Tag: blackjack

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Ready for Action: Avoiding the Blackjack Fatigue Factor

This post is syndicated by the Las Vegas Advisor for the 888 casino group. Anthony Curtis comments on the 888 article introduced and linked to on this page.

AC says:

When someone asks what determines how long I play or when I decide to stop, they’re usually expecting a hard-stop time limit or, more likely, a stop-loss or take-profits point. My answer is, I play as long as I have an edge in the game or until I get tired and am no longer playing optimally. This article addresses the latter. Author John Grochowski addresses my point, but also brings up another important consideration: the heightened chance that you’ll make bad decisions with regard to chasing losses, described as “going on tilt.” The advice is valid: Don’t play when tired. Follow it. And be sure to take note of the lesson within the lesson in the article. That is, a bad player at the table doesn’t affect your expected result over time. Bad plays by other players will help you as often as they hurt.

This article was written by John Grochowski in association with 888Casino.

Ready for Action: Avoiding the Blackjack Fatigue Factor

Players know the feeling, regardless of whether they’re playing online blackjack or in live casinos. From the first hand, they’re engaged, interested, thinking strategy on every card. It’s a fun game, especially, when winning streaks are coming often enough to keep bankrolls full.

But when players start to make mistakes, it’s time to watch out. The “Fatigue Factor” can undermine even the best players.

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BLACKJACK PLAYERS FACE MANY CHOICES BEYOND STRATEGY

This post is syndicated by the Las Vegas Advisor for the 888 casino group. Anthony Curtis comments on the 888 article introduced and linked to on this page.

A.C. says:

Most discussions about blackjack involve playing strategies, usually focusing on basic strategy. This article talks about other fundamental considerations that lead to better results, especially for beginners. Author John Grochowski correctly points out that the proper choices in the situations addressed will be different for experts who are playing with an advantage, but beginners who heed the advice to play at full tables, at games with fewer decks, etc. will benefit. Not all of the rules are absolute, so read carefully. Good stuff here.

This article was written by John Grochowski in association with 888Casino.

BLACKJACK PLAYERS FACE MANY CHOICES BEYOND STRATEGY

Player choices make a difference in blackjack, regardless of whether you’re playing online blackjack or in a live casino. That’s one of the keys to the game’s long-standing popularity.

The most obvious choices that make a difference come in blackjack strategy. Do you hit or stand. Should you double down? Should you split a pair?

Basic strategy can be your guide to those options, but there are choices beyond playing strategy that make a difference in your chances to win or lose.

Is it better to play at a crowded table or an empty one? Are fewer decks always better for players? Those are among the choices players face in addition to blackjack strategy once the game is underway.

Let’s explore some of the decisions blackjack players must make.

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BLACKJACK PLAYS THAT FEEL WRONG CAN BE SO RIGHT

This post is syndicated by the Las Vegas Advisor for the 888 casino group. Anthony Curtis comments on the 888 article introduced and linked to on this page.

AC says:

Blackjack is the subject, but the advice in this article applies to all gambling games. When there’s one correct play and you’ve been told what it is, you’re costing yourself money every time you do something else. This comes up in video poker all the time, when players reason their way out of making the correct play. I can’t count all the times I’ve been asked for the correct play and given the answer, only for the player to wave it off and do something else. Amazing! You may desire an explanation that you can get your head around, but you don’t need one. One of my favorite stories is blackjack expert Ken Uston being asked for a reason that a certain play should be made. Uston answered simply, “Because the computer says so.” You’ll recognize some of the blackjack plays in the article that you’ve probably wondered about. You don’t need the explanations, but author John Grochowski obliges anyway.

This article was written by John Grochowski in association with 888Casino.

BLACKJACK PLAYS THAT FEEL WRONG CAN BE SO RIGHT

Learning basic strategy at blackjack is one thing. Internalizing it so it becomes second nature can be quite another.

The problem is that some blackjack strategy plays seem to defy common sense regardless of whether you’re playing online blackjack or in a live casino. As one player asked at a seminar I gave, “How can a play be so right when it feels so wrong?”

How can hitting hard 16 be the right play when there’s such a large chance of busting? How can splitting 8s against a dealer’s 10 be the right play when you could wind up with two 18s losing to a 20? How can doubling down on 11 when the dealer has a 10 face up be the right play when you can’t hit if you draw a low card and the dealer could be sitting with 20?

It’s enough to give you a queasy feeling even while you make the best play.

But they are the right plays. All casino games are grounded in math. Basic strategy takes into account all possible outcomes and calculates the play that, on average, yields the best chance to win.

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2023 BLACKJACK BALL: THE INSIDE SCOOP – PART 1 BY HENRY TAMBURIN

This post is syndicated by the Las Vegas Advisor for the 888 casino group. Anthony Curtis comments on the 888 article introduced and linked to on this page.

AC Says:

You’ve probably heard of the Blackjack Ball, the annual gathering of many of the world’s top blackjack pros, during which there’s a vote for Blackjack Hall of Fame induction and a skills contest to name the “World’s Greatest Blackjack Player.” There’ve been many articles written about the Ball, but no one covers it like Henry Tamburin. In Part 1 of his summary of the 26th gathering, Henry goes into detail about this year’s HoF nominees, the betting Calcutta that takes place before the skills contest, and the written test that’s part of the competition. It’s a fascinating event that not many get to experience in person, but this account is the next best thing to being there.

