Why is Blackjack still Beatable?

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darrislance

Well-Known Member
I was just sitting around thinking the other day and pondered on the idea of blackjack being beatable. Why is this? I know casinos like the public to know that the game is beatable, but on the other hand I see other casino games that are not beatable and the tables are still packed.

Is it because of competition of other casinos? But it seems to me that if a player is smart enough recognize whether a bj game is good or not then he would not be that valuable to the casino anyway, because he more than likely knows at minimum basic strategy. I go to some casinos that have far inferior games yet there is not an available seat in the house.

To sum up my digression: If so many games in the casino are unbeatable over the longrun yet they still produce a profit for the house, then why allow blackjack to be any different? Just Curious.
 
Don't Kill the Golden Goose

If the casinos make a lot of money at blackjack, which they do. Then why would they endanger it?

Also, competition between casinos is a factor.

Many players who while not APs still know the difference between good and bad games. They don't mind gambling but don't like just handing over their money.

The casinos that offer the better games make more money.
 
so few people actually beat the game, that it cost them more money from the side effects of making the game NOT beatable, that it isnt worth it, and they are financially bette off allowing the very few skilled players to just go ahead and take a small amoutn of their profits.

Card counters only make decent hourly return rates most fo the time, a lot of them just coutn for the fun of it, it cost the casino serious dollars per hour when it decides to reduce penetration to 50% for all games, as does it if they limit the max bet for all player, or employ the no midshoe entry rule.

Csms are not popular to non APs either, and they lose money when they use them, also they have to pay lots of money to use them.
 
All the comments make sense, but also how often do you see a couple of ploppys sit at a table after they have been playing slots and lose another $100?

They may figure that it also brings people to the casino to play while friends and spouses play the slots ... often they spend in the restaurants and bars too.

Along those lines, I went to the local joint 2x over the holiday because my brother was in town and he wanted to play poker. He did that, I played BJ and my wife played the slots. My brother had a good night so bought us all a steak dinner .. more $$ made by the casino.
 
blackjack avenger said:
If the casinos make a lot of money at blackjack, which they do. Then why would they endanger it?

Also, competition between casinos is a factor.

Many players who while not APs still know the difference between good and bad games. They don't mind gambling but don't like just handing over their money.

The casinos that offer the better games make more money.
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If this were true, then why not make every game slightly beatable?

I constantly see games that have a high house advantage, but they still draw crowds of people, which is not logical, but they do. It seems unbeatable blackjack would do the same. I personally think the casinos are making a push toward this, because it seems that it is getting more and more difficult to find the good games. Casinos are greedy, they want all they can get.

From my personal experience it is not the games but the ammenities that bring people to certain venues. Time and time again when I visit my local casinos the masses gravitate toward the nicer resorts, which oddly enough have the worst games. I did read recently that of all the people that visit Vegas, fewer and fewer actually go to gamble.
 
In my experience darrislance:

Most people in casinos are idiots. The difference between many people is they look at the possibility of winning big, where people like us look at the probability of winning.

People attract to games like Three Card Poker, a game where you lose something like over 70% of the time (on a hand by hand basis), but they play for that big payout of 40-1 on their $5 dollar bet. Because that is exciting to them.

Another addition to why Blackjack is still around and in some places, in good form, is due largely to it being one of the most popular games and one of the oldest casino games. Probably more so then any other game in the casino (negating poker), the player has 'control' over their decisions and how their hand is played out.

And just like what others stated in this thread. Most blackjack players (at least regular players) know when the house changes rules to hurt them. Just like how people use to think that BJ would go to all CSM, however, the ploppies complained and many places who started with them are back to shoe games.

Also, the fact that blackjack is beatable attracts many one hit blunders who look up a website or read a few pages of some sort of count system, pull out a deck count down a few times, then go to a casino lose more then they normally would, come home say they ran into bad luck go back and do it again and just keep losing more. Most have no idea the amount of time you need to spend to actually succeed in this business.
 
