Learning the Game of Blackjack
Many people choose the game of blackjack because they think that it has the best overall odds inside a casino, and this can sometimes be true if you actually know what you’re doing. The house has a mere 1.4% edge if the player interprets each hand perfectly; that very rarely happens though. Even professionals will occasionally split eights or double on eleven when the dealer shows a ten; they are stupid bets but on occasion they do happen. The pros have a reason for this type of play though; they know it is a weak deck where tens are not prevalent.
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It absolutely kills us when we walk inside a casino and see novice blackjack players that do not follow any type of strategy. Those 1.4% house odds can quickly shift to 5-10% in mere minutes with a couple of dumb bets and it can get a whole lot higher if you do not take advantage of favorable hands. Even though the game of blackjack is simple, there’s a whole lot of counting going on if you plan of winning consistently at places like Rushmore Online. Here are the four main things to remember-
Be Consistent
Find a solid play chart for the type of blackjack you are playing; if differs with each rule variation and it can change quite a bit in some cases. For example, in Spanish 21 there will be a lot of times you will double when you’d merely hit at other tables, plus the rules for splitting change dramatically. Other blackjack games will allow you to surrender and this takes a little extra knowledge as well.
Bet Aggressively
The largest single mistake new blackjack players make is not with the cards themselves; it’s their betting strategy. We’ve seen thousands of players sitting back content at $5 per hand, even when the deck is screaming to up the ante and clean out the house. If you’re losing then its fine to stick close to the table minimums but once you start winning, bet as if you’ve been in this situation before and know how to handle it.
Set Limits
Along those same lines, all gamblers (in any casino game) should always come up with a quitting point. It is very easy to win ten hands in a row and make the false assumption that you’ll win the next ten as well; gambling simply does not work that way and the house always wins in the long run. The only way to beat the dealer is to walk away after a short burst of good fortune.
Count Cards
Maybe you’re not ready to take a place on the MIT blackjack team’s roster quite yet, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t learn some basic card counting techniques to strengthen your game. The plus/minus system, for example, is a great way to keep up with the probabilities of the next card being high or low, and sometimes the deck can heavily favor one side or the other. Since you can make money on it either way; it makes sense for you to practice.