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Blackjack is a game of cards where cards one to ten are given value equivalent to face value and all the colored cards are given a value of ten. Aces can have the value of one or eleven. Players are dealt cards and they have to play against the dealer’s cards. A player must have the highest total value of cards without exceeding twenty-one to win.

Most tables have the dealer stand on an all seventeen. Unless, you have the card total of less than twelve, do not hit indiscriminately. If you have a card total of seventeen or higher, stand. The higher the card value, the more the chances of busting if you hit, but do not let this scare you into standing up too soon; if the dealer stands on a soft seventeen, hit until a hard sixteen and then quit. You will have better chances of winning.

Now that you know a little about basic strategy, know that card values of 1 to 16 should always be taken as decision hands where you must decide for yourself if you want to hit or stand. As previously mentioned, if your card count exceeds seventeen, stand.

The best blackjack strategy ever developed according to the analyst and writer Ed Thorp is the Baldwin group strategy developed in 1956 by Baldwin, Cantey, Maisel, and McDermott. He claims that a player following the Baldwin group strategy has an edge of about +0.1%, which is the best odds a player can have against the house.

There are other non-mathematical strategies developed by other expert players that give good odds, but these are hard to outline, or indeed, to master.

If you are playing at a real (brick and mortar) casino, know that the card decks are not shuffled after each game nor are the cards from the previous game added to the card decks. Thus, you can keep track of the cards missing from the card decks (from all the previous plays that happened after the last reshuffling) and speculate which cards may never show face up on the table, and thus improve your strategy. Needless to say, this does not affect your play at an online casino as the electronic card decks can repeat the cards dealt.

Generally, to calculate odds for or against the players, the dealt cards are each assigned a point value. If the card favors the player, it is assigned a positive card value and if it favors the casino, it is assigned a negative card value. The odds are then calculated as the percentage (positive or negative) against the total outcomes as either favorable or non-favorable odds.

All these calculations work if the game is fair and the dealer is honest. If the dealer cheats and hands out seconds every so often, you might still lose. Know that the sound of the dealing of second from top card sounds quite different from the sound of the dealing of the first card on top. If you are lucky enough to notice it, point it out; you might just help everyone at the table; they may not like playing against a dishonest dealer either.

I remember clearly the first time that I ever made a non conventional blackjack move. I was scouting a casino in the north of England and was playing table minimums. I did not have too much money on me as counting and playing was not on my agenda. I did not want to ruin my chances with the team before we even started.

So what happened during the course of the evening was a little amazing if not stupid. The dealer was a nice girl and the inspector was also a nice guy and we had been making polite conversation for about thirty minutes or so.

There were a couple of other players on the table apart from me and she pulled an ace to her own hand when she already had seventeen. The rules state that the card must then be the next card out of the shoe and on this instance, the card happened to be an ace.

Without any conscious thought, I reached into my pocket and took most of the money that I had and placed a maximum bet on the first box of £200. The hush and silence became deafening as the inspector and dealer exchanged glances with each other as if to say “can he do that”.

Well of course I can and I wasn’t breaking any rules, just taking advantage of a dealer mistake. It was a bad thing to do but this is money when all said and done and the edge for the player when you know that your first card is an ace is over 50%. I won the hand although not with a natural and the mood on the table changed.

But I knew that this wouldn’t get reported because what dealer or inspector would want their superiors to know that they were not doing their jobs properly?

That really was a defining day and I made that same move numerous times although not always with an ace as it was often with a ten value card.

See you soon

Carl
Play at one of the best casinos online

How difficult is card counting in blackjack? Or should I say, how difficult is keeping the count in blackjack? The answer is……it depends. If you are using a basic level 1 counting system then all you have to do is add and subtract in units of 1. That hardly seems daunting and it isn’t when you put it as plainly as that. But there are numerous factors at work that can lead to a counter losing the count totally.

Firstly inexperienced counters get flustered by fast dealers, table talk and nerves that are brought about by doing something that they know full well that if they were to get caught then they simply would not be able to play the game in the same way and could even lead to them being prevented from playing at all.

