Blackjack - With or without the hookers.

[ForTheHoard]

From wikipedia-

Blackjack is a casino banking game. The most widely played casino banking game in the world, it uses decks of 52 cards and descends from a global family of casino banking games known as Twenty-One. This family of card games also includes the British game of Pontoon and the European game, Vingt-et-Un. Blackjack players do not compete against each other. The game is a comparing card game where each player competes against the dealer.

There's thousands of variations of the game, but most commonly, the player and the house play against each other with the player always acting first. Usually starting with 2 cards, the goal is to finish with a hand where the face values of the cards equal a sum as close to 21 without going over, counting the J, Q, and K as a 10, and the A as a 1 or 11. Bonuses are regularly paid out for being dealt a hand totaling 21 with an Ace and any card valued at 10, which is known as a "natural" or "blackjack." In every game, players have the option to "hit" (receive another card) or "stand" (end your turn without drawing anymore cards.) Every state and country that allows card games in their casinos will offer some variation of blackjack.

What makes blackjack rare in the world of casino games is that even though every hand is an independent event, the collection of hands over a period of time is based on determined events, meaning a certain amount of luck can be removed from the game by people that get proficient enough at the game. A couple mathematicians in the 1950's started hand calculating simulations of blackjack hands and determined that it was possible for the player to know when the odds of winning were in their favor, allowing them to adjust their bets accordingly, which narrowed the house's advantage to the point of flipping it in the favor of the player. Blackjack was a beatable game, and since that revelation, hundreds of books and media projects have been published on different playstyles that claim to teach anyone how to win. Modern technology allowed further insight into advantaged blackjack play by being able to run computer simulations that tested strategies over billions of hands of blackjack. We're at the point now where there is a statistically correct play to be made with every possible hand, which is known as basic strategy. Despite this knowledge, 95%+ of blackjack players don't adhere to basic strategy as the majority of people play to have fun and not to win.

I've known how to play blackjack since I was a little kid. It might have been one of the first card games where I learned the rules. Over the last couple years I've gotten into advantaged play as a hobby and it's been a pretty fun experience. I don't know many people that take blackjack seriously so I figured this would be the right place to riff about it.

 

[timewave0]

Have you ever played at a casino? Or, rather, attempted to count at a casino? I’ve considered learning how to count just as a goof, but I’m not sure I have the right type of mind for it.

I think a lot of people overestimate how much of an edge you get from counting. In reality it’s the slimmest of advantages and can easily be squandered if you don’t execute your core strategy correctly. You probably have to master regular strategy before pursuing advantage play, right?

This is a kinda off topic but I love the story of Phil Ivey beating casinos at Baccarat to the tune of >$20mil. His strategy was brilliant, though it only worked because he’s so famous and wealthy. It’s insane that he lost his court case given what the casinos did. The guy is a legit super genius tho

 

[Chongqing]

Have you ever played at a casino? Or, rather, attempted to count at a casino? I’ve considered learning how to count just as a goof, but I’m not sure I have the right type of mind for it.

I think a lot of people overestimate how much of an edge you get from counting. In reality it’s the slimmest of advantages and can easily be squandered if you don’t execute your core strategy correctly. You probably have to master regular strategy before pursuing advantage play, right?

This is a kinda off topic but I love the story of Phil Ivey beating casinos at Baccarat to the tune of >$20mil. His strategy was brilliant, though it only worked because he’s so famous and wealthy. It’s insane that he lost his court case given what the casinos did. The guy is a legit super genius tho

Counting cards depends on knowing how many decks are being used.

Casinos have thought of this.

Don't they use endless decks and rotate them constantly?

 

[timewave0]

Counting cards depends on knowing how many decks are being used.

Casinos have thought of this.

Don't they use endless decks and rotate them constantly?

Not endless. From what I understand they typically use four to eight decks per shoe. It makes things harder, but the counters have developed a technique for dealing with it. Like I said earlier tho, the advantage is surprisingly slim + they have to be cautious to avoid detection, otherwise they’ll quickly run out of places to play.

 

[ForTheHoard]

Have you ever played at a casino? Or, rather, attempted to count at a casino? I’ve considered learning how to count just as a goof, but I’m not sure I have the right type of mind for it.

I think a lot of people overestimate how much of an edge you get from counting. In reality it’s the slimmest of advantages and can easily be squandered if you don’t execute your core strategy correctly. You probably have to master regular strategy before pursuing advantage play, right?

