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I have said this many times and I will keep on saying it, card counting is not only a very serious business but it is also very difficult to pull off. Certain people with certain personality types are definitely not suited to playing full-time blackjack or even part time blackjack for that matter.

The thing is that it does create somewhat of a nervous situation when you are ramping your bets. When you do this for the first time, you always get the feeling that everyone in the entire building knows what it is that you are doing.

This first time nervousness and paranoia should go away but with many people it doesn’t. The fact of the matter is that anyone who goes and does the bare minimum as a blackjack player will get caught. Or at the very least will have severe counter measures taken against them.

This usually involves the dealer dealing short shoes which decreases the number of hands dealt per shoe but it also decreases the number of profitable situations for the counter as well. The best and most profitable situations tend to arise at the end of the shoe so when the shoe is cut very shallow then the really profitable situations rarely arise and the game tends to be nothing more than a process for recycling money.

This is what many novice card counters do not understand, they learn the running count but do not do true count conversions. If the first ten cards out of a four deck shoe are low cards then the running count is +10. But this figure of +10 does not represent the same ratio of high cards to low cards as it would if the count was +10 with only one deck remaining.

If we use the high-low count to show what I mean, there are 208 cards in a four deck shoe. These are broken down into 80 low cards, 80 high cards and 48 middling cards that have a count of zero. So ignoring the middling cards we can see that there are now 80 high cards and aces and 70 low cards remaining for a ratio of one high card or ace to every low card at a rate of 1.14.

But with only one deck remaining if we took a standard distribution of 20 low cards, 20 high cards and 12 middling cards, taking away ten low cards gives us a ratio of high cards and aces to low cards which is 2.00 and not the 1.14 like before.

See what I mean now

There have been big debates down the years about the merits of card counting systems and comparing one to the other. This kind of reminds me of online poker and what is the best way to operate. With online poker then there is simply no one shoe fits all policy and there never can be in a million years.

Much depends on how good you are, how fast you can play, if you have rakeback, how your game stands up to multi-tabling, does watching your opponents figure greatly in your play and the list goes on and on. Usually you need to find your own level in online poker or any other form of poker to be able to make money.

Players that cannot find their own level or are constantly trying to move up and be big shots usually bust out. There is little difference with blackjack, the best card counting system is basically specific to each individual. You cannot quote some level 4 type system as being optimal if the individual cannot use it properly without losing count.

So if a certain system is “best” for you then it is “best” and it is that simple. It is the same when financial consultants recommend financial products to clients. There is no stand out best product, only what products are best for certain people.

So a blackjack player who struggles with adding up and true count conversions may find the KO Count optimal. Then again, someone who was playing long hours who was also shuffle tracking and wanted to incorporate everything as efficiently as possible may find the high/low optimal (like we did).

Then again, a player who has the mental fortitude and is doing nothing but counting and wants optimal power and results may use a level four system. So there is no such thing as the “best system” in the world…..only what is best for the individual.

See you soon

Carl “The Dean” Sampson
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When I wrote my first book, “Princes of Darkness : The World of High-stakes Blackjack” back in 2006, many people jumped on me for only using the basic high/low count. This is a basic level 1 counting system where you only add and subtract in units of one.

Some of the criticism amazed me and especially from so called blackjack experts who clearly had not read my reasons further into the book. These were clearly people who were stuck in what was conventional card counting blackjack train of thought.

I on the other hand was thinking beyond conventional card counting. I simply did not want (could not handle) complicated multi-level counting systems whilst trying to shuffle track at the same time. Card counting is difficult at the best of times whilst having to interact in normal ways and worry about signalling in BP’s.

On top of this you are trying to keep a score on what has been won and lost and if you have people in your team who you cannot trust, you have more than enough to think about and if any “expert” thinks that while doing all this that they can use a multi-level counting system on top then I have two words to say to that……try it!

