Estimating the Dealer's Hole Card

is there a way of guesstimating what tha dealers hole card is, very well knowing tha tc ya know. ????

if you have a high positive TC....i would guesstimate that its a 10...and vice versa ....makes sense huh :laugh: If we could guesstimate accurately, BJ would not exist because we would all be millionaires.

That's what cardcounting is. Forming a probability as to the next card based on knowledge of the composition of remaining decks. If I guess it will be a ten card off the top of the shoe I will be right 4 times in 13. If I guess it will be ten with a True Count of +3, I will be right a little better than one time in 3.
BW

Dealers hole card

When you are sitting at 1st base and if the casino is using one of those checking devices with the red / green lights to check for blackjack, if the dealer is jamming his cards into the reader when he has a ten up and check for an ace under, he can bend the tens. From 1st base you will start to see the ten value cards (when they are the dealers down card) take on an upward curl on the corner. Seeing the slight upward curl on the dealers down card comes in handy when he has an ace on top and asks for insurance, etc.
You wouldn't see it at every table but when you do, take advantage of it.

There are better ways of using this information that just hole carding. You will sometimes be able to read the dealers next card by looking for a damaged corner and if you are sitting at first base, you can use the damaged corners as a target for where to cut to land a 10 card in your hand. Very useful indeed.

RJT.

Seems to me I read about an AP who cut the cards based on that little curl from a hard to read checking device. He wom nearly a million$ befoe they figured out what he was doing. Yes, come to think of it, I read about it in AP for the Casino Executive by Bill Zender. I never thought of the application you just mentioned, however.

Except that ALL cards get checked in that device, whether they're 10s, Aces, or anything else.

Yes but the corners of the 10 and A cards get bent a different direction to the cards in the hole.

RJT.

I don't follow you. When the dealer has a 10 showing, he will place the hole card vertically into the device. When he has an Ace showing, he will place the hole card horizontally into the device. And obviously, the hole card can be anything. Let me know if I'm missing something.

the up card being a 10/A will get bent in a place opposite of the down card, so when you flip it back down, the 10/A has 2 bends. This isnt new or unknown to the house, they chuck old decks of cards every 4 hours approx.

I guess that makes sense but where I play (A.C.) and when I dealt, only the hole cards gets checked, not both cards together.

So the hole card is checked and THEN placed beneath the up card?

Yes. And when I went to dealer school, I was specifically told to do it this way.