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I watched the movie “21” the other night for the first time. This is the supposedly true story of the “MIT” team that took the casinos in Las Vegas for considerable sums of money. There were many mistakes that were made by a supposedly 25 year veteran of playing blackjack that I found difficult to understand. Firstly they divided up the winnings after every trip which as far as I could tell was just over a weekend.

It is unlikely that any team would do that after so short a playing session. Variance is huge in blackjack and it would be easy to hand out $50,000 in profits to your team members only then to lose an amount of money that took you back down to where you started. Except as the backer then you would be down the money what you had already paid to your team if you put up 100% of the money which I assume that in the film he did because the students all seemed short of their own money.

What I also found strange was that it would be difficult teaching blackjack and evasion techniques to new players let alone shuffle tracking which is highly complex. From someone who has tried and used shuffle tracking and not to mention studied this art for a long time then I can vouch for how difficult it is. This would be made even worse by trying to teach novices this art that had never set foot inside a casino before in their life. The term “shuffle tracking” was used once in the movie but that never came across in what they did at the tables.

Counting speed is imperative in card counting but there are certain tricks that you can do to really hasten up your speed. The best players can and do count an entire deck in less than 20 seconds. This isn’t as difficult as it sounds at first glance because of the value of hand combinations. It is for this reason why skilled players can count an entire round of cards with the merest glimpse at the table.

Card combinations work well in blackjack because of the high-low count. Basically this means that hands that consist of high cards and low cards simply cancel. For example a hand with 10-3 is zero and if they pull a 2 and then another ten then the count is still zero for that hand. Likewise if the high-low count shows neutral cards clumped together like 7,8,9 for example. These three value cards are counted as zero and so seeing a box with 8,7 and the dealer holding a four then you know that this hand is zero also.

Reducing this to counting individual boxes makes it easier to card count than looking at the entire table which can seem somewhat daunting. Quite often you will see entire groups of cards that simply cancel each other out and once you become adept at doing this then counting 20 cards can be done in no more than 3-4 seconds. The only time needed is the time needed to verify that this particular sequence cancels and once you verify that then you can move on. It then becomes the case that counting an entire deck in 20 seconds is easy.

One of the key problems in blackjack is in escalating your bet sizes without it being noticed by the casino. Clearly then you cannot move from betting say $2 minimums to $500 maximums as a 250-1 bet spread is going to mean one thing……a very short playing career! So just how do you build up to playing $500 per hand? Well firstly if you are betting in different denomination chips then this is going to get noticed. So I would tend to start playing in $25 chips. Straight away this reduces your spread from 250-1 to only 20-1 and so going from $25 to $500 will not cause anywhere near as many problems as going from $2 to $500.

However there is a downside to playing $25 at the start and this is that you are going to be playing an awful lot of hands in negative counts at $25 per time. This is where two key strategies come into play. When the count goes neutral which means that neither you nor the casino have the edge then you need to be increasing your bet sizing. Now this will clearly increase the variance considerably but this is the price that you pay for longevity and high earnings in blackjack.

So you start to double up like a gambler in neutral counts and it only takes two double ups to reach $100 from $25. Two more double ups and you are at $400 and only $100 less than the maximum bet providing of course that the count goes in your favour. So in this instance then the really big money only goes on during positive counts while if the count goes the other way then you switch tables. This brings me onto strategy number two which is to play in casinos with two active tables. You can drift between the two so that you are not playing negative counts as often.

I was having a discussion the other day on a forum regarding which was the more skilful game…..poker or blackjack? At first glance then it appears very simple to find the answer and that is poker. However I feel that this is doing a serious disservice to the game of blackjack to arrive at a quick conclusion like that.

There is a depth to blackjack that is unknown amongst nearly everyone who plays poker. In fact even poker has advanced alarmingly so in terms of the technical side over the past few years and this has revealed a side to the game that poker players never really knew existed. This exact same process happened in blackjack some years ago but many poker players think that blackjack is just about knowing basic strategy and a simple card counting system.

If you want to make it that simple then fine but trust me when I say that blackjack and the attaining of money in blackjack is a tougher proposition than what you first think. Let us look at a clear example here of what I am talking about. In blackjack then the dealer has position on the player on every single hand that gets played. Imagine how more difficult this makes the game when a mediocre player (which is what the house is) can beat all but the very best opponents simply by acting second. I do not think that there is any definitive answer to this argument to be quite frank.

I was watching a documentary a while back about Ken Uston that I hadn’t seen before. I recall reading his book called “Million Dollar Blackjack” and thought that it was one of the best books that I had ever read on the game. Ken Uston for me was perhaps the greatest blackjack player in the history of the game.

He was the blackjack equivalent of Stu “The Kid” Ungar in poker……he was a maverick but an out and out genius. He was also someone that the casinos in Las Vegas hated because he took them to court and won over the fact that they didn’t have the right to bar card counters. Advertising a game as a game of skill and then preventing players who have that skill from exercising it is always a sore point with blackjack players.

This was why casinos started employing counter measures against card counters. They devised tactics like no mid shoe entry……forbidding back counting……shallow penetration and training dealers to count. They knew that they couldn’t risk taking extreme measures like barring players again as this would risk court action just like in the Uston case. It is difficult to take this sort of counter measure when all a player is doing is exhibiting skill. So from that day forward then casinos knew that they had to approach the situation in a far different way…….and they did. The arrival of the automatic shuffling machines was a dagger to the heart of nearly all professional blackjack players.

