Posts Tagged ‘Basic Strategy’
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010
Casinos and online casinos love to perpetuate the idea that blackjack is the one casino game in which the house can be beat. They will even admit that you need a blackjack strategy to beat the house. And they are more than willing to perpetuate the myth that blackjack strategy is the key to beating the house.
And they would be lying to you.
It is true that basic strategy is a major tool against the house in blackjack, but it will not beat the house on its own. Playing according to basic strategy can lower the house edge to 0.5%. But players must play it perfectly, otherwise that 0.5% is not achievable.
Even if you are playing perfect basic strategy there will be times that you lose a round. This is because you only have a 48% chance of winning (ignoring pushes) in blackjack, even if you are using basic strategy. Think about it—if you have lower the house edge to 0.5%, the house still has the edge.
But casinos and online casinos will happily allow and encourage players that they cannot lose with basic strategy. Some brick and mortar casinos will even give players a basic strategy chart for free.
What they are hoping to see are players who believe that they will win every hand with basic strategy who then lose a few rounds and toss the chart away. Once they taught the chart away they are playing without strategy, and that means more money for the casino.
It is possible to lose rounds of blackjack. It is possible to lose them in a row. In fact there is a 14% that you will lose three hands in a row. It is just how it is. And casinos are hoping to bank on that percentage and what players toss their basic strategy charts away.
The best thing that you can do for your blackjack strategy is to understand that you will not win every single hand. Even card counters who are skilled enough to gain an edge over the house will still lose some hands. Stick with basic strategy and hang on through the hands you lose.
Tags: Basic Strategy, Blackjack, Blackjack basic strategy, Blackjack Odds, Blackjack strategy, Blackjack Tips., Casino Games, Casinos, How to play Blackjack, Online Blackjack, Online Casinos, play Blackjack
Posted in Blackjack, Blackjack strategy, Online Blackjack | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 31st, 2010
Time to test your blackjack knowledge:
What are the blackjack odds of winning if you ignore the ties?
The answer is 48%.
Pushes, also known as ties, will happen around 9% of the time. But excluding those pushes, your odds of winning are 48% of the time with you and 52% of the time against you. And this is if you are playing according to basic strategy.
You might be wondering how you could possibly make money on this game if you are odds on to lose more often than you would win.
Remember that the 48% of the time you are expected to win is all wins, including the wins you have with natural blackjacks. When you win with a natural blackjack you receive a 3-2 payout instead of a 1-1 payout like you would with a standard win.
So say you are wagering $10 and you win the round, you would receive $10. But if you were to win with a natural blackjack you would win $15. The times that you win with a natural blackjack puts a little more in your bankroll.
Another occasion in which you make more money than the standard 1-1 is when you double down. The payout for a successful double down is 2-1. Again, say you were wagering $10 per hand of blackjack, doubled down and won, you would receive $20 instead of $10.
While there is nothing extra blackjack strategy-wise that you can do to increase your odds of winning with a natural blackjack, when you double down is in your hands.
Doubling down is a good play to make money in blackjack. But it is also a fast way to lose money. The key to making the most of this blackjack play is to know when the most advantageous time to double down are, and that knowing comes from a basic strategy chart. A basic strategy chart gives the best times to double down when your cards and the dealer’s up card provide you with a good shot of winning the round.
So it is possible to make money with your blackjack odds only giving you a 48% chance of winning. The key is in making the most of the hands you are dealt, using your blackjack strategy.
Tags: Basic Strategy, Blackjack, Blackjack basic strategy, Blackjack Odds, Blackjack Payout, Blackjack strategy, Blackjack Tips., Double Down, Online Blackjack
Posted in Blackjack, Blackjack strategy, Online Blackjack | No Comments »
Friday, August 27th, 2010
Every single player out there wants to know what the best blackjack strategy is. This comes from blackjack’s reputation that it is the one casino game in which players can beat the house.
The truth is that only the players who are willing to put a lot of time, patience, research and practice into the blackjack playing and blackjack strategy will come to the point that they can beat the house. They also must be highly skilled card counters. And, in all truth, not many blackjack players are willing to put the time and effort in to building up their card counting skill.
