Tag: Card counting

Blackjack Games Not to Play: MindPlay Tables

Part of being a savvy blackjack player is knowing strategy and how to play the game to squeeze the best odds out of a game. But another part of being a savvy blackjack player is knowing where to play and where not to play. I am not talking about specific casinos. I am talking about specific games of specific rules to avoid.

That being said, there is one specific blackjack game that I recently heard of that I feel compelled to tell of. In fact, this is more a type of blackjack table than a blackjack variation

Card Counting and Insurance Together

If you recall my last post I discussed what exactly insurance is in blackjack. This was my opener to my overall explanation that insurance can in fact be used in the grand scheme to make money from blackjack. But such a trick is not for the newly green players of blackjack. And it is not for online blackjack play, but that is because card counting is necessary to turn insurance to your advantage.

Blackjack is one of those casino games that players can use strategy to turn the odds in towards them. Card counting is a blackjack strategy of skill that can actually allow the player to turn the game

Card Counting Tips: CSMs and RNGs

Well you have already had a basic explanation of how to begin card counting, but there are a few more things that you need to know before you reach your card counting glory.

There are also some blackjack games that you will want to avoid with card counting. Online blackjack and blackjack tables with Continuous Shuffle Machines. The reasons you want to avoid those blackjack games are very similar.

I will start with CSMs. CSMs are devices in which the cards from one round are fed into the device and the entire deck reshuffled before the next hand is dealt. Hence the continuous part.

This causes none of the cards that have been played to be discarded, and without discards there is nothing to count. Card counting is a way of keeping a loose running tab on the cards that have been played and removed from play under the remaining deck hits its reshuffle point. But since CSMs keep cards from being removed from play there is no point in trying to count them.

As for online blackjack, it is powered by a Random Number Generator. An RNG functions similarly to a CSM, but not exactly.

When an online blackjack game is created, its RNG is programmed with every possible outcome, such as all possible starting hands and dealer up card combinations. When a player clicks Deal, the RNG pulls from all possible starting hands and dealer up card combinations. This has an effect like a CSM because no cards are ever

Card Counting Not as Hard as it Seems

I am not joking. Card counting really is not a hard blackjack strategy skill to learn. It takes time, practice and patience to master, but the basic skill is not hard.

If you can add and subtract 1 then you can count cards. Many novice card counters will start out with the Hi Lo counting system. It is the most basic and teaches novice counters the basics that will allow them to move up to more advanced counting systems in the future.

The Hi Lo system starts out by assigning counting values to the cards, either a +1, a 0 or a -1 like so:

Cards 2 through 6 are assigned and counted as +1
Cards 7 through 9 are assigned and counted as 0
Cards 10 through Ace are assigned and counted as -1

Players then count the cards on the table with their appropriate counting values, adding 1 and subtracting 1 where necessary. It is as simple as gong around the table adding and subtracting what counting values the other players, you and the dealer have.

So what do you do with this running total that you have?

Well it depends on what the cards you have counted add up to. If the running total in your head is in the positive by +3 or more it is a good indicator that a good many low cards have been played, hence the higher positive count. A positive count means that the remaining deck is rich in high cards

Blackjack Makes Brushing Up on Your Math Skills Fun

For most people math ends when we get out of school, be it high school or college. Other than basic adding, subtracting and multiplying we do not really use much math. And with all these nifty apps for mobile devices we almost never do basic math anymore. But blackjack can help you brush up on your math and make it fun at the same time in two ways.

First there is the basic math that is inherent with blackjack