Even IF you succeeded which would be very doubtful then you still have the rather serious problem of fatigue waiting ominously just around the corner. To do all these things whilst trying to supervise several team members at the same as well as keep an eye out for casino personnel and any potential heat is very difficult.

In fact I would have to say that had I not had all of my years in gaming where I practiced counting speed and multi-level counting systems coupled with already knowing about casino techniques and surveillance then I just don’t think that I would have been able to pull everything off. There is no doubt in my mind that I would have probably been forced to drop the shuffle tracking element.

But seeing as I didn’t see how card counting could be profitable as a stand alone way of making money from blackjack in 1998 then it is doubtful if the entire thing would have got off the ground to begin with.

see you soon and take care

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

When you have been in gambling as long as I have (far too long actually) then you begin to take certain things for granted and certain types of knowledge. One of those pieces of knowledge is basic strategy for blackjack.

The thing is that basic strategy isn’t rocket science and is so easily learnt. All you have to do is memorise a few simple charts. But one of the underlying problems behind why millions of blackjack players worldwide both in live casinos and online casinos do not use basic is not because they cannot memorise the tables but because they simply do not believe in it.

There is a tendency to be seduced by the effect of immediate short term results. This happens in poker an awful lot. If a player re-raises a rock with K-10 and the flop comes K-10-5 and he ends up busting the AA of his opponent then this underlines in his own mind that he made the proper play.

This happens in blackjack, you tell someone that they need to take a card on 15 against a 10 and they do so. They then bust on six consecutive occasions and then think that taking a card on 15 is wrong and go back to their old way of playing.

They then say things like “well if I had stood instead of taking a card then at least I would have had a chance”. They just cannot comprehend that these strategy plays are computed over hundreds of thousands (even millions) of situations and when replicated often enough is the correct mathematical play.

You can also have certain players who try to “feel” what the next card is. I like watching these types and find them hilarious. This is especially the case when they are on the last box playing the role of “goalkeeper”.

It is quite amusing to see the look on their faces when their play leads to the dealer busting on several consecutive occasions. They almost look like some “blackjack Zen master” when all they are is extremely misguided and naive about blackjack.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

In poker, if you see your opponents hand without actually trying to do so then that is not cheating. Part of the game is in concealing your own hand. In casino blackjack of course then the casino is fair game and so is the dealer if they are careless with exposing cards.

So just how do dealers expose cards in blackjack when it is being dealt from a shoe? Well there are numerous ways to do this but the main one is when dealers for whatever reason are either not holding the card correctly or not pulling the card correctly. Even many experienced dealers apply pressure to the wrong area of the card and inadvertently make it visible to an alert player at first base. If this card is a ten value card or an ace then that is a big advantage for the player.

Now of course that card needs to be the first card out of the next hand so that the player on first base gets the card. But the problem is with individual counters that if you escalate your bet dramatically to take advantage of this then it is blatant to the casino staff. You will be suspected as a card counter even if in this instance you are not counting.

If you went from £5 to £200 with the knowledge that the next card out of the shoe is an ace then the edge is around 52% for the player. This means that the expectation is +£104 on the bet. Do you want to risk your entire operation for £104? This is even supposing that you win the hand, an ace is no guarantee of victory. This tactic is better when you have a BP (big player) as you are going to be signalling them in with big bets anyway.

Quite often, aggressive male dealers have this flaw and especially if they are fresh at the start of a shift or they are annoyed for whatever reason. Different dealers deal the cards in different ways and flaws that were present at the start of shift may dissapear with time and vice versa.

In the next post I want to talk about actual spooking ploys that we used,

see you soon

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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

I may not be having any casino trips on a Friday/Saturday for a while after a very close family member was diagnosed with a serious illness on Tuesday. So I guess that this means that I will have to think about something else to write about the following day

I remembered though yesterday that I was only part way through talking about basic strategy. I had already discussed the decisions for standing and now we will look at the splitting decisions. Once again this is a generic basic strategy so should not be seen as remotely definitive.

