Books! Blackjack Books! Lost in Space? 
Million Dollar Blackjack
Publisher's Foreword
"When Ken Uston Came to my office in 1978 with request that I publish his book, my initial reaction was - does the world really need another blackjack book?"
Does the world really need another blackjack book?
Publisher Stanley Roberts said that 27 years ago
You can only imagine what situation is like with books almost three decades later. Horrible!
Book selection is extremely important because that's how you get your first real blackjack education! If anybody tries to sell you a book in which they describe how to beat Baccarat, Slots, or any other casino game rather than BJ is lying to you.
Also not all of the blackjack books are good. What's more bad ones will make you lose all of your money.
These days anybody can write book about blackjack. I've been thinking for a long time to do the same thing.
Well anyway to make this simple I'll give you the list of good books:
- Basic Blackjack
- Blackjack Bluebook
- The World’s Greatest Blackjack Book
- The Theory of Blackjack
- Professional Blackjack
- Blackjack for Blood
- Blackjack Attack: Playing the Pros’ way
- Blackbelt in Blackjack
- Blackjack Ace Prediction
- Play Blackjack like Pros
- Knock – Out Blackjack
- Play Blackjack as a Business
- Million Dollar Blackjack
- Blackjack Secrets
- Beat the Dealer
- Blackjack Autumn
- The Blackjack Zone
- Burning the tables on Las Vegas
- Card Counting for the Casino Executive
- Casino Tournament Strategy
- The Counter
- You’ve got Heat
probably I missed few other good books but this is pretty much complete list of good books anything else is not even worth mentioning. Even in couple of these books authors are not completely honest to their readers and put material that is not realistic and not well explained, creating overall effect that blackjack is still easily beatable, which helps them sell the book. Maybe one or two books. So you shouldn't be worried!
Still I would like to pint point examples of completely bad book black bookshelf and half half books gray bookshelf.
Perfect example of horrible book is
"Powerful Profits Blackjack" by Victor H. Royer
There is no words to describe how bad this book is. It literally makes you cry :cry:
Perfect example is the author's complete lack of math knowledge.... perfectly demonstrated on page 18.
"To make your required $166.67 per day, from your 2 percent edge against that grate game you found, you will need a daily bankroll of about $8,300. This is your daily bankroll. You will need a tootal bankroll of 41,500 for each week. This means you must carry a bankroll of $166,000 for each month! If you look at this annually, for the whole year, to guarantee yourself a "win" of $40,000 you will have to have bankroll of $1,992,000."
Experienced players will realize that this math is incorrect!
To make $166.67 every day you have to have betting action of $8,300 not a daily bankroll of $8,300. Betting action is money wagered over period of time. To explain this better you can have baetting action of $100 000 with as low as bankroll$2 ( bet dollar, win, bet dollar lose, bet dollar win, and lose again, and so on). Yes this is a little bit exagerated just to picture better what is bankroll and what is betting action. Everything else number wise that was written in that paragraph is incorrect too.
There is lot more things that are just ridiculous, and I am not going to waste my time on them ( splitting 5s is just one of them)
Not to mention that he wrote the book "Powerful profits Slots" :cry:
Example of Grey Bookshelf is
"Blackjack Winner's Handbook" by Jerry L. Patterson
Good things about that Book are
Chapter 2 about game rules Very well explained.
Chapter 9 about Shuffle Tracking (very nice intro )
Rest of the book ................
Anyway most of the people that write books these days can't even come close to casino. They do not care any more about card counting because they can't play anyway in any casino in USA. They make everything so simple and easy, you buy book thinking you are going to learn something and become a winner. 99.9 % of time you become loser reading those books. Card Counting is not easy like they want you to think, it is not profitable like it used to be. Yes profitable card counting is possible, but do not expect to make millions like Ken Uston, not because you can not master it, but because things change, and casinos made it lot harder to beat bj.
General rule for good book is : If material is hard with a lot of math, than that is a good book.
Learning just to count without knowing why it works (studying by heart without any understanding), or without knowing math behind it, will cost you a lot of money. It is simple math nothing hard and if you are willing to study and spend some time on it, you will most definitely make some money playing BJ.
