More Bang for Your Blackjack Bucks

By Henry Tamburin

If you are a recreational blackjack player, I’ve got a few tips to help you win more, or at the minimum,

Increase your play time.

Be Selective

Not all blackjack games are created equal. So, don’t just sit down at the first uncrowded blackjack table that you come across. You should first scout the tables and be sure the blackjack game that you want to play has fair rules. For example, stay away from any game where a player blackjack gets paid at 6 to 5 payoff odds (or worse, even money). You want to play on a table where blackjacks pay 3 to 2. Usually the payout for a blackjack will be written on the layout or on signage on the table. If you not sure what it is, just ask the dealer before you get in to the game.

As a generally guideline, casinos that offer the less favorable 6 to 5 blackjack games will do so on single deck games (although a few casinos have implemented 6 to 5 on double deck games so be careful). On double deck and especially 6-deck games, you are better off with these playing rules: the dealer must stand on all 17s including soft 17 (known as an s17 game, as opposed to a hit 17 game where the dealer must hit soft 17), you can double down on any two cards (known as doa), and you can also double down after splitting a pair (known as das). Being able to surrender a poor hand is also a player favorable rule (but many casinos do not offer this rule). So be selective where you play and above all, avoid those 6-5 games.

Number of Decks

The house edge in blackjack increases as the number of decks increases. So a single deck game is better than a double deck game which is better than a six deck game and so forth. But be careful. As mentioned above, many casinos have put single deck games in their casino (which is good) but only pay 6 to 5 on a blackjack (which is very, very bad). In general their aren’t many fair single deck blackjack games (paying 3 to 2) available in most gaming jurisdictions so you’ll often be faced with playing a double deck game, or one that uses 4, 6 or 8 decks of cards.

In most casinos, minimum betting limits on double deck games are usually higher than six- or eight-deck games. However, there are some casinos that offer low limit double deck games especially during the week days. If you locate a double deck game within your betting limit, the ones with the best rules are s17, doa, and das. However, most likely you will find h17, doa and das which are OK for a double deck game. What you want to avoid is a doubled deck game where you can’t doa or das.

With six (or eight) deck games, you should shoot for an s17, doa, das game at the minimum. These games are readily available in most gaming jurisdictions but again be careful. Many casinos offer these shoe dealt games with h17, while other nearby tables have s17. Check the rules on the layout or ask the dealer whether the game is s17 or h17, and given a choice, stick to the s17 game.

Know Your Playing Strategy

If you want to play longer and win more, you shouldn’t use intuition to play your hands. Especially when the mathematically correct playing strategy is readily available in blackjack books and on the Internet. If you don’t want to bother memorizing the entire basic playing strategy, then purchase an inexpensive basic strategy card and bring it to the table when you play. These strategy cards are perfectly legal and when you use them, you will never make a playing mistake (the strategy cards are very easy to use). I recommend the Ultimate Blackjack Strategy Cards (check them out on my site at www.smartgaming.com).

Play Slowly

Even under the best playing conditions and using the basic playing strategy, the casino will still have the edge over you (although the edge will be small, around a third to a half of a percent). This means that in the long run, you will lose more money than you win. You can however, decrease your losses by playing slowly. How do you do this? For starters, it’s best to play at a full table of players rather than playing heads-up (alone) against the dealer. The more players there are, the less hands you will be dealt per hour, and the lower will be your expected hourly loss because you reduce your exposure to that tiny house edge. (As a general guideline, you’ll get about 60-80 hands dealt per hour at a full table, whereas playing heads-up, you’ll be playing 150 - 200 hands per hour, which is a big difference.)

Secondly, don’t play blackjack on any table (regardless of how good the rules may be) if a Continuous Shuffling Machine (CSM) is used to randomly shuffle the cards. A CSM usually contains 4-5 decks of cards and after the dealer completes a round, all the discards are returned back into the CSM where they are randomly mixed with the unplayed cards. By using a CSM, the casino can deal about 20% more hands per hour than a game where the dealer manually shuffles the cards, or uses an traditional automatic shuffler (the latter are OK, it’s just the CSM that should be avoided). Just watch a game and see if the discards are placed in a discard tray after each round (that’s what you want).

Get Rated

This has nothing to do about playing strategy but rather about taking advantage of the casino comps to reduce, and sometimes eliminate, the house edge. First, get yourself a Player’s Card (they are free) and give it to the dealer before you play. The table supervisor will track how much you bet and how long you play. This information will determine how much comps the casino will give you for your play. Remember you must ask the floor supervisor for a comp after you are done playing. The comp could be a free buffet, a free room, a free show ticket, and so on. These comps will reduce your overall cost of gambling.

Use a Simple Card Counting System

Card counting systems use to be complicated and require many months to master. Nowadays there are much simpler counting systems that recreational players can learn in less than an hour and give them the edge over the casino. These simple counting systems are available in blackjack books and include: Speed Count (Golden Touch Blackjack Revolution by Frank Scoblete), the Ace/10 and also the K.I.S.S. (Blackjack Bluebook by Fred Renzey), and the Rookie K-O (Knock-Out Blackjack by Olaf Vencura and Ken Fuchs).

Here’s one more tip to consider. Play in a mini-blackjack tournament where you aren’t playing against the house but rather against other players. Many casinos offer weekly tournaments that are 100% equity meaning the casino returns all the entry fees in prizes and you limit your losses to the amount of the entry fee, which is often $25 or less (plus you could win $500 to a $1,000 or more). But before you sign-up to play in a blackjack tournament, I highly recommend you read tournament pro Ken Smith’s new e-book, How To Win More Blackjack Tournaments (www.BJInsider.com/Win), to get the inside scoop on how to get the edge over your opponents in blackjack tournaments.

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Henry Tamburin is the author of the best-selling book, Blackjack: Take The Money and Run,

editor of the Blackjack Insider e-Newsletter, and Lead Instructor for the Golden Touch Blackjack

course. For a free 3-month subscription to his blackjack newsletter with full membership privileges,

visit www.bjinsider.com/free. For details on the Golden Touch Blackjack course visit

www.goldentouchblackjack.com or call 866/WIN-BJ21. For a free copy of his casino gambling

catalog featuring over 50 products call 888/353-3234 or visit the Internet store at www.smartgaming.com.