This is a kinda off topic but I love the story of Phil Ivey beating casinos at Baccarat to the tune of >$20mil. His strategy was brilliant, though it only worked because he’s so famous and wealthy. It’s insane that he lost his court case given what the casinos did. The guy is a legit super genius tho

I have counted in casinos, and it's a lot tougher than just counting out a deck at home. There's a lot of distractions and you're always trying to minimize looking like a counter. Remember to smile when you wind and frown when you lose, and not to stare at the table or discard pile constantly. There's counting systems that are much easier to grasp than others. I think they're classified in tiers, I, II, and III, with tier I being the easiest and tier III being the most difficult. Most people use a I or II system while the computer sims that go for maximum accuracy favor a tier III.

I learned on a tier I system and now use a slightly more complicated tier I system. The average blackjack game gives the house a 1%-4% advantage depending on the rules. Playing perfect basic strategy reduces the house advantage to about 0.5%. Using an effective card counting system perfectly will push the player advantage from 0.5%-2% depending on the rules. At any given time during a shoe you can have up to a 5% or so advantage, but over time it averages back down to about 1%. It's not a thing where you can walk into a casino and use the blackjack table like an ATM. Your expected value is calculated over thousands and thousands of hands. It's not unusual for a card counter to go on losing streaks for weeks or months, but the averages correct themselves over longer periods of time. Phil Ivey's story was awesome, but he had a lot of things going for him. He used card counting, a partner, edge sorting, and they talked the casino into special rules not often given to players only because he and his partner were very high rollers. The fact that he lost his lawsuits flies in the face of every court decision before it.

Counting cards depends on knowing how many decks are being used.

Casinos have thought of this.

Don't they use endless decks and rotate them constantly?

It depends on the system and the casino. The most common games run a 6 or 8 deck shoe, which is totally accounted for in almost every modern card counting system. There's also still single and double deck games, but they usually have much higher minimum bets and are watched more closely by pit bosses. The two most common ways card counters are chased off is with 6:5 blackjack bonuses (as opposed to the much more favorable 3:2), and continuous shuffling machines (CSM). 6:5 games are so lopsided in the house's favor that there's no point in counting them. There's no system that can produce a winning game on 6:5. CSM games usually only use 2-3 decks, but every discard is put back into the machine and is randomized before every deal. You can't count a CSM, and card counters will never sit down and play one.

The casino does know about card counters, but its a love-hate relationship. The advent of card counting brought in more money to the casinos because 80% of people that learn to count cards never learn to do so correctly and still play a losing game. A bad card counter stands to lose as much or more as any random gambler. The reason every BJ game doesn't use 6:5 and CSM is because even gamblers know that it skews the odds so much that it's not popular. If the average 3:2 player loses an average of $10/hour then the average 6:5 players lose like $17/hour. Even the gamblers know that 6:5 tables will drain their stack faster, and most places have a hard time finding players when the rules are too bad.

You only have to know how many decks are left in "balanced" counting systems. "Unbalanced" systems don't require any mental division. You determine the running count by card counting, which is actually really easy because you're adding and subtracting by 1. Someone using a balanced system will take the running count and divide it by the number of decks that haven't been dealt yet, giving what's called the true count. Balanced systems base their betting off the true count. Alternatively, unbalanced systems eliminate division by starting your count based on how many decks are involved in the game. Balanced systems require the player to be able to estimate deck usage (which is done by looking at the discard pile instead of the shoe), where an unbalanced system requires you to know how many decks the game started with. I prefer unbalanced systems because the most important party of card counting is not making mistakes, so playing a perfect game with a simpler system yields more expected value than an imperfect game using a more complicated system. The advantage margins are very thin, so perfect play often outweighs complexity.

Edit- I forgot to mention that casinos can also deter counters by where they put the cut card in the shoe. The cut card is a blank card inserted into the stack of decks that lets the dealer know that after the cut card is dealt out, that will be the last round in the shoe and all the cards will be reshuffled. Card counters need deep shoe penetration, which means that more cards are dealt and fewer are removed from the game. An average casino policy may be to cut a 6 deck shoe at 1.5 decks, which means the dealer will estimate about 1.5 decks from the bottom of the stack and insert the cut card there. Shoe penetration doesn't affect the odds for non-counters, but normal players don't like shallow penetration because it means fewer hands are dealt between shuffles, and an 8 deck shuffle can take a couple minutes. This is usually how online blackjack games stop counters. They'll put the cut card 4 decks in on an 8 deck shoe and it totally destroys the counter's advantage. More than the 6:5 bonuses I believe. I'm better at parroting shit I read from the mathematicians than I am doing the math myself. BJ books are generally pretty good about showing their work though.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Maybe I should build my own lunar lander...