Good Luck!
Million Dollar Blackjack
Publisher's Foreword
"When Ken Uston Came to my office in 1978 with request that I publish his book, my initial reaction was - does the world really need another blackjack book?"
Does the world really need another blackjack book?
Publisher Stanley Roberts said that 27 years ago
You can only imagine what situation is like with books almost three decades later. Horrible!
Book selection is extremely important because that's how you get your first real blackjack education! If anybody tries to sell you a book in which they describe how to beat Baccarat, Slots, or any other casino game rather than BJ is lying to you.
Also not all of the blackjack books are good. What's more bad ones will make you lose all of your money.
These days anybody can write book about blackjack. I've been thinking for a long time to do the same thing.
Well anyway to make this simple I'll give you the list of good books:
- Basic Blackjack
- Blackjack Bluebook
- The World’s Greatest Blackjack Book
- The Theory of Blackjack
- Professional Blackjack
- Blackjack for Blood
- Blackjack Attack: Playing the Pros’ way
- Blackbelt in Blackjack
- Blackjack Ace Prediction
- Play Blackjack like Pros
- Knock – Out Blackjack
- Play Blackjack as a Business
- Million Dollar Blackjack
- Blackjack Secrets
- Beat the Dealer
- Blackjack Autumn
- The Blackjack Zone
- Burning the tables on Las Vegas
- Card Counting for the Casino Executive
- Casino Tournament Strategy
- The Counter
- You’ve got Heat
probably I missed few other good books but this is pretty much complete list of good books anything else is not even worth mentioning. Even in couple of these books authors are not completely honest to their readers and put material that is not realistic and not well explained, creating overall effect that blackjack is still easily beatable, which helps them sell the book. Maybe one or two books. So you shouldn't be worried!
Still I would like to pint point examples of completely bad book black bookshelf and half half books gray bookshelf.
Perfect example of horrible book is
"Powerful Profits Blackjack" by Victor H. Royer
There is no words to describe how bad this book is. It literally makes you cry :cry:
Perfect example is the author's complete lack of math knowledge.... perfectly demonstrated on page 18.
"To make your required $166.67 per day, from your 2 percent edge against that grate game you found, you will need a daily bankroll of about $8,300. This is your daily bankroll. You will need a tootal bankroll of 41,500 for each week. This means you must carry a bankroll of $166,000 for each month! If you look at this annually, for the whole year, to guarantee yourself a "win" of $40,000 you will have to have bankroll of $1,992,000."
Experienced players will realize that this math is incorrect!
To make $166.67 every day you have to have betting action of $8,300 not a daily bankroll of $8,300. Betting action is money wagered over period of time. To explain this better you can have baetting action of $100 000 with as low as bankroll$2 ( bet dollar, win, bet dollar lose, bet dollar win, and lose again, and so on). Yes this is a little bit exagerated just to picture better what is bankroll and what is betting action. Everything else number wise that was written in that paragraph is incorrect too.
There is lot more things that are just ridiculous, and I am not going to waste my time on them ( splitting 5s is just one of them)
Not to mention that he wrote the book "Powerful profits Slots" :cry:
Example of Grey Bookshelf is
"Blackjack Winner's Handbook" by Jerry L. Patterson
Good things about that Book are
Chapter 2 about game rules Very well explained.
Chapter 9 about Shuffle Tracking (very nice intro )
Rest of the book ................
Anyway most of the people that write books these days can't even come close to casino. They do not care any more about card counting because they can't play anyway in any casino in USA. They make everything so simple and easy, you buy book thinking you are going to learn something and become a winner. 99.9 % of time you become loser reading those books. Card Counting is not easy like they want you to think, it is not profitable like it used to be. Yes profitable card counting is possible, but do not expect to make millions like Ken Uston, not because you can not master it, but because things change, and casinos made it lot harder to beat bj.
General rule for good book is : If material is hard with a lot of math, than that is a good book.
Learning just to count without knowing why it works (studying by heart without any understanding), or without knowing math behind it, will cost you a lot of money. It is simple math nothing hard and if you are willing to study and spend some time on it, you will most definitely make some money playing BJ.
Good Luck!