MartyAce said:
In my experience darrislance:

Most people in casinos are idiots. The difference between many people is they look at the possibility of winning big, where people like us look at the probability of winning.

People attract to games like Three Card Poker, a game where you lose something like over 70% of the time (on a hand by hand basis), but they play for that big payout of 40-1 on their $5 dollar bet. Because that is exciting to them.

Another addition to why Blackjack is still around and in some places, in good form, is due largely to it being one of the most popular games and one of the oldest casino games. Probably more so then any other game in the casino (negating poker), the player has 'control' over their decisions and how their hand is played out.

And just like what others stated in this thread. Most blackjack players (at least regular players) know when the house changes rules to hurt them. Just like how people use to think that BJ would go to all CSM, however, the ploppies complained and many places who started with them are back to shoe games.

Also, the fact that blackjack is beatable attracts many one hit blunders who look up a website or read a few pages of some sort of count system, pull out a deck count down a few times, then go to a casino lose more then they normally would, come home say they ran into bad luck go back and do it again and just keep losing more. Most have no idea the amount of time you need to spend to actually succeed in this business.
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I've never understood the people who get pissed at me for not betting the 7% house edge "pairplus" in three card poker. Why don't they go play video poker?
 
There are only a few hundred actual professional BJ players in the U S A.

The casinos offer a game called BJ, that was popularized after the 1962 publication of "Beat the Dealer".

Prior to that, Craps and Baccarat were the big games in casinos and "21" was considered a sucker's game that the crapshooter's wives played when they were tired of slot machines.

Books like that and (misleading) movies like "21" keep the myth, (that the public can beat the game), alive.

The truth is that only a tiny insignificant portion of people can and will do that, though hundreds of thousand will try and fail.
 
moo321 said:
I've never understood the people who get pissed at me for not betting the 7% house edge "pairplus" in three card poker. Why don't they go play video poker?
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Holy Chihuahua. What paytables are your Pair-Plus bets? I saw one in Reno that was over 10%!

But I understand - my wife won't let me not play the pair-plus bet if I play 3-card with her.

Don't care if I piss off the whole world but, you know, can't piss off the boss and risk the "withholding tax" If you catch my meaning grin:
 
Why blackjack can be beatable

darrislance said:
If this were true, then why not make every game slightly beatable?

I constantly see games that have a high house advantage, but they still draw crowds of people, which is not logical, but they do. It seems unbeatable blackjack would do the same. I personally think the casinos are making a push toward this, because it seems that it is getting more and more difficult to find the good games. Casinos are greedy, they want all they can get.

From my personal experience it is not the games but the ammenities that bring people to certain venues. Time and time again when I visit my local casinos the masses gravitate toward the nicer resorts, which oddly enough have the worst games. I did read recently that of all the people that visit Vegas, fewer and fewer actually go to gamble.
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Blackjack, in a similar way to Video Poker, is a game of decisions and can be offered with a small house edge because of the education necessary to make proper decisions is not gained by the vast majority of players. Nearly all the blackjack games that I play have house edges of .19-slightly higher than half a percent, yet the casinos are making about 3% on these games. In nearly 500 hours of blackjack play last year I doubt I ran into 5 people who played basic strategy perfectly. Though I avoid crowded tables you are probably talking about thousands of players and only a handful really knew basic strategy, much less counted! To add to this, I do all my playing on tables with $25-$100 minimums, which means that the amount of money in your wallet has nothing at all to do with how much you know about blackjack.

So, you feel that the casinos can increase profits by making the current rules even worse than they are at blackjack and people will still play because at games with bad rules the tables are already crowded.

This has continually been tried by casinos and one of two results always happen.
1. The bad game is somewhat popular but the amount of money bet on it is much lower than the amount of money on a similar blackjack table. Examples would be 3CP, CSM blackjack, or 6/5 blackjack.
2. The game just starts to disappear Carribean Stud or Mindplay21.

