Question of the Day - 28 December 2017

[Editor's Note: Arnold Snyder, blackjack player, author, publisher, and bishop, responds to this question.]

First things first. Is Michael Morgenstern a “sensation?” I went to his YouTube channel and discovered he has 172 videos and 35,000 subscribers, so I'd say that’s pretty impressive.

Then I looked at Morgenstern's Blackjack Army website and there's not much on it. He provides an accurate basic strategy chart and a page where he sells training videos and materials, though there's very little description.

Even though I had no intention of buying his materials just to review them, I knew I couldn't pass judgment on his methods without personally reviewing what he sells. So I watched some of his YouTube videos to see if they’d be any help in assessing his credentials as an expert.

I was pleasantly surprised to hear, in a number of his videos, that it’s not necessary for people to buy his videos or purchase his training materials, because he explains all his blackjack methods on his free YouTube channel. I looked at some of his vids on card counting, shuffle and ace tracking, and bet variation.

Morgenstern does provide the correct card values for counting with the HiLo system. The card-counting and bet-variation videos I watched, however, fall short in counting theory and practice. And you can get the HiLo count system out of dozens of inexpensive books.

On to his "advanced" stuff, I looked at his YouTube videos on shuffle tracking and ace tracking. I'm sorry to say that he doesn’t actually understand these strategies, so it was unwise of him to tackle them.

For example, in shuffle tracking, he claims that he tracks all the denominations, not just the aces, and knows where all the individual denominations of cards are located, just by remembering them from shoe to shoe. Meanwhile, he provides no instructions on how to accomplish this prodigious feat of memory, other than assigning pictures to the cards like fishes and seahorses. He struggles visibly to explain concepts he clearly doesn't understand, then tells people it's not hard to do.

From what I saw, Michael Morgenstern struck me as a get-rich-quick Internet marketer, rather than the real thing. Just get a decent book on card counting and follow the advice on how to practice and test yourself.