This article was written by Henry Tamburin in association with 888Casino.

For the second consecutive year, the 26th Blackjack Ball was held at one of the unique buildings in Las Vegas, the Cleveland Clinic – Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health. (See photo of its unique and distinct architecture.) The building contains a large ballroom that could easily…

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KNOW WHEN TO DOUBLE DOWN AT THE BLACKJACK TABLE

This post is syndicated by the Las Vegas Advisor for the 888 casino group. Anthony Curtis comments on the 888 article introduced and linked to on this page.

AC Says:

The title of this article doesn’t quite explain its contents. While it is about proper strategy for doubling down, it addresses only soft doubling, which refers to hands that contain an ace. These tend to be misplayed the most. Author John Grochowski properly makes the point that you double hands only when doing so increases your expected return. He provides the numbers to back it up, and it’s interesting to see how the magnitude of the difference in plays fluctuates, but all you really need to know is that doubling according to basic strategy will improve your results over time. If basic strategy says double down, then double down.

This article was written by John Grochowski in association with 888Casino.

Knowing when to double down is a key part of any blackjack player’s game. Permitting doubles is one way the house reduces the edge it gets from players having to risk busting first.

Most players who put a little time into learning basic blackjack strategy pick up on when to double hard hands fairly quickly…

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A GUIDE TO DOUBLE EXPOSURE BLACKJACK

This post is syndicated by the Las Vegas Advisor for the 888 casino group. Anthony Curtis comments on the 888 article introduced and linked to on this page.

AC Says:

Double Exposure is a blackjack variation that can still be found today. The game originated in Germany, where it was called Zweikartenspiel, with the key component being that both dealer cards are dealt face up. The problem with a game like this is that the strategy is drastically different from traditional blackjack, but it’s usually not readily available, requiring that players must do their best with intuitive adjustments. That usually doesn’t work out well. With this article you have an applicable basic strategy (it changes slightly with rules variations) at your fingertips. As noted by the author, it’s more complicated than basic strategy for the traditional game, so it might take longer to commit completely to memory. Don’t be thrown off by the mistake in the article’s photos, which depict a traditional game with only one dealer card showing; in a Double Exposure game, both dealer cards are dealt face up.

This article was written by John Grochowski in association with 888Casino.

When you hit hard 16 against a dealer’s 10 in blackjack, you’re playing probabilities. You don’t know if the dealer has a pat hand or has to hit and chance busting. You don’t know what you’ll draw. You just know the percentages favor hitting.

In a blackjack variant called Double Exposure, the guesswork is …

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It’s Not Good News

Not so long ago, I received an email from Anthony Curtis directing my attention to https://acresmanufacturing.com/optimal-poker-analyzer/ . It’s an advertisement for a product that casinos can use to evaluate the accuracy of the video poker players at their casino.

Generally speaking, casinos want to reward players based on their true worth to the casino — that is, pay losing players a lot to keep losing, pay good players a little but not too much, and find and eliminate winning players. Also generally speaking, strong players want to disguise what they’re doing so they can keep their welcome and continue to gather their profits. 

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A Not-Too-Disturbing Farewell

In Las Vegas blackjack circles, the El Cortez in downtown Las Vegas is well-known for having a decent single-deck game — aside from the fact that they are extremely quick to pull the trigger on kicking players out. Several blackjack teams send their new players to play there, knowing they’ll be kicked out fairly quickly, just to get the first barring out of the way.

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A Look at Arnold Snyder’s Radical Blackjack

Arnold Snyder is one of the initial seven members inducted into the Blackjack Hall of Fame. His book, Radical Blackjack, published by Huntington Press, has been in the works for years. I’ve heard many of the stories in it from Arnold himself, but I finally got to read it and there were lot of new things.

I’m not going to give all of Snyder’s arguments as spoiler alerts. But I will touch on what he discusses. If this is something you are interested in, get the book. My goal is to give you enough information for you to decide whether the book has value for you.

  1. When is it smart to double on a hard 12?
  2. When is it smart to insure for less than half your bet?
  3. What are the main features of loss rebates and how do you figure out how much you should win or lose before you stop?
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Tonight’s the Night!

Listeners to the GWAE podcast know that Richard Munchkin is one of my favorite storytellers. When a guest on the show takes us through memory lane, it sometimes jogs one of Richard’s stories and I just sit back and listen with enjoyment. 

With that in mind, Richard’s brother Jake made a long post on Facebook in late December that caught my eye. It was about blackjack in the early 80s and their team was playing in Atlantic City somewhere. At that time, there was no device law in the New Jersey gaming statutes and so it was completely legal to use electronic devices inside the casino. Teams tried various forms of computers to assist them in playing blackjack and other games. At that time, computers were very primitive relative to today, and often this involved pressing buttons with your toes and getting tiny shocks on your leg to tell you what to do. There would be wires running up your legs to your battery pack. All kinds of things could and did go wrong with this, but in general the process was successful enough that casinos finally banded together and lobbied the state legislature to ban electronic devices used to predict the outcome of casino games. 

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