If I had to put into a list what the world’s greatest blackjack player would be and what skills they would have then it would form a very interesting mix of skills and abilities. Firstly I also think that there is no such thing as the “world’s greatest blackjack player” either as some players clearly have different skills to others. Also I think there have to be definitions of what constitutes such a player as clearly someone who placed too much emphasis on say the mathematical side of the game would be swayed into voting for someone who was very strong in that area.

Clearly there are many other skills like being able to shuffle track, keeping side counts, avoiding detection, bankroll management, longevity and probably the adaptive skills required to try new techniques that can beat the house. I also think that in order to maintain an edge then a modern player simply has to move into other areas as well that almost become gamesmanship.

Also the ability to befriend casino staff and management as these are not the people who you want for enemies……trust me. So blackjack players come in all shapes and sizes and so trying to decipher which is the best or who is the best is very difficult. For me though then the real test of a blackjack player comes in two areas……the amount of money that they won and over what period that amount was taken over. You can have all the skill in the world but if you get caught then it is game over.

There are many similarities between poker and blackjack and one such similarity is that both games can be approached with card dependent strategies. In blackjack then this is referred to as basic strategy. However in poker then card dependent strategies are also in use by many players but just how effective are they? I think one way to answer this question is to once again look at blackjack as an analogy. If you played accurate basic strategy in blackjack then doing so would elevate you above many other players who play the game.

However this would still not get you an edge over the house but you would be conceding less in terms of EV than other players who were not using basic strategy. Now let us change the situation and imagine that instead of playing against the dealer that you could enter into private wagers with other players as to who would make more money and both players staked the same amount of money. Now we enter into a different proposition because this injects a higher level of seriousness into the game.

It also brings card counting into the equation as well as the higher the stakes then the more serious the player and so more serious players would clearly be using strategies that were superior to simple basic strategy. While basic strategy would still get you an edge over the weaker players, it simply wouldn’t be enough against the stronger better players and playing higher stakes demands better strategies. In online poker then this resembles the difference between solid ABC and using tracker data for example. However solid ABC can still be very successful but you need to find the correct level to use it. In poker then this represents the highest level possible where that can work and this takes a little experimentation.

Many years ago there was a huge debate on the subject of card counting systems and which one was the best. This is clearly a difficult question to answer fully as much depends on what you are trying to do, your own abilities and whether or not you are attempting to implement other strategies at the same time. I have my own personal opinions on counting systems that do not fit in with the ideas and philosophies of many other experts in the field. I have tried numerous systems in the past from the basic hi-lo to far more sophisticated level 2, 3 and even 4 systems. I have also used unbalanced counting systems like the K-O and I can only report what I have learned.

I believe that the simpler systems are better for numerous reasons despite the fact that they find on average less profitable situations. Firstly they allow you to be able to count faster because level 1 systems are easier to follow. This means that as you gain experience that you will have more down time at the table because you will be counting cards far faster than the dealer can pull them. This allows you to be able to interact with other players and gaming staff and look less like a counter.

Simple counts also are less mentally demanding as well and you find that you simply do not lose the count as easily and thus this not only allows you to count more accurately but also for longer without suffering from fatigue. So the bottom line is that the simpler counts work for me all the time.

It is often thought that the only way to beat blackjack is by counting cards. This strictly speaking isn’t true of course as there are other ways and shuffle tracking is one such example. However I would never recommend to anyone to try shuffle tracking but there are untold ways to beat blackjack if you are prepared to cheat. In no way am I advising anyone to cheat but in this post I am going to explain one such method. It is a first base method and is a variation on “spooking” except the player is doing the spooking themselves and it works in the following way.

As the dealer pulls the cards from the shoe then they sometimes pressure the card in the centre more than what they should. This can often reveal the card to the player at first base which is blackjack terminology for first box. This can especially be the case if the player is small in stature. This technique is effective because bets can be sized accordingly if you know what the next card is.

In practice then only picture cards are visible but this is enough to give the player a 13% edge if they know that their first card is a ten value card while the dealer’s card is unknown at this stage. In fact I have even heard of one dealer who deliberately exposed cards to an accomplice at third base who then signalled in a big player. Collusion is rife in casinos with staff that are unhappy in their job.

I have been asked many times down the years as to how effective progression systems are within the game. Well let us get one thing clear here and this is that progression systems left to their own devices cannot get you an edge on their own. This is because the house in a game like blackjack starts with an edge of at least 0.50% and more if the player veers too far away from basic strategy. However one of the key areas in blackjack is to avoid detection and this is where progression systems have a strategic use.

This is because using a progression system makes you look more like a gambler and less like a card counter. These sorts of systems are very popular with punters on games like roulette and blackjack as well as other casino games like Punto Banco and CSP. But as long as you remember that these systems will not get you a long term edge then you should be fine using them.

I myself have never used these types of systems when I played blackjack for a living between 1998 and 2002. I never saw their strategic use at the time and it was only afterwards that I saw any advantage in using them. However if all you want is to play the game of blackjack with some sort of system then there is absolutely nothing wrong with that at all in my opinion……just don’t expect long term profits.