stophon said:
After reading some posts on this forum and some parts of blackbelt in bj, i have been wondering how powerful these "secret" strategies are that everyone seems to know about but cannot disclose publicly for fear of casino personnel seeing them.
So my question is, how powerful are these "secret" strategies? Are any of them as powerful as card counting? As universally applicable?
Virtually ALL of them are more powerful than card counting. Otherwise; what would be the sense of keeping them secret. And, as Sonny points out; they are very rarely universal, usually being dependent upon certain conditions arising. Oftentimes you only get one bet down before it's time to leave the casino.
As for how powerful they are, advantages of 50% are not at all uncommon. I have a good friend who plays the 50% advantage game for a living. He gets in an average of five bets/day.
100%-150% advantages (lock) are possible but quite rare. I was in Monte Carlo about 15 years ago, and stood behind a table for two hours. Finally, I tracked a players blackjack & bet the limit of $2000 on the player's hand. (This is permitted in many places in Europe.) Within 5 minutes I was escorted out of the casino. So as you see, there are drawbacks to almost all of the advanced techniques.
There are actually some side bet situations where you can obtain an advantage of 300% and more, but you're lucky if you get out of the casino without being barred.
Bear in mind that the move's I've hinted at so far involve a MASSIVE amount of skill and NO cheating or otherwise illegal means. If you want to include cheating....... I once witnessed a play where the team beat the Trump Marina out of $150,000 in one shoe (dealer involvement). After the dealer got his cut, he went out & bought $15K worth of coke and got busted. After intense questioning, the authorities found out where he got the money. He turned state's evidence in return for leniency on the drug charges. All the
players on the team did a substantial length of time in the pokey. I wouldn't recommend or reveal cheating strategies to ANYONE, out of fear that they might be foolish enough to TRY it.