To be able to split then you must have a pair and we will start with the highest pair which is aces. Here you are correct to always split them unless the dealer is showing an ace. With tens you never split them but in many casinos you simply do not have the option to do so anyway. With nines then you split them if the dealer has a nine or below except if they have a seven showing. Anything above a nine by the dealer and you stand.

You split 8-8 if the dealer has a nine showing or lower, sevens if the dealer has a seven or lower, sixes if they have a six or lower, do not split fives or fours. Finally, split 3-3 and 2-2 if the dealer has a seven or less. In future posts I will look at soft totals that include an ace.

But while we are on the subject of basic strategy then I will mention doubling as well. You double on 11 if the dealer has a nine or less, you double on ten in the same way, you double on nine if the dealer has a 3,4,5 or 6.

So this is basically it then with regards to basic strategy, all I have missed are the soft totals which I will cover in a later post. But once again it is important that you realise that these are generic and rules variations and geographical location will mean that there will be differences in what I have just said.

But if you want to be a good blackjack player, get down to basics first

see you soon

Carl

For all you people out there who play blackjack, you may already know what a difficult game it is to master. My belief though is that most people simply do not know about the marvelous subtleties of the game. In fact when I read my first ever blackjack book back in around 1990 then my knowledge and understanding of the game quantum leaped. That book was Beat The Dealer by Ed Thorp which was the first great blackjack book.

The game is deeply mathematical in nature, but yet as someone who is not well grounded in mathematics myself, I know from personal experience that there comes a time when knowing the in depth mathematical stuff using qualifications in highly advanced mathematics and statistics is simply not needed and has diminishing returns. There are far more important skills to playing blackjack and beating the game inside live casinos.

Honesty is a massive element in team play and I do know of certain blackjack teams who used polygraph machines to test to see if results were being reported correctly. I tried to get around this problem by operating in such a way as to make everything as open as possible. I did not allow any team member to operate alone as I knew that this would be a problem or at least a potential problem.

At the end of the day, people need money and people have debts and bills to pay. If they don’t have enough money to get by or if they have other expensive habits then the temptation to steal is ever present. I never wanted to go down the avenue of polygraph testing although at one stage I did secretly inquire about the price of a such a device and how easy it would have been to get hold of one.

But these are things that need to be ironed out first and not during the operation. Also it is pretty difficult to ask someone to take a test when it is them who is stumping up the money as the main financial backer. So I was in a very awkward situation anyway. But polygraph testing has been used numerous times with professional gambling teams and not just in casino blackjack either……and you thought that professional blackjack was all about counting cards

see you soon

Carl

One of the biggest running counts that I ever saw happened during the second year of our operation. I was back counting a shoe game and with a table full of seven players, the first two rounds of play produced only one ten value card.

The first round of play alone left a running count of +14 and the second round increased this still further to +25 if my memory serves me correctly. This was a six deck game so with 5.5 decks remaining the true count was 4.5.

In all my years of casino gambling and counting cards both in and out of gaming, I have never seen a running count go through the roof as quickly as this. I would like to report that we made a lot of money from this situation but the rest of the team wasn’t present as I was merely scouting the game

Still, a few percent in edge isn’t something that you can take to the bank. But it does make a good story and the sum total of this advantage was that I won £45. I couldn’t really max out on the situation for two reasons.

Firstly I was only playing minimums and having a spread that was too big would have alerted the gaming staff. A second reason was that I didn’t have that much on me for a scouting mission (about £200).

There was another reason as well and getting heat at this stage would not only have been foolish but it would also have been selfish as well as we would have been coming back into this casino at some future point in time.

The game from a theoretical point of view with regards to conventional blackjack was poor, the penetration was around 60-65% and the game was six deck.

So without shuffle tracking and advantage play, it was quite poor. This was a cross reference taken from six different blackjack dealers. Not one single dealer dealt more than about 70% of the cards from the shoe at anytime.

Blackjack can really be a frustrating game at times but +25 after two rounds…..now that takes some doing.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson