation that you would have with a stranger.

Working those tips into your practicing can help improve your ability to do math that relates to card counting, making you ready for the distractions and light conversation the dealer will have with you. Improving your math will improve your counting sills. The better your card counting skills are, the closer you are to gaining an edge over the house.

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Blackjack and Betting Strategy

Monday, October 11th, 2010

I have to admit I am sighing a little as I write this. I keep hearing about blackjack players who not only continue playing with betting systems, but that they also insist this is the best way to manage one’s blackjack betting strategy.

But there is one little problem with those betting strategies. I do not care if you are playing with a positive betting progression or a negative betting progression, they are still systems. And systems will in the long run, cause you to come out with less than when you arrived.

Think about this for a moment. A betting system totes the notion that it can overcome the house edge by allowing the player to walk away with a profit from blackjack.

But these betting systems are based on an infinite line of betting, meaning they do not tell the player when to walk away from the table. They are designed so that the player keeps playing and playing and playing. Without knowing when to walk away from the blackjack table anything you win you can lose. And with a betting system you can lose it very quickly.

Rather than using a betting system that has you increasing your wager without any guarantee that you will ever recoup your losses, stick to flat betting and set yourself a goal to reach in winnings.

Having a goal to reach in winnings will allow you to know when to walk away from the blackjack table. If you tell yourself that you are going to play until you have won $150, it gives you a stopping point.

And by flat betting to reach it your, winnings and your bankroll or more solid. Losing $20 in one round is easier to swallow and make up for than losing $320 in one round because your betting system’s progression has taken your wagering that high.

Betting systems for blackjack have their appeal in that they appear like a fast way to make your profit from blackjack. But in truth the flat betting as the basis of your betting strategy will make your bankroll more solid and steady, causing you to come out ahead. Think of it like the tortoise and the hare—flat betting is the tortoise and betting systems are the hare.

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Two Hands in Blackjack, the Upside

Friday, October 8th, 2010

This morning I talked about why playing two hands at the same time was bad for your blackjack strategy and for your bankroll.

This is because you are simply wagering twice as much per round. No, it is not like doubling down. Doubling down is done when it is advantageous to do so—not every single hand. So, no, nothing like doubling down.

But there is a way to play two hands at once in blackjack. It is quite simple actually. Split your wager between your two hands. If you are wagering $10 per round and want to play two hands, wager $5 on each hand. This way you are not putting your bankroll anymore at risk than you would if you were playing a single hand.

The trick here is that both hands can take advantage of a dealer’s hand that gives the player a good chance of winning, making it possible to win with two hands rather than just one.

There is also the added benefit that if the dealer has a hand that favors him and he wins, you are not losing twice the amount.

The upside to this style of playing is that it can extend the time that you can play, or how long your bankroll will last. This is because the fluctuation in your bankroll is lessened. Say for example you win with one hand and lose the other. In this situation, you will have broken even in terms of money. The only time you really lose money is if you lose both hands.

Because of this fluctuation your can make your bankroll last longer at the blackjack table. It gives you an 86% chance that you can make your bankroll hang in there simply because you have more opportunities to lose less thanks to the possibility of breaking even in some rounds.

While I do not recommend playing two hands in this manner all of the time, it can be useful if you are looking to make your bankroll last and intend to just enjoy playing some blackjack. In other words, this is not a good blackjack strategy to make money, but it is good for bankroll playing.

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Two Hands in Blackjack, the Downside

Friday, October 8th, 2010

There is a blackjack myth that says that you can change the flow of the cards by playing two hands. You will see this happen at a blackjack table when a player suddenly switches from one hand to two, or two hands to one—they are trying to shake things up a bit for the deck.

In truth the number of hands you play in a round of blackjack does not do a thing to the order of the cards…mostly because there is no order to the cards. Card order and card flow are blackjack myths.

Playing with two hands has an upside and a downside. That is because there is an effective way to play two hands per round and an ineffective way. It is kind of like having an upside and a downside. First we will look at the downside.

The downside is that you are wagering twice as much per round. Say you are wagering $10 on a hand, and switch to wagering two hands per round. An ineffective player will wager $10 on each hand for a total of $20 per round.

The problem with this is that you are putting yourself and your bankroll at twice the risk. If the dealer has a strong hand, you stand to lose $20 rather than your original $10.

This means that you have the potential of running through your bankroll twice as fast.

Sure, you can take the positive outlook and say that you are going to win twice as much when the dealer has a poor hand. But blackjack odds are against you. You only have 48% chance of winning and a 52% chance of losing.

So if the odds are still against you to lose, why wager double what you normally would just to have two hands to shake up the card flow when there is no such thing as card flow?

That is the ineffective way of playing two hands per round—to simple double the amount you are wagering per round in total. There is an effective way to play two hands in blackjack which I will discuss this afternoon.

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More Betting System for Blackjack

Thursday, October 7th, 2010

This morning I wrote about the Labouchere negative progression betting system that unknowing blackjack players will use in place of a good betting strategy.

The use it because they come across one of those article-generating sites in which the people writing the articles do not always understand the finer points of their subjects. In the case of the article I saw today, it said that the best way to bet in blackjack was to use a betting system.

This is simply not true. Betting systems limit how a player makes their wagers in a game of blackjack. These systems are also based on principles that go against the essence of blackjack.

Now we are going to look at the Paroli betting system.

This is a positive progression system, meaning that it works based on wins. If you win a hand, you would double your wager on the next round. You would keep doubling until you lose a round and then return to the amount of your original wager. Take a look:

If you were to wager $20 and win, you would wager $40 on the next round. If you win that round you would wager $80. But if you lost, you would return to the original amount of $20.

