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  • Andrew C
    Andrew C said:
    (Posted to: Top Ten Blackjack Basic Strategy Mistakes)

    Hi Ken,
    The Casino (ENHC) that I visit has a good rule – if the player splits or doubles & the dealer gets Blackjack, the player only loses the 1st bet, so this will change the Basic Strategy a little. I’m guessing that in this case I should double a hard 10 against dealers 10, but not sure about splitting Aces against a dealers Ace? Oh, I should also mention that you can only split to two hands.
    Thanks.

  • Abiagil
    Abiagil said:
    (Posted to: Online Blackjack Strategy Trainer)

    Question about black jack what if the dealer sees the player has over 21 which was the case in my situation and I had 15 and I hit and got an ace and i stayed. Is it the same???

  • KewlJ
    KewlJ said:
    (Posted to: 4,000 Miles in Search of an Advantage — Part One)

    I enjoyed your first article and look forward to reading more. I do have a couple thoughts.

    1.) Curling up for the night, in the back seat in a Walmart parking lot, is just a bit too “thrifty” for my tastes. As card counter type AP’s carrying at least partial bankroll on us, I would re-evaluate the risk vs reward ratio on that one.

    2.) Seems you identified that you were close to the tipping point, as you left the casino one night, yet then returned the next morning, to “press your luck”, which apparently didn’t go well. Since this “pressing your luck at a place you already knew you were unlikely to get much more action resulted in flyering, and loss of other nearby casinos, it would seem to me this was NOT a +EV move. You lost several nearby casinos for no real reason.

    • J. G. Araby
      J. G. Araby replied:
      (Posted to: 4,000 Miles in Search of an Advantage — Part One)

      Hi KewlJ, thanks for the input. Valid points—here’s my thoughts:

      1) I can agree on some points, but I do take a few precautions, which I can probably also add to the article. The primary being that I would only have such a sleeping arrangement in a very safe area. I thoroughly research before spending the night. To be honest, I’ve felt safer under the lights/cameras of Wal-Mart about 30 mins outside a large city than I have at decently priced hotels in many big cities (think Chicago or Baltimore).

      You would be surprised at the number of travelers you see sleeping out at those places, but I agree it is certainly not for everyone, and I wouldn’t do it after a big win where I may have been noticed.

      2) Without giving away the area, I can say this casino was pretty much the most tolerant/best game, and this was planned to be my last day there—so I did give up a bit of EV as I could have likely made on hit-and-runs through a couple other casinos on my way out, but opted to play there and hope the heat hadn’t transferred shifts. Good point and good lesson for readers. If you want to avoid back-offs, the signs are often there. If this was local or a place I would hit again in the next few months, I would have approached it differently.

  • Zachary Young
    Zachary Young said:
    (Posted to: Should You Take Partial Insurance?)

    I respectfully disagree with Zippy and Bear. Insurance is not simply an unrelated side bet it is instead a wager that is attached to our main bet. If it was simply our goal to maximize expectation then we would wager say 1/6th of our bankroll at a modest edge in order to do so. This would of course be suicide. While EV is an important component of decision making it is not the be all and end all of blackjack decisions. Reducing variance is also an important goal especially because if we reduce variance we can bet more and then generate more EV. I do think there is a role for partial insurance. However contra the author of this blog post I do not believe we should not be partially insuring stiffs. In fact we should not insure stiffs at all below the index and doing so actually increases our variance as we run the risk of losing the insurance wager and losing the hand.

  • something
    something said:
    (Posted to: 6 to 5 Blackjack? Just Say No!)

    But isn’t it worth it if you’re counting cards? If it means playing in a one deck game doesn’t that mean that you will recoup the difference and then some? It depends on the cut card’s location and the number of others at the table, and the min bet and max bet of course, but I was just at a casino that had a min bet of 10 and max of 200 on a game like that. I didn’t play that because I wasn’t prepared for it and I thought even if I pulled it off, it was a quick way to get das booten out of the place, to either bet 10 or 200 every hand, the 2 deck game looked more appealing.

  • DS
    DS said:
    (Posted to: Lesson 6 - Card Counting - Single-deck Play)

    El Cortez in Las Vegas is similar, good rules on single deck, though dealer hits S17. 3:2 BJ, double anything, split any pair. Haven’t checked surrender though.

    Royal Match pays 3:1 on same suite hole, and KQ on suite pays 10x! I’ve found it easier to count suites than cards.

  • Martin Morris
    Martin Morris said:
    (Posted to: Start Here - Get Blackjack Smart!)

    Yes read Winning Black Jack for the Noncounterby Avery Cardoza and Play Blackjack like the pro’s by kevin black. When you hit your 12 vs 2 and 3, your chances of busting low. Hit your soft 17 all the time.Soft 18 facing 3-6 DD or Stand. 2,7 8 stand. Hit 9 or above because more 10’s in deck. You assume the deal will draw a 10 that will beat your Soft 18.