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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

My recent family issues seem to be behind me now, my father has been ill recently so that has been taking up my time. Thankfully he is now OK and I went on my usual Friday night casino trip.

I would rather not say where it was for the reason being that I don’t want anyone to make the connection between me and what I have done in the past. It would just be my rotten luck that someone from the casino or that company read this blog

Anyway, I spent my time watching the dealers and I couldn’t believe how bad they were. I could never understand this years ago, I mean the job of a croupier can be considered professional.

It is not a job where you can walk straight in off the street and do it. You first have to have six weeks basic training but even after that six week period then you are not much good to the casino and have to be supervised very closely.

You would never be able to get a job at another casino with just six weeks training behind you. So even then you wouldn’t really be able to do much. Most casinos wouldn’t touch a dealer with much less than six months experience.

So what this means is that for a croupier to be of real use to a casino then they really need to have some considerable experience behind them. So why then do land based casino chains (especially in the UK) pay their staff so little compared to the job that they do and the profits that they make?

It is no wonder why so many staff leave casinos, a combination of poor to mediocre pay, anti-social working hours and often…..ill treatment from casino managers who think that they can talk to grown men and women like they are school children.

If these criteria were different then there wouldn’t be as much need for training schools and becoming a croupier would be far more difficult than what it really is.

I am actually starting to see the role of an online casino in a completely different light recently and they certainly rightfully take their place in the casino world there is no doubt about that.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

The difference between online casino gambling and live casino gambling is akin to online poker and live poker in my opinion. By that I mean that there are many similarities but also numerous differences.

For instance in online blackjack there is no facility to card count or shuffle track. But then again in live blackjack with shuffling machines then you do not have the facility to be able to do that anyway.

But with online casinos then you do have numerous other advantages that live casinos simply do not offer. You do not get financial incentives or bonuses in live casinos for becoming a member.

You also don’t have the luxury of being able to play in your own home without having to travel in order to do it. But of course live casinos do offer the ability for interaction.

But then again maybe you don’t want interaction. Maybe you don’t want friends and family knowing that you gamble. But in my mind, the differences with live blackjack and online casino blackjack are becoming less and less.

This is rapidly becoming the case with roulette as well. Live casinos are now featuring electronic roulette more and more or using one single centralised wheel like I have seen in numerous casinos.

The fact of the matter is that the old timers like me will not like this form of roulette but the new kids will not know anything else but the Internet version.

So I can see online casino games really starting to expand as the live casinos won’t be offering much different to what the online casinos will be offering from a purely gaming sense.

In my experience, there have been no casinos in the UK who have provided new members with money when they join. This is where the online casinos really have the edge.

But most people incorrectly view gaming anyway. It is merely entertainment and nothing more and no different to watching a movie or going out. It is merely an alternative form of entertainment and should be seen as such.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

The objective of any casino is to maximise profits within set barriers. Obviously any casino owner in an ideal world would like to make 100% return on turnover on the gaming side but that isn’t possible.

Not one single punter would stand for not ever winning whether it be fruit machines, roulette, casino poker, blackjack or slot machines. The goal can really only be to take the maximum possible whilst still keeping the punters coming back.

This is why punters who win are the best source of advertising for any casino and adverse publicity is very bad. Roulette has always been the best money earner for the casinos due to its speed and its ability to be able to support more than a dozen players per table at any one time.

I don’t like it when land based casinos become agitated and disgruntled by punters winning sizable sums of money. I have worked on the inside so I know that it happens. I have seen countless situations where gaming managers have been openly hostile to punters who have won money.

I find this approach truly amazing in an industry where the casino has to depend on people repeatedly coming through the door in enough numbers to not only pay the overheads but to generate meaningful profits as well.

OK so casinos are not a means of social security but with areas like slots and Caribbean stud poker, then why in heavens name don’t they give the punter better value for a money?

Giving a player a 50/1 pay-off for a straight flush and this is based on the dealer having a qualifying hand of AK is ludicrous in my opinion. It is lucky for land based casinos that more punters are not aware of the odds of making these hands otherwise they simply wouldn’t play them.

Giving people value for money is the key to not only keeping them but to also keep them coming back for many years to come. Handing out a casino marketing code every month would be a good start or some other incentive for players to come and play and after that…to stay and be happy.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

Sometimes I can behave like a real idiot. I mean…when I do stupid things then a part of me wants to keep it quiet and not tell nobody. But then again I deserve to be punished so why not tell all. We had our usual Friday night casino jaunt last night and I ended up playing roulette like I have been for a while.