So what can the rest of the blackjack players out there do? The ones who want to play for fun and who want to make some money on it—like a serious hobby in other words. What can they do?
The best that a blackjack player who is not aiming to be professional can do in terms of blackjack strategy is to play according to basic strategy.
Basic strategy is a chart with every single player hand running down the left side. This includes pairs and soft hands, not just hard hands. The inclusion of pairs and soft hands is one of the strong points of basic strategy because pairs and soft hands are often tricking for players to figure out how to play.
Running across the top of the chart are all of the dealer up cards. Where any line from a dealer up card intersects with a player hand is the best statistical play for that combination of player hand and dealer up card.
What players need to understand is that they will not win every single blackjack hand with basic strategy. They will win more hands because they are making the best statistical plays. And while basic strategy does not beat the house, it will lower the house edge to 0.5%, making blackjack the casino game with the smallest edge.
Tags: Basic Strategy, Blackjack, Blackjack basic strategy, Blackjack Odds, Blackjack strategy, Blackjack Tips., Card counting, Casino Games, Game of Skill, How to play Blackjack, Pair Splitting, Soft Hands
Posted in Blackjack strategy | No Comments »
Wednesday, August 25th, 2010
I am going to call the basic rules and plays of blackjack Blackjack 101. This includes the objective, hitting and standing. Double downs and splitting pairs goes into Blackjack 102. Then there is the leap into Blackjack 103, better known as ‘first discovering basic strategy.’
But once a new player gets Blackjack 103 under their belts they begin to move into the murkier waters. Bring on Blackjack 104: Casino Tricks and Insurance.
When a novice blackjack player first encounters insurance they are usually a bit confused. Here they are trying to bet the house and the house is offering them a way to save their bet in case the dealer has a natural blackjack. Is that not oh so considerate of them?
But even then the little warning bells go off in the player’s mind: Why is the house trying to help me when they want me to lose?
The truth is quite simple. The house is helping you. They are helping you to turn your money over to them faster.
And really that is all it is. Think first about what insurance is. The dealer has an Ace showing, the less common of the two cards necessary for a natural blackjack. He then offers you insurance just in case he does have a natural blackjack, which means that hole card needs to be a 10. In all reality you are placing a side wager on whether that hole card is a 10 or not.
Insurance is a side bet made for half the amount of your original wager. If you have bet $10 on the round, insurance would be $5 for you. You are wagering more money on a round than is ordinary.
So rather than standing to lose $10 in a round, you could lose $15. And it is possible to lose both bets. Let’s say that you have a hard 19 and the dealer has an Ace. You take insurance and the hole card is a 9, giving the dealer a soft 20 that he can stand on. His 20 beats your 19, and since the hole card was not a 10, you lose the insurance bet too.
What novice blackjack players have to understand is that insurance does not offer them any true benefits, and that it is best not to take insurance when playing blackjack.
Tags: Basic Strategy, Blackjack, Blackjack basic strategy, Blackjack online, Blackjack Rules, Blackjack strategy, Blackjack Tips., Casinos, Double Down, How to play Blackjack, Insurance, Online Blackjack, Pair Splitting, play Blackjack
Posted in Blackjack, Blackjack strategy, Online Blackjack | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 24th, 2010
What makes blackjack one of the most popular casino games out there?
Simply put, it is the myth that blackjack is the one casino game in which the player can gain the edge and beat the house.
Truthfully that can happen. But it does not happen just from sitting down at the blackjack table or by logging in to your favorite online casino to play a few rounds. To beat the house at blackjack you must study the game, its rules and its strategies. It takes practice. And it also takes card counting.
So truth be told, online blackjack cannot be beat because a player cannot count cards. This is because the game functions similarly to a blackjack table with a CSM in a brick and mortar casino. A CSM is a Continuous Shuffle Machine, and it prevents any cards from being discarded because at the end of a round all the just-used cards are put in the little machine, the entire deck reshuffled and then the next round dealt.
So you must be playing blackjack in a brick and mortar casino—at a table without a CSM I might add—so that you can count cards. You also need to be playing according to basic strategy. Basic strategy drops the house edge to 0.5%. A skilled and practiced card counter can overcome the remaining 0.5% that is against them and then begin to tip the odds up to 1% in their favor.
So, yes, blackjack is a beatable casino game.
However, the majority of blackjack players will not spend the time to gain the necessary skill in card counting that is needed to overcome that last bit of the house’s edge. And still many others will not play according to basic strategy.
And while casinos to not want to seem like they are handing out money for free, they do not seem to mind the continued myth that blackjack is the beatable casino game. For them, it draws more and more new blackjack players that they wind up taking money from.
Even knowing that, players who want to become skilled at blackjack should still work and practice their blackjack strategy. Strategy is meant to improve blackjack odds. So even if you do not beat the house, you will lose less money with a sound blackjack strategy than if you did not have a blackjack strategy.
Tags: Basic Strategy, Blackjack, Blackjack basic strategy, Blackjack Odds, Blackjack strategy, Blackjack Tips., Card counting, Casinos, Continuous Shuffle Machine, CSM, Game of Skill, How to play Blackjack
Posted in Blackjack, Blackjack strategy, Casino Games | No Comments »
Monday, August 23rd, 2010
When it comes to playing online blackjack, there are some differences between blackjack that is played online and blackjack that is played in a brick and mortar casino. Those differences can have an impact on your blackjack strategy.
One of the biggest differences comes down to players. When you are playing blackjack in a brick and mortar casino, you could be playing with up to six other players. But when you are playing blackjack online it is a one on one game between you and the dealer. While this does not seem like a big deal, it actually is.
The more players there are in a round of blackjack the longer it takes to play out. If you are playing at a full table, the average number of hands per hour is around 55. But if you are playing one on one with the dealer you will go through about 220 hands in a single hour.
Granted, that is a big difference, but what does that have to do with strategy for online blackjack?
Well, blackjack strategy is about making the most of advantageous situations and minimizing your losses in disadvantageous ones. Since the house will almost always have an edge, you will lose money over the course of that hour.
We are going to say that you are a basic strategy player who plays $25 per hand. With basic strategy you have lowered the house edge to 0.5%, meaning that you will lose around $0.12 per hand.
If you were playing at a full table you would only lose on average $7 per hour. But if you were playing one on one, like you would be playing in online blackjack, you would lose around $28 per hour. That is quite the difference.
Unfortunately there is no way to add more players to your game when playing online blackjack. So you need to find something to your strategy to slow your rate of play, or how many hands you play per hour.
There is no magic strategy tool for this. This is a player controlled strategy, meaning you are in control of how many rounds are played per hour. Give yourself a time limit—play for 15 minutes and then take a break for a set number of minutes. Or give yourself a set number of rounds to play in an hour; when you have played that many, stop until the next hour arrives.
Or you could be like me and donate blood. It takes a few days to recover, for your body to restore the missing blood, so you run a little bit slower. Donating blood has the benefit of saving someone’s life and helping your online blackjack strategy at little bit.
But I would still play for a set number of rounds, or for a set amount of time before taking a break. After all you can only donate so much blood so often.
Tags: Basic Strategy, Blackjack, Blackjack basic strategy, Blackjack Odds, Blackjack online, Blackjack strategy, Blackjack Tips., Game of Skill, How to play Blackjack, Online Blackjack, Online Casinos, play Blackjack, Rate of Play
Posted in Blackjack strategy, Online Blackjack | No Comments »
Monday, August 23rd, 2010
Name one of the worst hands to be dealt in a game of blackjack.
If you named one of the stiff hands then you have chosen wisely.
Stiff Hands are some of the worst hands to be dealt, and not just statistically speaking or in terms of blackjack strategy. They are a bummer to moral too. You know as soon as you see those two cards tallying up to 12, 13, 14, 15 or 16 you just have this sinking feeling.