But fatigue is the number one factor with regards to losing the count for skilled counters. Keeping the count at the start of the session is easy and especially so if it is a level 1 counting system. But the problem later on in that same session is that your concentration levels start to fall and you often can find yourself blindly staring at the table.

This kind of brain freeze is a classic warning sign with card counting and a sign that you need to end the session and quickly. Adding and subtracting in units of one may sound simple but doing it constantly for hour after hour after hour is a mental drain. You can easily reach a stage where you simply cannot think anymore. With shuffle tracking then it can be even worse because if you are not fully concentrating on where the high card segments have been dispersed to for the next shoe then you could easily end up signalling the BP into situations that were negative and not positive….not good.

So keep in mind that card counting is a mental exercise and as with all types of exercise then it eventually leads to fatigue and fatigue leads to errors and in gambling then errors means losing money.

see you soon

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

I must confess that before I started working with bwin, I was unaware as to how big and just how varied their markets really were. Coming to the site is worth it just for the extensive football betting and bwin live betting and streaming service by itself. If all that doesn’t grab your attention then you can get yourself across to their poker room which is one of the best on the net and with some great bonuses to boot.

You can also get access to some great poker material as well on the poker blog section with some great features and news. I think for me personally one of the outstanding features that any gambling site can have is variety and daily content. But there are millions of people who are turning to the online casino experience these days.

In fact I was only having this exact same conversation with a professional colleague of mine the other day. We discussed how land based casinos were starting to veer down the electronic gaming avenue. This is certainly the case in the UK. We have electronic blackjack, electronic roulette and all the rest of the electronic games that are sprouting up like mushrooms.

They are entering dangerous ground in my opinion because what they are starting to offer in a gaming sense is starting to merge with what online casinos offer. So in future, where will the incentive be for punters to leave their own home to gamble on blackjack or roulette etc when everything can all be got from their very own computer? There are always those who fear cyber crime of course by these days sites like bwin employ some of the best experts in the world to thwart these people.

In my mind the threat is no more real than getting mugged outside a casino (which almost happened to me once). I can also say that numerous people have had their cars broken in to whilst being inside a land based casino and I have even heard of big winners being followed home and then robbed at home. Land based casinos are also a haven for thieves and pick pockets so if you think by avoiding online casinos that you are safer then you had better think again.

I really do think that you are safer both physically and financially playing online casino gambling and this is from someone who has done both on numerous occasions.

see you soon

Carl

Many attribute successful blackjack players as being individuals but they never work on their own. Even if they might happen to practice on their own, they are operating with knowledge gained from some of the greatest exponents on the planet. I know from past experience that even when I was on my own as a counter, I still had an arsenal of world renowned experts swimming around in my head.

In my mind, I was never going into a casino on my own as I had other people there with me in spirit. I had read Million Dollar Blackjack by Ken Uston more times than I can care to remember. Ken ran what was perhaps the most successful blackjack operation in the history of the game and I did learn an awful lot from him from reading that one single book. Then we had Professional Blackjack by Stanford Wong, an absolute classic of a book and still as relevant today as it was when the first edition came out back in the eighties.

I had started the process off by reading Beat the Dealer by Edward Thorp  back in 1990 and that really kick started the whole process. The book was dated compared to the others but it was still a gem. This was the first great blackjack book and it must have kick started the careers of thousands of card counters.

Then we had Playing Blackjack as a Business by Lawrence Revere, like Stanford Wong this name was an alias but Revere also had a dark side as well. Rumour had it that he also worked as a card counter spotter for casinos and that he also caught the very people who he had trained up.

Many would argue that Blackjack for Blood by Bryce Carlson should also be up there. The sections on the Advanced Omega 2 counting system and evasion techniques were great information. Then I had Blackjack Attack by Donald Schlesinger. This for me could be the greatest blackjack book ever printed and was the first book to properly explain how strategy deviations were of less importance and the “sweet 16″ and “illustrious 18″ were formed in that book.

