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cinemagician Inner circle Phila Metro Area 1094 Posts |
I gave up playing blackjack about 5 years ago. I'm thinking about getting into it again if for nothing more than to sharpen my knowledge of the game.
For starters- is there a good website that lists the correct basic strategy chart in relation to rule variations, such as double down allowed after splitting etc. Furthermore, is there any info on what Casino is offering what game. Thought I might ask here before I google. -Mark Posted: Jul 2, 2006 5:27pm I found this one- it's pretty good. http://wizardofodds.com/blackjack Now as to which casinos offer the best game--?
...The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity...
William Butler Yeats |
Dannydoyle Eternal Order 21219 Posts |
Depends on what you mean by best game.
Single deck? Tough to find. 6 deck allows double after split and DOA? Well you have to find those. If you can find one where the dealer stands on soft 17 wow you got something there. Now we get to the next little problem. Casino heat. How much do they watch for card counters? That again is a subjective standard which by the way changes according to shifts. One casino may be horrible to you in the morning, go back at shift change and they don't care. Do you want to count cards or just play basic strategy? That makes a difference too. You may want to play basic strategy, which is basically an even game, and get lots of comps. Depends on what your looking to do.
Danny Doyle
<BR>Semper Occultus <BR>In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act....George Orwell |
CardShark2004 Regular user 153 Posts |
After reading Bringing Down the House. And understanding advantage play, the legality of card counting, and casinos as private property, I never understood, why anyone except the uninformed would want to play blackjack. If you count alone, ur gonna get caught and be asked to leave, if you have a team (i.e. bringing down the house) its less obvious. if you play basic strategy as danny doyle mentions, ull probably break even. So I don't understand the point. Or how professional gamblers make money playing blackjack (i assume they play other games as well)
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Dannydoyle Eternal Order 21219 Posts |
Well you just simply need more info.
Magic sites are the WORST sourse of this info. Other than casino sites. Counting does not mean you get caught. Greed means you get caught. The MIT blackjack team still exists by the way. You know them from Bringing Down the House. Yep they exist. There are companies that are simply fronts that are public stock companies which do nothing but count cards in teams.
Danny Doyle
<BR>Semper Occultus <BR>In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act....George Orwell |
silverking Inner circle 4574 Posts |
The social engineering and acting skills of the big counting teams, and the experienced solo counters are still taking millions out of Vegas, Atlantic City, and the Indian casinos.
It's the little guy in town for three days that gets greedy because he's got to fly back home that gets caught. The big guys excercise 100% control over the environment they're working in, and they never get greedy. |
Steve V Inner circle Northern California 1878 Posts |
There are still single deck games. Played some over the last few days in Carson City and found some in a couple other places in rural areas.
Steve V |
whistleandthumb New user 7 Posts |
Andy Bloch, the leader of the MIT Blackjack team (from Bringing Down the House) has a DVD out called "Beating Blackjack" through a company called Expert Insight. Their site is: http://www.expertinsight.com
They have a proper basic strategy card up there, and the DVD teaches you how the MIT team counted cards, which is, surprisingly, VERY easy to do. I was in Vegas a few weeks back and did pretty well after having watched the DVD just one time. I HIGHLY recommend it. |
Dannydoyle Eternal Order 21219 Posts |
See a "proper" basic strategy card depends on the game you are playing.
1 2 4 6 8 decks makes for different strategy. DOA, DAS, dealer hits soft 17 all makes changes to it. While it teaches you how they counted cards,which has been arround for AEONS, it dosn't teach all that they were doing. Andy was and is a great player.
Danny Doyle
<BR>Semper Occultus <BR>In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act....George Orwell |
mxray Loyal user 276 Posts |
The only single deck I am aware of in Vegas is all 6/5 , which is mathematically suicide. Also the sigma of single deck being beatable (ha!) often keeps floormen hawking those games much more intently. If youswing your bets very much at all in an SD game, they will quickly be on to you.
As to sites, I think either Stanford Wong's site or Arnold Snyder's are the way to go. There are sites dedicated to just the math of the game, but you need a place wwher people discuss real world play. If starting out, I would likely go with Stanford's, though I think The Bishop himself is almost God. Stanford 's get a little more traffic. Look for posts from DD' , Mathprof, THopper, among others. Generally, if someone gives you bad advice, the others will correct him pretty fast, so your chance of getting bad advice there is slim. Hope this helps, MXRay |
mxray Loyal user 276 Posts |
There was a chapter in Bringing Down the House where they went to Shreveport, La, and I think supposedly saw their pictures on the pit fax machine in one casino almost as soon as they got there, or something like that .