 

[Chongqing]

Not endless. From what I understand they typically use four to eight decks per shoe. It makes things harder, but the counters have developed a technique for dealing with it. Like I said earlier tho, the advantage is surprisingly slim + they have to be cautious to avoid detection, otherwise they’ll quickly run out of places to play.

Why would they stop at 8? Think about it.

If this was possible, there'd be some Dan Blizerian larper on social media saying they know how to do it.

Maybe that exists, I don't know.

I'm just skeptical.

 

[Dammit Mandrake!]

I don't overthink blackjack. I just sit down and play.

 

[ForTheHoard]

Why would they stop at 8? Think about it.

If this was possible, there'd be some Dan Blizerian larper on social media saying they know how to do it.

Maybe that exists, I don't know.

I'm just skeptical.

You realize that card counting isn't remembering every card that's been played, right? Let's say you start in your head at 0. Low cards (2-7) are worth +1, high cards (10-A) are worth -1, and neutral cards (8 & 9) are worth 0. All you're doing is looking at the cards being dealt and either adding or subtracting 1 from the number in your head. When that number starts getting high, that means there's an abundance of high cards that haven't been dealt, which gives the player the advantage in BJ. When that number starts getting deep into the negatives, then a lot of low cards haven't been dealt yet, which is advantageous to the dealer. You bet bigger when your advantage is higher, and you bet low (or not at all) when your advantage is lower.

The number of decks matter in terms of changing the odds, but has nothing to do with the difficulty of card counting. If you can count 1 deck, you can count 20 decks. This is a table from the book going over the system I use. The X axis is the running count (the number in your head), and the Y axis is your advantage against the house.


If you want just the raw math around the game, read "Beat the Dealer" by Edward Thorp. He wrote it in 1966, and it set the foundation for card counting systems that came years and decades later. Again, it doesn't teach you how to count cards, it's just shows the math that proved counting cards could be possible. It's beyond my math comprehension.

I don't overthink blackjack. I just sit down and play.

Do you mess with any of the betting strategies or do you just flat bet?

Edit- I found a house edge calculator to explain my point about 6:5 blackjack being dogshit. The rules setup is based on a local casino I frequent.

 

[Cardinal Cardinal]

I just recently got into blackjack and taking the rabbit hole down card counting and advantage play. Im interested in some of the programs on ev, bet spreads, risk of ruin that blackjack apprentice advertises but not willing to spend the 400+ dollars to access them. Is there a cheaper or free alternative that is as good as theirs? (I'm assuming they have a good product)

 

[ForTheHoard]

I just recently got into blackjack and taking the rabbit hole down card counting and advantage play. Im interested in some of the programs on ev, bet spreads, risk of ruin that blackjack apprentice advertises but not willing to spend the 400+ dollars to access them. Is there a cheaper or free alternative that is as good as theirs? (I'm assuming they have a good product)

Look up Norm Wattenberger. He codes and sells blackjack software. I don't know his entire catalogue but I bought his verite practice software a couple years ago and it was worth the money. I had trouble finding pirated copies of anything due to the community being so small and the people selling the software being revered blackjack players. I think he offers free demos for some stuff. It's all pretty bare bones visually but packed to the brim with features. It reminds me of commercial software in the Windows NT era.

 

[Cardinal Cardinal]

I'm trying to get better at remembering and adding to a count while doing something like resplitting a hand. If I try to add my hand total and keep count while the cards are coming out I noticeably slow down or sometimes freeze. The dealer doesn't always count to help me out and I'd like to be able to do it on my own regardless.
My issue is keeping the two numbers separate in my head. Most of the time if I split a hand 3 times I make a mental note of the running count and freeze the number, play the hands as I would without adding to the count, then quickly add up the count before the cards are swept away (on a loss) .
Is there an exercise that would help me be able to keep 2 sets of numbers separate in my head? Any other observations or tips in general are appreciate for this situation.