Then I had The Theory of Blackjack by Peter Griffin, a very mathematically heavy book but still very good reading. I also have to mention the articles on shuffle tracking in Blackjack Forum by Arnold Snyder as being excellent value. I could mention countless others, the Shuffle Trak program by Mesa Verde Software, Stanford Wong’s Professional Count Analyzer are also up there.

So I was never on my own, I had the best team on the planet helping me……The Blackjack All Stars……what casino can stand up to that kind of team without changing the game or the rules……none!

See you soon

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

Let us say that you want to achieve a bet spread of £2 to £100 without getting noticed. You want to play as little as possible without getting noticed when the count goes negative. In blackjack then you know when the dealer has the advantage and when you have it. Ideally you would like to play the absolute minimum when the dealer has the advantage and then expand to the maximum whenever you have it. In reality of course then the situation is far different as you will quickly get detected doing this.

So you start your bet at the start of the shoe at £5 and not £2 as I said previously. Here the running count is zero and the house edge means that you are under a -0.5% disadvantage at this stage. But if the running count starts going negative then you can leave the table. But you need to have cover when you do this so I would advise going and standing behind a roulette table as if you are waiting to bet on roulette.

This has then reduced your blackjack bets not to the table minimum of £2 but to absolute zero. It also allows you to look more like a gambler who is flitting between two tables. Of course you throw the odd cover bet onto roulette even money chances every once in a while but that is just for cover. You are only losing 1.35% per spin on even chance bets so 4 bets of £50 every hour is only costing you £2.70 per hour.

Your blackjack hourly rate will offset this and increase the length of your career. Then when the count stays at around neutral you can increase your bets by doubling it up and you can even tell the dealer to “double you up”. You can do this after a winning hand so that it makes you look as if you are letting winnings ride or after a losing hand so that you are chasing losses.

Also your £50 bets on roulette exceed your bets on blackjack at this stage so when you increase your bets on blackjack to match them or even exceed them then no one will think anything of it but be sure to let the blackjack dealers know that your £50 bet on roulette has either won or lost…..got to be sneaky

see you soon

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

It has taken a while but I have finally watched the mover “21” with Kevin Spacey. I think as with all movies that surround technical fields like sports and games, there are going to be numerous things that are not accurate. Today’s video shows the preview for the movie and has been selected by me because it sort of fits in with what I have been saying about blackjack.

At the end of the day, anything that has been written, spoken or filmed about the game of blackjack rightfully takes its place in the blackjack world whether people agree with it or not. It is inevitable that Hollywood will do their stuff and change what the MIT team did just for dramatic effect.

So we have a situation where reality and fantasy merge. Even when I wrote my book “Princes of Darkness: The World of High-stakes blackjack”, it was difficult to get across the reality of it and I was the one who was writing the book. In fact I have to confess that I slightly inflated and dressed up certain things in a minor way and I think that is kind of inevitable during the process.

I remember a few years ago watching Rounders with Matt Damon and even though that is probably the best film on poker ever made due to its accuracy, I found it very clichéd and done in a way that still didn’t depict true reality. Watching the movie “21” will not reveal how to run a successful blackjack team although it will reveal useful tips if you zoom in on them.

But things like using two big players on the same table isn’t needed for instance as this just brings too much heat down and tipping is not something that a professional blackjack player does on any great scale simply because the edge is so small. By all means watch the movie if you have never watched it before but do remember that you are watching Hollywood at work here.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

Play blackjack online

The automatic blackjack shuffling machines have been somewhat of a pain in the backside for serious blackjack players for a few years now. This is because you cannot card count or shuffle track the damn things. The casino industry would probably argue that they are an assist to serious blackjack players but then again, they would argue that it doesnt take a player to be a winning player for them to be a serious blackjack player and that is an extremely viable arguement.

But they are still a pain in the butt all the same……HOWEVER…..there are ways to beat blackjack games with automatic shufflers. The technique is not to beat the shuffler but to beat the dealer. Without going into too much detail, there are ways to extract money from blackjack games without shuffle tracking or counting.