I got the impression from the book that they left that particular casino almost immediately. It didn't happen that way. They played at that casino for quitre a while. I know because I was there as well . (At the time,this casino was offering what some people considered maybe the best Double deck game conditions in the country. No longer the case.) I don't know any of the MIT guys, but the fact is that after a while, you can identify most of the local counters from observing their betting patterns and play over and over again. You may not know most of them by name, but certainly know them by face. Once in a while you will get someone from out of town you haven't seen before. But this was several new young faces, who were not from around there,didn't look/act like most of this casino's usual patrons, (This was not the most upscale casino oin town) were counting, seemed pretty intense, and some a little arrogant: One of them wonged in on a table I was already at, and then, when I went to 2 big bet hands (when the count got high enough to warrant it) he angrily slammed down a 2nd bet for himself, and glared at me. This happened a couple of times. So he was not only wonging in on my table, he thinks I don't have the right to make optimum bets for my bet spread. Pretty arrogant, in my opinion. Only later, when I got home and emailed some people, did I learn who these guys actually were. Knowing this, I can't help but wonder how much other stuff in that book was maybe "sexed up" a little to make counting seem a lot more glamorous than it really is to readers who are non-counters. MXRay |
Dannydoyle Eternal Order 21219 Posts |
Think about it. Card counting is inherantly boring. Like police work. Hours and days and weeks of boredome, then bam 2 minutes of excitement.
Card counting is boring. So yea it had to be sexed up. I know this for I spoke with the author. He was writing a NOVEL, for entertainment purposes. So more power to him. Problem is when people take them as fact. Then it gets all Da Vinci code on ya! Problem is MOST counters get greedy. Period. So do most cheaters. If they would do less check spreads, they would not be as noticible. The MIT team got caught when they experienced inevitable setbacks that were well within the peramaters of mathmatical probability. THEN they got greedy. Playing too long, WONGING in (I love it when your name becomes a VERB!) with HUGE big player bets and yada yada yada. Thing is guys had been doing what they were for years it wasn't new. Just that they had a "company" behind them, big money and got noticed. Cardinal sin in my book. Greed will kill you when counting or tracking or hustling. Tough to avoid when you are a 140 grand down on the night and have a huge opportunity, but again gotta think big picture. Most of the heat counters get is because of greedy predicessors. Anyhow a nice BJ site is HITORSTAND.net. Has a simulator, recomendations for sites to play, and gives you the right basic strategy (OR BS!LOL) for the game you put in.
Danny Doyle
<BR>Semper Occultus <BR>In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act....George Orwell |
mxray Loyal user 276 Posts |
Quote:
On 2006-07-15 12:37, Dannydoyle wrote: That's about as a accurate as it gets. For a new counter, its exciting, but once you have the basic mechanics of counting down, have your betting spread worked out ( plenty of programs around to help you do this) , and have worked out some sort of act with the pit, its a lot like the computer programs : "If______ then ______, else ______". I know one guy who was a very good counter, who moved on to other things, (no, not poker!) because it simply begame boring for him sitting there for hours, playing "like a robot" as he put it. Its no coincidence that Ken Uston, who probably made more money in Blackjack than about anyone, also wrote a book on how to beat the game PacMan. (Rememer that?) As he once pointed out, they are actually very similar, al ot fo decisions are automatic, based on what has just happened. So it becomes a lot of memorization. That was a lot of why I think I got into tracking. New mantal challenge more abstract, not to mention higher EV... MXRay |
Dannydoyle Eternal Order 21219 Posts |
Almost all good Pac Man decisions are automatic.
As with BlackJack when played properly. There are no choices in BlackJack. Just more mathmatically correct decisions. The only one really even close is hitting the 12 in to a dealer 2 or 3. The vast majority of the other things are not even close. Here is where most guys get confused. Take for example splitting the 8s into a face card. The math tells us to split them. (barring a count decision) We don't split them because we will make more money, we split them because we will lose less money. ALMOST AS IMPORTANT A CONCEPT. What you end up is with two hands with 8s in them. Each hand will lose about 16 cents. A 16 will lose about 42 cents. THAT is why you split them. You still lose but you lose less. So the people who get confused when they keep losing splitting the 8s into a face or ace and stop doing it, are losing more money. The reason for the rant is this decision is automatic. NOT in dispute. Not an either or. It has been made for us by the math LONG ago. As for bordome I do so much other things while counting that I don't get bored. I have a lot of fun. So it isn't so much work.
Danny Doyle
<BR>Semper Occultus <BR>In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act....George Orwell |
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