Those are, by the way, the stiff hands, hard 12 through 17.
And there is also a feeling that your blackjack strategy cannot help you when you are facing down a stiff hand.
Unfortunately you can look to being dealt a stiff hand around 43% of the time when you are playing. This percentage applies to both blackjack played in a brick and mortar casino and to blackjack online. Both games at their core are the same.
On that note you are lucky as your blackjack strategy will not vary regardless of where you are playing blackjack.
What makes blackjack strategy for stiff hands seem so ineffective is that you know that you still are the underdog and that your chances of losing are still pretty high. Blackjack players are used to turning to their blackjack strategies to make their odds at winning better. But that is not the sole purpose of blackjack strategy.
That other part of blackjack strategy is minimizing your losses, and it goes hand in hand with playing out stiff hands. It is true that even with a strategy tool are great as basic strategy that you are still the favorite to lose as unfortunate as that sounds.
Knowing that you are the underdog, what you want to do with your blackjack strategy is to minimize your losses. I know, this sounds easier said than done, but that is how players must look at it.
As a rule of thumb, and according to basic strategy, the best thing for you to do if you find yourself with a hard 13 through hard 17 is to stand if the dealer is showing a 2 through 6 and hit if the dealer is showing a 7 through Ace. Now, with a hard 12 you will want to hit if the dealer has a 2, 3 or 7 through Ace, and stand if he has a 4 through 6.
When your first two cards reveal a stiff hand, switch your mind to thinking that you must now minimize your losses. Once you have that in mind, next focus on how your blackjack strategy says to handle the stiff hand you have been dealt.
Tags: Basic Strategy, Blackjack, Blackjack basic strategy, Blackjack Odds, Blackjack strategy, Blackjack Tips., Hard Hand Strategy, Hard Hands, How to play Blackjack, Online Blackjack, Stiff Hands
Posted in Blackjack, Blackjack strategy, Online Blackjack | No Comments »
Wednesday, August 18th, 2010
When playing blackjack, players who desire to be savvy blackjack players will work and work to build a blackjack strategy that they can use to reduce the house edge and increase their own blackjack odds. This is true across the board of blackjack players. Those who play in brick and mortar casinos seek to beat the house, just like online blackjack players. It is one of the similarities between the two formats.
The desire to be a savvy blackjack player will take players on a quest from one of the internet to the other. They will closely examine strategy methods of others and tear about blackjack betting strategies. For players who play in brick and mortar casinos, they will practice and practice at card counting.
But for all of this work and studying, many blackjack players overlook a very effective way of reducing the house edge that is built in to the very basics of the game: double down.
Doubling down hits the house edge for 1.6%. When you consider that other plays only knock off fractions of a single percent, a hit of 1.6% is quite large.
When a player doubles down, he has the chance of winning twice the amount off of the house that he normally would on that particular hand. Because blackjack odds are about money, the opportunities that give the player a chance to take more money from the house are the ones that increase blackjack odds the most.
So why are blackjack players hesitant to double down and why do others disregard it entirely?
The answer is simple. They are afraid to put more money on the line. And with an attitude like that, a blackjack player might as well be handing over a portion of their bankroll.
And it is not like players are left with no way of knowing when the best chances to double down are. Basic strategy tells players when the most opportune times to double down are, which further decreases chances of loss and increases chances of winning.
With that knowledge in hand and knowing just how much damage doubling down can do to the house’s edge, it is most unwise to ignore doubling down. And that is exactly why any savvy blackjack player will not ignore the ‘natural’ means of increasing their blackjack odds, and will not forget doubling down in their blackjack strategy.
Tags: Basic Strategy, Blackjack, Blackjack basic strategy, Blackjack betting strategy, Blackjack Odds, Blackjack online, Blackjack Rules, Blackjack strategy, Blackjack Tips., Card counting, Double Down, Game of Skill, How to Bet in Blackjack, How to play Blackjack, Online Blackjack
Posted in Blackjack, Blackjack strategy, Online Blackjack | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 17th, 2010
After my post yesterday afternoon I started giving some thought to blackjack strategy in regards to a two card hand versus blackjack strategy for multi card hands. This came to me after discussing how a two card soft 18 is played that same as a three card soft 18. This lead to the aforementioned thinking.
