Gambling With An Edge

Blackjack Tournaments

The best resource for table game tournament information is BlackjackTournaments.com.  The site hosts a searchable listing of upcoming events, along with a community of very talented players discussing the game.

My e-Books on blackjack tournament strategy

How to Win More Blackjack Tournaments

Volume I in my pair of books includes material useful for a wide range of tournament expertise, from beginner to experienced.

The book is in PDF format and will be immediately delivered by email.

Buy the book at my publisher’s website: Buy Volume I here.

Volume II includes more tournament advice, again appropriate for all skill levels.

Of particular value are the discussions of tournaments that use an accumulation format.

It is available in PDF format, immediately delivered by email.

Buy the book at my publisher’s website: Buy Volume II here, or get a bundle of both books at a special price.

You can get it at Amazon.

Strategy Cards

My Advanced Strategy Cards for Blackjack include card counting index numbers for the popular Hi-Lo system in addition to the usual basic strategy.  The twelve card set included all the index numbers from -5 to +5.  See the details page for more information.

If you just want an accurate strategy chart for free, see my Blackjack Basic Strategy Engine.

Online Gambling in New Jersey and Delaware

If you live in New Jersey or Delaware, these new sites of mine will be of interest.

• New-Jersey-Online-Casinos.com
• Delaware-Online-Casinos.com

One Easy Change to Improve Your Casino Results

In today’s casino environment, knowing the best strategy for the games is only part of the puzzle.  For both machine players and table game players, coupons and marketing mail can offer a substantial boost to your bottom line.  To maximize your marketing mail, you need to understand how the casino marketing system works.

Even experienced players often assume that the value of your marketing mail is based on the total amount of your play.  That is almost never true.  Most casinos use some form of the “average daily theoretical” or “ADT” to decide how valuable you are as a player.  “Theoretical loss” or “theo” is how much the casino expects to win from you based on which games you play, how much you bet, and how long you play.  This is probably familiar to you.  The critical part that many players don’t understand is how that value is averaged across all the days that you visit.

Imagine a player who visits a casino on just one day in a month, and plays enough to generate a theoretical loss of $1000.  Then consider another player who visits the same casino on 10 different days in that month, and generates a total theoretical of $4000.  You might think that the second player would get better mail offers, because he has the potential to lose four times as much in a month.  But the first player will get more generous free play or match play offers, because his ADT is $1000 compared to the second player’s $400 ADT.

The casino’s marketing mail is based on the idea of “How much might this patron lose on the day we attract him back in with a coupon offer?”  If you spread your play out over several different days, you are going to get smaller offers than someone whose action is concentrated on fewer days.

Misunderstanding this concept leads to a variety of mistakes.  Here is a common one… If you visit a casino on an overnight stay, you may be tempted to get up and put in a little extra play before you checkout of the hotel.  But what that abbreviated play is actually doing is dividing your theoretical by two, since you now have two play days.

The simple advice that can improve your marketing mail is this…  Don’t play on checkout day, unless you plan to put in a full day’s worth of play.  In fact, try not to ever have rated play on any day where you don’t plan to play much.  The free play and match play offers you get should be noticeably higher after a few months of managing your daily average better.