In reality there are not enough cardcounters out there to make a difference as to game popularity and if all the players were counters there would be no game. The difference is made by so many of those very bad players, who play decent size money, play it very badly but still see both real and imaginary reasons to avoid many bad games. A good example is someone I sometimes travel to casinos with. He asked me to teach him to count but he never mastered basic strategy and might jump his bets on a high count if he is winning. I would approximate he is playing at about a 1.5% disadvantage to the house. He plays loads of 3CP at $100, a game with a huge house edge but he would not ever play 6/5 blackjack or a CSM blackjack table because he considers 6/5 a bad game (it is 3 or 4 times better than 3CP though), and says that you can not get a run on a CSM (that Mythical Magical Flow thing.) But the importance here is that this kind of losing player is requiring the casino to keep decent enough blackjack alive because they will not play on poorer blackjack and their numbers are big. The bad player rules the rules and the casinos give him that as they take his money.

ihate17
 
ihate17 said:
So, you feel that the casinos can increase profits by making the current rules even worse than they are at blackjack and people will still play because at games with bad rules the tables are already crowded.

This has continually been tried by casinos and one of two results always happen.
1. The bad game is somewhat popular but the amount of money bet on it is much lower than the amount of money on a similar blackjack table. Examples would be 3CP, CSM blackjack, or 6/5 blackjack.
2. The game just starts to disappear Carribean Stud or Mindplay21.

ihate17
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You make several valid points, but yes I do feel that casinos have increased their profits by changing the rules to increase their edge. My logic behind this is simple; when I first started playing blackjack a few years ago I can't remember seeing any 6/5 and now I see more and more almost everywhere I go. I'm sure the casinos have done plenty of research on how to increase profits and this is one of them. Which I don't travel often, but I have yet to see the rules change to benefit the players. And, I know APs only take a very small percentage from casinos, but casinos still don't like them because they want all they can get. But, I can't blame them for that, because I want all I can get too...
 
The average 6/5 table

darrislance said:
You make several valid points, but yes I do feel that casinos have increased their profits by changing the rules to increase their edge. My logic behind this is simple; when I first started playing blackjack a few years ago I can't remember seeing any 6/5 and now I see more and more almost everywhere I go. I'm sure the casinos have done plenty of research on how to increase profits and this is one of them. Which I don't travel often, but I have yet to see the rules change to benefit the players. And, I know APs only take a very small percentage from casinos, but casinos still don't like them because they want all they can get. But, I can't blame them for that, because I want all I can get too...
Click to expand...


Granted there are idiots with money who will bet big on a 6/5 table but they are really exceptions. Walk thru big Vegas casinos and you will notice busy or not, the 6/5 tables have lower minimum bet levels than the 3/2 tables. I am sure the casinos did not plan it to work out this way but it has. Similar to the CSM tables, which are always the lowest bet level tables.

Understanding this is pretty simple. The cost of overhead and salary being what it is, $5 tables and to some extent $10 tables (bigger places) are really a convience for the players and not much of money makers for the casino, unless they raise their take on those tables by bad rules or dealing more hands. This thinking is also why many casinos improve their rules once you move the minimum bet up to $25 or $100, depending upon the casino.
This also moves along with their thinking on slots, lower denomination = higher house edge. So if you want a seat at a low limit table, the rental on that seat becomes a higher percentage of your bet.

Now would the casinos spread 6/5 to shoe games if they could get the same play on them? Sure they would. Harrah's does these kind of things with gimmick pits, things like dealers in bikinis, dealer entertainers etc and charge you a fee for it and they catch some idiots, but real casinos (if it is owned by Harrah's and located in Vegas, it is not a real casino in my opinion) know that players who play decent size money will not play 6/5, and especially not play 6/5 shoes.

ihate17

ihate17
 
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