The Paroli betting system is said to make the most of a winning streak. Unfortunately there is no way to predict how long a winning streak will continue. This can result in a very heavy loss if you lose a round after several successful wins. Imagine in the above example winning five rounds and wagering $320 only to lose that $320.

The problem with the Paroli betting system is that it is based on winning, and is meant to be used in a casino game in which the house has the advantage. Players can only expect to win around 48% of their blackjack games.

So if you have less than a 50% to win why would you use a betting system based on winning?

Exactly—you should not!

Betting systems should not be used in blackjack—especially those that are based on winning streaks in casino games that do not have an edge over the house.

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Betting Systems for Blackjack

Thursday, October 7th, 2010

I saw a posting from one of those article-generating sites that pertained to what the author was calling blackjack betting strategies; he was talking about the Labouchere and Paroli methods.

I am going to say this right now. The Labouchere and Paroli methods are not blackjack betting strategies—they are only betting systems. And those systems can cost you more money in the long run than what they claim you could win.

And I will show this.

First up, the Labouchere. The Labouchere is a negative progression betting system. The way it works is that the player will make his wager and double it every time in the next round if he lost the previous round; he will keep doing this until he wins. The Labouchere’s claim is to beat a losing streak.

Look at a sample of a few rounds of Labouchere: you start out wagering $20 and lose; the next round has you wagering $40 and you lose; the next round is $80 and you lose; the next is $160 and another loss and you are up to $320 in five rounds.

The Labouchere’s claim to fame is to beat a losing streak by winning back all the money you lost in previous rounds and then some extra. It plays on the fact that for the majority of players, the house has the edge and the player’s blackjack odds are 52% for losing. Logically this betting system makes sense.

Does it sound too good to be true? Yes? That is because it is.

First off the Labouchere requires an infinite betting limit, meaning there is no limit on how high you could bet. Unfortunately casinos do not allow this and tables have betting maxes on them to protect themselves from paying out too much in one payout to high rollers.

The other downside to this betting system is that it implies that the player will eventually win. There is no guarantee in blackjack that a player will win. So you could go rounds and keep doubling your wager until you have lost almost if not all of your bankroll.

So there are your reasons for not using the Labouchere betting system as a blackjack betting strategy. It is not a strategy. It is based on a principle of blackjack that is not true, and it can wipe out your bankroll.

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Will Zynga Make a Mobile Blackjack Game?

Wednesday, October 6th, 2010

Online blackjack players might find their favorite online casino game on their Facebook sooner than they think.

Zynga recently bought out the iPhone and iPad app creator Bonfire. The reason for the speculation over a possible Zynga Blackjack is because Bonfire created the We Farm mobile app, which is one of the top ten grossing iPad and iPhone games. And We Farm is very similar to Zynga’s extremely well-known Farmville Facebook game.

But Farmville is not Zynga’s only Facebook game to fame. They are also behind another Facebook game called Zynga Poker. Poker and blackjack are two of the most popular online casino games in the online casino industry. Because of that popularity, it would not be a far cry to see Zynga create a Zynga Blackjack game.

But with the recent buyout of Bonfire, who used to work with Microgaming on PC and Xbox 360 games such as Halo Wars and Age of Empires, Zynga may be on the move to increase their online gaming world both with a move further into the mobile app arena as well as moving further into online casino games.

And Zynga is no stranger to the mobile app arena, although it is only a small contender as of yet with its Zynga Live Poker mobile app. With the technology and graphics capabilities of a developer who has worked with the likes of Microgaming, who knows what apps Zynga will produce for the iPhone and iPad—their ever popular Facebook games could all go mobile.

However, I think that Zynga would profit more from moving further into the realm of online gambling by creating more Zynga Live apps for other casino games, such as online blackjack.

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Networking and Online Blackjack

Wednesday, October 6th, 2010

What do World of Warcraft and online blackjack have in common?

Initially they are two games in the online gaming world. But as of late they might have more in common than simply being games played online.

Yazino is a fairly recently launched social networking online casino. It is a site in which blackjack players can play online blackjack and other online casino games but are also playing with other players and networking through the site.

In other words, there are two types of online games, and every single online game can be fit into one of two categories: online gambling and social gaming.

Social gaming is like World of Warcraft—payers are able to play the game yet at the same time they are playing with other players around the world and networking within the game. Online gambling is just that—gambling through an online version of a favorite casino game, such as online blackjack.

But Yazino is looking to merge the two types of games into one site. Chief Executive Officer Hussein Chahine said:

“Gambling sites are perceived as dark and seedy while social gaming sites are seen as fun, friendly and engaging. Our ambition is to connect the two and bring simplicity and friendliness to the gaming market along with a social networking experience that sets us apart from the rest.”

In other words get ready to make new friends while collecting old ones and at the same time enjoying a few rounds of online blackjack or whatever online casino game is to your liking.

Actually the idea of playing with friends is part of what is behind the Yazino online casino: “We’ve approached this through the casino environment, which we believe embodies the best aspects of gaming, gathering friends around a table in a competitive and fun environment,” said Chahine.

But with social networking in the ground work of this new online casino, I am sure that Yazino will probably be recommending other blackjack players for you to friend as you play online blackjack.

On second thought, perhaps I should describe this as a mix of Facebook, World of Warcraft and online blackjack and other casino games—kind of all wrapped up together in playing with others like in World of Warcraft (without magic and weapons), yet you are friend collecting like on Facebook while playing online blackjack. Yes, I think that would be the right descriptive mix.

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