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What does it take to become a card counter? Or to put that another way, what does it take to win considerable amounts of money from a casino without it being down to luck? Well I think that it takes a special type of person and one that is different than most other people. Like Billy Walters for example who won $2 million from a casino in Atlantic City in 1986. It wasn’t the amount that he won that was the issue but how he did it. To find a biased wheel and then exploit that wheel takes an awful amount of determination.

You must really want to beat the casinos badly in a certain way and this is what I mean by special type of person. There are numerous people down the years who have done similar things but in my mind this really separates them from other successful gamblers in other fields. In poker it is really accepted that a good player will make money and there are many people who do so in the modern online game.

In blackjack in years gone by then there were people that made money from that game but even that game wasn’t difficult when compared to games like roulette or even sports betting for that matter. Roulette is a game where the player is supposed to not be ever able to get an edge due to the in built house edge that can never change. This is true to a certain extent but biased wheels change the equation considerably. Let us say that for instance long run analysis showed that a certain number was arriving once every 33 spins instead of once every 37 spins.

This creates actual odds of 32-1 for this event happening but yet you are being paid 35-1 when it does. So if you bet $10 per spin and saw 33 spins an hour then you would make a good hourly rate exploiting this wheel. You would lose $320 on average on the 32 losing spins but win $350 for the winning spin thus making $30/hour.

Blackjack is a game in which you receive two initial cards.  You must stand or hit.  If you hit, you will receive another card.  The goal is to get a total of 21.  If you have a nine and a six, then you hit and get a seven for a total of 22, you bust.  Blackjack is an easy game to understand and master, but there are some tips that you can keep in mind when playing to better your overall chances of winning.

First off, Blackjack has some of the best odds in all casino games.  Of course, the odds will depend on the situation and the casino, but the majority of casinos offer a house edge of up to 1%.

One of the most important things you should know when it comes to blackjack is that you should learn basic strategy.  Basic strategy can help you out more than you could ever imagine if you are knowledgeable about it.  It all has to do with mathematics.

Although you do not have to know how to count cards in order to succeed and win at Blackjack, it does help.  However, you must keep in mind that counting cards is illegal and if you are caught in a casino, there will be consequences.

Many will say don’t play Blackjack at the casinos that require an ante per hand.  This is completely up to you, but it gives the house a higher edge.  The actually ante appears to not be much, such as $0.50, but it adds to the house edge, which isn’t something that you want.

Although it’s okay to use your instincts, don’t count on them.  More often than that, Blackjack players will go on a hunch, win, and think they can do it every single time.  Little do they know, a hunch doesn’t always work in the way that you want it to.  It could end up hurting your bankroll in the long run as well as your self-esteem.

You should split your Aces and eights but hold fours and fives.  It’s part of the basic strategy concept and mathematics. 

Keep checking back for more blackjack tips and strategies and maybe I’ll shed some light on card counting if you are really interested.

There is a special type of buzz when you enter a casino with the intention of taking money from them. Casinos at the end of the day are businesses and any business is concentrating on making money and not on losing it.

But at the end of the day they are providing entertainment. They don’t mind people winning money as long as winning money is all that they are doing. There is of course a world of difference between winning money and earning money. When you are earning money then you have a positive long term expectation.

You are no longer winning money by getting lucky like a normal punter but slowly extracting money from the casino. It is possible that some card counters could be allowed to ply their trade if the casino was gaining in some other way.

For instance I once knew of a gaming manager who allowed a winning small-stakes counter to ply his trade simply because he didn’t want to risk upsetting the big hitting roulette players that he came in with who were his friends.

It is when you know that the casino don’t know what you are doing that creates the biggest buzz. This is something that a lifetime of online poker cannot replicate. This constant cat and mouse game is in itself quite a thrill.

Alas of course, it is very difficult to make blackjack a career. This is why I was playing online poker just a few years later. Just like with online poker where you are struggling to find profitable games, it is often better to play semi-professionally or as a serious amateur than to try and go full-time.

I certainly do recommend though that you try and play blackjack in a live setting because it will be well worth it.

See you soon

Carl
Or alternatively why not come and play blackjack on bwin online casino

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

How do you get the money onto a blackjack table without looking like a card counter? This is the problem that you face as a pro blackjack player. Let us say that you have a $2 table minimum and a $200 table maximum. But due to bankroll limitations, your maximum bet is $100. This is still a bet spread of 50/1 if you deviate between betting $2 and betting $100.

This is called bet spread and will get you caught in any casino for the simple reason being that this is what they look for. So you need to reduce your spread, if you think that this is reducing your profit then you are wrong. Let us say that your could theoretically make £10,000 in a six month period but after that six month period, you were basically prevented from playing   wherever you went as your details were now on some database of undesirables.

Let us also say that had you reduced your spread during that same period, your theoretical earn rate would only have been a mere £4000. During that six month period, it is easy to think that you are maximising your earnings but that is merely an illusion.

It is like a tortoise and the hare type situation where the player who is earning less has the ability to carry on doing so at a rate of £8k a year. Let us say that his playing career lasts for 10 years at the same rate, he has then made £80k compared to the other players £10k and all because he chose a more realistic bet spread.

You need to sacrifice profit, if you try for the maximum possible then you will fail for the simple reason being that you will expose your operation. If you could start betting £5 instead of £2 then that would be a start, straight away you have reduced the spread to 20/1 from 50/1 when you max out with your £100 bet. You could then use a typical gambling doubling up system and make it known to everyone that this is what you are doing. You prepare for the jumps by increasing your bets in neutral counts.

This has the added effect of confusing any member of staff who can card count as you will be increasing your bet when the count isn’t positive but it also allows you to get to your maximum bet faster should the count continue to escalate.

You have to work smarter

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

Yesterday was hard work for me, in fact I was so shattered by the end of the day that I cancelled our usual Friday night casino trip. I was fast asleep by 10pm and snoring like a trooper in my armchair (according to my partner). It was a bad day all round, lost my Internet connection and spent several hours of making phone calls and listening to annoying music first with BT and then with my ISP provider.

I couldn’t even be certain that it wasn’t my router that was the problem and went out and purchased a new router out of desperation. I had work to do and business meetings to attend and still had no connection last night and had to use a colleagues business computer to send several important emails. Anyway, got up this morning and all is fine as it was a fault with my broadband which was fixed at their end late last night.

Anyway I promised to teach you basic strategy this weekend. Well the bad news is that I cannot teach you perfect basic strategy because there is no such thing. Much depends on where you are playing and what the rules are. Because I don’t know where you are playing then I will be forced to give you a generic basic strategy that will do about 99% of the job.

In fact on second thoughts I may have to fragment this over several posts as it may be longer to put down than I first imagined. So I will start off with hard totals first.

18……..always stand
17……..always stand
16……..stand if dealer has 2-6 otherwise hit
15……..same as above
14……..same as above
13……..same as above
12……..only stand if dealer has 4,5 or 6 and hit against all other totals

Obviously if your total is 11 or less then you take a card because you can only improve your position by hitting. Don’t try doing stupid things like standing on 7 because you “think” that two picture cards are due and the dealer has a 5 showing. This is ludicrous and will cost you money in the long term irrespective of how successful you may be on any one individual hand…..ditto with hands that are 17 or higher.

So the next stage is to learn this data first and then I will provide you with the rest of it in the coming posts.

see you soon

Carl “The Dean” Sampson