Is there really a difference between a hand that is made up of two cards and a hand that is made up of more cards?
In some cases it does. Naturally a two card blackjack is worth more than a hand with three or more cards that totals to 21. And a pair can only be split in the first two cards; you cannot have a 4/8 and hit for another 8, and then split. Also, you generally can only double down on two cards. Some casinos will allow for doubling on three cards but it is not a common house rule; and online casinos only offer double downs on two cards.
But in most cases it does not matter if you have a hand total made up of two cards or a hand made up of more than two cards. Take a look.
Let’s say you have a hand made up of a 6/8. That is a hard 14. If the dealer has a 7 or higher you would stand according to basic strategy.
Now let’s say you have a hand that is made up of a 5/3, which is a total of 8. Again, the dealer is showing a 7 or higher, and you hit according to common sense and basic strategy. You receive a 6 for a total of 14. As you do not have an Ace this is still a hard 14 and it would be played like you would a two card hard 14—in this example it means that you would still hit.
See how this works? There is nothing on the basic strategy chart that says that the hard hands can only be made up of two cards. Often enough with smaller starting hands you have to hit before your hand at least once before it comes time to decide to hit or stand again.
The point is that to get the most out of your blackjack strategy you need to actually be familiar with your strategy. Basic strategy is easy to use if you play on auto pilot. But auto pilot is not the best way to play blackjack if you want to turn a profit.
Tags: Basic Strategy, Blackjack, Blackjack basic strategy, Blackjack Rules, Blackjack strategy, Blackjack Tips., Double Down, Game of Skill, Hard Hand Strategy, How to play Blackjack, Online Blackjack, Pair Splitting
Posted in Blackjack, Blackjack strategy, Online Blackjack | No Comments »
Monday, August 16th, 2010
There are some hands in blackjack that who’s basic strategy plays just cause our brains to revolt. Our brains get hung up on the numbers, are so focused on the numbers, that they miss the finer points. One such hand is a soft 18.
A soft 18 consists of a 7 and an Ace. Our brains see that 18 and want to stand. But they are missing the fact that this is one of those flexible hands that have a chance of building into a better hand simply by hitting it. You do not have to worry about busting because you can reduce that Ace from 11 to 1 if you need to
In fact you cannot bust if you hit a soft 18. An Ace, 2 or 3 will give you a hand total of 19, 20 or 21—all strong hands. Anything 4 or more will cause you to reduce the Ace and you have decent ground to build strong.
This is why basic strategy dictates the following plays based on dealer up cards:
Dealer 2: stand
Dealer 3-6: double down
Dealer 7 and 8: stand
Dealer 9, 10, Ace: hit
As you can see, you are receiving another card more often than not. The only times you stand are the times when the dealer is in a good chance to build a hand stronger than yours if you were to hit.
But the soft 18 confusion does not end here. There must be something about having an Ace in hand that makes it a harder hand to know how to play.
I have heard of players who are fine and well with a two card soft 18, but if they start with a two card 7, hit and receive an Ace, the confusion begins again. But the truth is that a two card soft 18 is no different than a three card soft 18. It is still a soft 18 and that Ace can still be reduced, and a 4/3 is still worth 7. So the same plays can be made.
Your blackjack strategy for a soft 18 does not differ from your blackjack strategy for a soft 18 made up of three cards. Or even from four cards. The whole point is that you have an Ace and some other cards that are worth 7. Every player needs to train themselves to see past the obvious hand total on the surface and look at what cards are making up that hand total.
Tags: Basic Strategy, Blackjack, Blackjack basic strategy, Blackjack Odds, Blackjack strategy, Blackjack Tips., Double Down, How to play Blackjack, Online Blackjack, Soft Hand Strategy, Soft Hands
Posted in Blackjack, Blackjack strategy, Online Blackjack | No Comments »