A word or two about blackjack
strategy
Blackjack is not one of the most popular casino games for no
particular reason. Most gamblers know and appreciate the fact that
it is one of the games with the lowest house edge.
The
typical house edge on a blackjack game is 2-3% which is great even
when compared to roulette, let alone games like bingo or keno, where
the house edge can get as high as 60%. Good old BJ takes it easy on
players. Instead of trying to rake in a huge sum on a single bet,
casinos and online casinos aim to make players play as many
hands/hour as possible. Whenever you play Blackjack, be aware of
this: the faster the game is, the more you’re bound to lose.
One
way to reduce the losses is to apply basic strategy. Proper basic
strategy will cut the house edge to about 1%, although it seems to
work better in some casinos than in others. I suppose it all depends
on the dealers and on whether the casino has any automatic shuffling
machines running or not. Some automatic shufflers (the RNGs used by
online casinos are such devices as well) offer players a marginal
advantage when they do apply basic strategy.
Blackjack basic strategy is nowhere as complicated as poker
strategy. Don’t feel intimidated, all you have to do is learn a few
charts which tell you the actions you need to undertake in relation
to the cards that you get and the dealer’s exposed card. There are
separate charts for soft hands and hard ones.
The
real edge in blackjack can be gained through card-counting though.
That way, players can even overturn the 1% house edge and make it
work in their favor. Basic card-counting is a fairly simple affair.
It doesn’t take a genius to pull it off, but mind you, even though
there is no law forbidding players to use their minds for obtaining
an advantage in a casino, the casino itself will adopt a very
unilateral attitude towards card-counters and will eject them from
the table as soon as suspicion arises.
The
simplest way to count cards in Blackjack is the following: assign
values to different cards: from 2 to 6 +1, from 7-9 0, and from
10-A, -1.
Whenever you see a card leave the deck, add or subtract one (or
don’t do anything if it’s a 0 value one), this way, all you’ll have
to keep in mind is a sum. The bigger the sum is, the bolder you
should be with your bets, because that means there are more
high-cards left in the deck then low ones – a fact which is in the
player’s advantage.
Really efficient card-counting techniques employ more intricate
variations of the system, presented. If the house uses several
decks, things become much more complicated, but the cards will still
remain countable.
You
cannot count cards in an online casino, because you have no idea how
many decks the system uses, and how it shuffles them. Even if it’s
only one deck we’re dealing with, the RNG has the ability to
reshuffle it after each played hand, as it only takes it a fraction
of a second.
When playing online, try to gain the upper hand through a
combination of basic strategy and a clever exploitation of comp
offers. There are no offers such as
rakeback in
online blackjack, but there are comp points that can be earned
through real money wagers and which can indeed provide a real edge
for players.
Comp points can be used for this purpose in live casinos too,
although earning them is much more laborious offline than online.
Whatever you do, try to generate some sort of positive mathematical
expectation on your bets when
gambling,
otherwise, the negative EV will eat your bankroll up over the
long-run, regardless of how lucky you may get.