There was only me and my partner, the weather was foul so we went on our own. In fact we almost didn’t go at all and when you have seen as many casinos as I have down the years then they don’t carry the same appeal. It’s my partner who is the eager one, she has been winning and doing well and thinks that she can keep it up

Anyway, to cut a long story short I lost about £250…..it wasn’t the amount or the fact that I blew away my profits from the previous two trips. It was the fact that I placed bets when the situation wasn’t right. You see this is what professionalism is supposed to be about. You should bet when you should and not when you can. Having the discipline to stick to rules is what separated the pro’s from the pretenders and maybe I am nothing more than a pretender these days.

I have tried to tell myself that I was just having a great time but is this all that it is? I remember a few years back I was at a race meeting in Malta with my partner and a couple of friends. Their racing isn’t the same as it is in the UK and they have carts that the jockey’s sit on that are pulled by the horse.

But anyway, the others were having a good time placing bets except me. The reason why I didn’t bet was because of the stupendously large bookmaker margins which I viewed as nothing short of daylight robbery…..and the punters stood for it. I wasn’t giving them my money out of principle.

In the past I used to be as disciplined as this…..maybe I need to take a trip down memory lane to see how I used to be.

see you soon

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

Visited a quaint little casino last night, my partner was out with a couple of female friends and rather than stay in and do my work, I had some business to attend to so I had a little casino trip with a friend who signed me in. They had a blackjack hand dealt game. These are getting rare now in the UK. I had about £500 on me and was drawn to the game like a moth to a light.

I should not have allowed this to happen because you cannot do much with £500 unless you are using advantage play techniques. Unfortunately last night I had proficient dealers all through the night and no one ever made an error.

I played blacklack and counted and in seven shoes, the count never rose high enough for a big bet to go out. I couldn’t get too much on the table in this casino without getting noticed. Anyway after about two hours of this I became bored and drifted across to roulette minus about £50. I had been watching a certain dealer and when they came back from their break, I knew that they would be on the next table for at least ninety minutes or so.

So I casually drifted across and took a seat which was the only one left as it was quite busy. Fortunately the seat was near the wheel so I could get to grips with his spin. It was a usual low profile Huxley wheel but the ball composition was perfect and so was his wheel speed. The inspector didn’t seem to care and spent ages chatting to the female dealer on the other table.

I already had about £100 in five pound chips in my pocket and bet five and the neighbours for £5 (£25 bet)……..bullseye….no 5. Roulette has been going so well that I don’t know why I bother playing blackack. So this one spin put me over £100 up for the night. On the next spin I hit him again for another £5 on the number for what was a £155 in profit. This put me at about £260 ahead in minutes since switching from blackjack.

Then the dealer started messing with his wheel speed, I think he either sensed that he would get into bother if he didn’t or that I was reading him. I had two losing bets that came nowhere near their target and finished the session over £200 ahead. I would like to report a happy ending but I owed my partner £250 from a few weeks ago……oh well.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson author of Princes of Darkness :The World of Highstakes Blackjack and Killer Roulette

Do you remember when I mentioned about imagination and creativity always being able to defeat casinos. Well I would like to tell you a story of when we experimented with using silent vibrating cell phones to signal in the big player. We were inside a casino where they had an upstairs bar area.

In that bar area they had numerous screens showing people the action from the gaming tables on both blackjack and roulette. The pictures were crystal clear and I suddenly had the idea to see of I could count the cards from the bar area…..I could do it easily.

The problem was that when the count went positive, getting down the staircase into the pit and then placing the bets would have taken too long. Suddenly the information seemed useless until I came up with the idea of using a silent vibrating mobile cell phone to call the big player who was down in the pit.

He would have the phone in his pocket and when it rang, he knew that he had to approach the table. There was only one table in operation so we couldnt make a mistake by signalling him to the wrong table. We had one ring for when he had to move in and one for when he had to move out when the count went negative. We purchased a new phone for this very purpose so no one else had the number.

The next thing that we had to ascertain was whether or not these pictures that I was seeing were live or not. We found that out by getting the big player to reach out across the table (the camera was above looking down). We had synchronised our watches to the nearest second and there was next to no time delay.

I would like to report that this idea worked but unfortunately we were plagued by not always being able to get a signal on our respective phones as cell phones around 2002 were still in their relative infancy. Still though, it was a fantastic idea looking back and one that I am very proud of to this day.

It also gives me great pleasure to relate that story as well but I have always believed that if you look hard enough, you will eventually find the answers. It always used to give me a real kick to play blackjack, it was the underhandedness (is that a word?) of it all.

I hope that everyone is enjoying my blog so far and I am really enjoying being with bwin.

take care

Carl