Blackjack has always offered a great value in the casino for anyone willing to learn basic strategy. Without card counting, a player that uses an accurate basic strategy at the table can play games at most casinos with substantially under half a percent house edge. Even the worst rules and conditions rarely exceed a house edge of 0.8%.
If you are a recreational player, you can consistently overcome that small edge with the value you receive from comps of free rooms and food. Why is it possible to get back more in comp value than your actual expected loss?
The reason is simple… Most players do not play accurate basic strategy. They play the game badly. As a result, the typical player loses substantially more than a fraction of a percent of their action, and the comps given to blackjack players reflect this higher theoretical loss.
Of course casinos know that basic strategy players lose a lot less than the average player, and they supposedly have a way of dealing with this problem. But, fortunately, their solution just doesn’t work…
When you sit down at a table and hand over your player card, the pit personnel will write down the length of time you play, and the size of your average bet. What you may not know is that most casinos also have a notation for how strong a player you are. Generally the rating cards will have spots to mark your ability as “Superior”, “Average”, or “Poor”. If you are a solid basic strategy player, and the pit is doing their job, they should be marking you as “Superior”, meaning that your play has very low expected losses. This would negatively impact the comps that will be extended to you, because your theoretical loss will be very small. This system is intended to keep basic strategy players from getting more back in comps than they will lose at blackjack.
So, why is a basic strategy player still able to beat the system at virtually all casinos? Pit bosses mark almost every player as Average in skill. During a session at the recent G2E gaming conference, the moderator quoted a study that was done of 2 million player ratings. Of all those rating cards, only six were marked as “Poor” players. That’s easy enough to understand, because if a player were ever to accidentally learn that they were rated as a poor player, they would likely be offended. And poor players are the bread and butter of the casino. What’s more surprising is that of those same 2 million ratings, only a handful were rated as Superior. More than 99.9% of the ratings were “Average”.
So how do you exploit this casino loophole?
- Play accurate basic strategy. (If you aren’t sure of the exact strategy for your game, see our Strategy Engine).
- Inflate your rating by timing your bigger bets to be on the table while the floor person is watching.
- When you leave the table, ask about your average bet rating. When confronted, the floorperson will often fudge on the side of higher bets.
- Most importantly, make sure you get all the comps you have earned. Ask!
I still have a couple of topics that came from the gaming conference, including the comments on RFID chips that I said would be in this post. That’s coming next.
If you are a Twitter user, you can stay up-to-date on all my posts by following me @BJInfoPosts.
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Hello, I have been studying card counting and basic strategy for 6 months. I have read the books that are recommended and practiced every day for about an hour or so. After recently reading a few posts online,pros have been saying that card counting is no longer what it used to be and that it’s nearly impossible to maintain a healthy living off of the game let alone making it worth your time playing. Is this all true? Should I even continue thinking of card counting as a part time job on the weekends to make some money?
It is certainly true that game conditions are not as good as they were ten years ago, but there is another factor that I think offsets that negative. Table games are spreading to new jurisdictions at a faster pace than I have ever seen.
For players who are willing to travel, there are so many new venues to play that I think this is something of a golden age for the game. If you get away from the well-worn games in Vegas, there are tons of fantastic opportunities at small properties all over the country. If your target bet size is anything up to a low spread in black chips, there are lots of places to get a decent game.
For a weekend warrior, this may not be much help. If your local games deteriorate, you may not have the flexibility to travel far afield in search of better conditions. But before you give up on the profitability of the casinos nearest you, make sure you look with an open mind at all the opportunities there. Look at other games, and look at promotions.
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