The theory behind this is a closely guarded secret and this is something that the casinos certainly do not want you to know. I spoke about this in my book “Princes Of Darkness: The World of Highstakes Blackjack” a few years ago and I think that it certainly ruffled a few feathers within the casino industry as they had always deemed the games unbeatable.

The truth is that casinos like it all their own way and why shouldnt they? They are running a business after all and are not in business to hand people money. The early automatic shufflers were even beatable themselves as they often left patterns and clogged up. They often had to be repaired which was detrimental to what the casinos actually wanted, faster games and more action and more profit.

I will be going to a casino again tonight so will relate you the story of what actually happened either tomorrow or Sunday. This club doesnt have a single hand dealt BJ game which is annoying but since I am playing less poker these days, I am starting to enjoy BJ again, only problem is that time wise, there isnt as much money in it although its a night out and you really shouldnt see it as any more than that.

Anyway….wish me luck and see you soon

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

Play blackjack at bwin.com

I have had many people over the past few years contact me about my comments on beating automatic shuffling machines. I feel that this needs a little explaining because people do tend to quote the obvious, “how can you beat them when you have no count or tracking information?”

That is a viable question of course as you simply cannot card count or shuffle track these things as the cards are being continuously shuffled with most designs. But after nearly ten years in the gaming industry, you become aware of numerous cheating techniques (it just comes with the job).

These techniques apply whether or not the game has an automatic shuffler as they are cheating techniques and not card counting or shuffle tracking techniques. Actually strictly speaking, they are not just cheating techniques but also tchniques that take advantage of dealer errors, how to look for them and also how to deliberately create them.

At the end of the day, dealers become tired……they get bored by the sheer repetition of their job…..they get annoyed by the behaviour of certain punters…..these are all negative emotions that impact on their ability to be able to do a certain job.

So at specific times of the shift, dealer errors can be more likely…….but consider this…….imagine of you are playing on a game with a shuffling machine and playing from £5-£15 per hand with an average bet of £10. You get dealt 60 hands per hour on an average game at a typical house edge of 0.5%. This means that you have placed £600 in action in an average hour and the house has taken 0.5% of that which is £3.

So your hourly rate in this instance is -£3 per hour…….but what if a dealer was making one error per hour at an average bet size of £10 that resulted in you being paid when you shouldnt have been paid or (stagger at the thought), you pull off one subtle cheating move per hour…….suddenly you are now at +£7/hour and not -£3.

Two instances per hour and you are now making decent money…….its bad……its cheating…..its opportunism……BUT ITS POSSIBLE!

Regards

Carl

I remember some years ago, well about 1990-1991 to be precise, a husband and wife team used to come into our casino as card counters. They basically only survived because the casino where I worked at that time basically didnt know anything about advanced blackjack.

Although looking back, neither did this couple because they committed the cardinal of all sins, they failed to disguise their spread. I knew that these people were counting but I always thought that it was him that was the counter and she merely came with him for cover. As it turned out, it was his wife who was the counter and she merely signalled him when to bet. They started betting £5 and sooner or later they upped it to as far as the table maximum.

I dont know if this signal was audible or visual, she was sat so close to him that she could have easily touched his leg when it was time to bet. In the end though they got themselves barred which was hardly surprising looking back. Funnily enough I became friends with this player many years later and no doubt I would have had him in my first team had I known him personally at that time.

But it is bet spread that warns casinos of counters, actually their cover was pretty good. No casino suspects a husband and wife of being card counters and had they got their spread in order then they could have pulled this off for far longer than they did. They eventually split up and divorced which was sad but looking back, they never stood a chance. In fact they were lucky that I didnt blow the gaff but I didnt want the casino to know about what I knew about the game.

Back then we are talking pre-internet so the knowledge to beat the game and play professionally was little known and I had access to books from the States that few people in the UK had got or even read.  This placed me into a very rare situation where I knew more than the casino management and that was a pretty good feeling for a croupier I can tell you

take care and see you soon

Carl