Smart Blackjack: Winning Strategies & Essential Tips

hi welcome to another edition of the straight scoop I'm John LaRussa president of market data and just a regular 60 year old guy that has learned a thing or two in my 60 years of experience today I'd like to talk about playing blackjack at the casino how to consistently win and win over the long term and limit your losses I playing Jack like playing blackjack this is what I call playing smart blackjack now the first thing you have to remember is you're not going to go in there and play by hunches blackjack is a mathematical game it's a game of probabilities you have four hundred and sixteen cards in the shoe that's usually eight decks of cards in a shoe at the blackjack sometimes you love six decks with most the times today you'll have eight decks and they're either hand shuffled or they're shuffled by a continuous shuffle machine or another machine that shuffles them at the end of the shoe I prefer the hand shuffle or the machine that shuffles them at the end of the shoe when all eight decks are used up I do not like to continue a shuffle machine because the cards are constantly being put back into the machine shuffled on a regular basis before you even get through the shoe and you really you don't know what is going to happen in terms of trends or momentum or a lot of picture cards coming out there's no rhyme or reason it's totally random so I think the odds are better in the players favor with the hand shuffle or the regular machine shuffle but the thing that you have to first learn and get a copy of and memorized is something called the basic strategy table you can find it on the internet there even give you a card or a chart in the gift shop of most casinos or you can you can make one up yourself like I did I laminated it so I have it in my pocket at all times this is what it looks like basically and I hope that's in focus it'll show you when to hit hand when to stay when to split pairs when to double down when to let's say I guess that's probably all you need hit stand Double Down and split and there are rules for when you should do this you have to memorize this otherwise you're just going against the odds this basic strategy table was first developed in the 1970s by math math students at MIT and mastered chases Institute of Technology contrary to what some people will tell you it was not made up by the casinos when they talked about oh the casinos wrote the book on this and what you should do no casinos didn't write the book the people at MIT these students that computer simulated millions of hands being played they wrote the book so don't believe it I've been playing blackjack for over 30 years now 25 30 years in Las Vegas and Atlantic City down here in the south in Tampa at the Hard Rock take my word for it it's the truth you can look it up do some research on the Internet so this basic strategy table is paramount it's crucial it's going to tell you what to do when to do it and when to double down your your bets and it's going to be key to you winning money or minimizing your losses now there's a couple of things that I disagree with on the basic strategy table they tell you to split eights against a face card meaning a picture card a 10 a jack a queen or a king or an ace I don't agree with that reason being the dealer has an ace showing or a picture card showing chances are he's going to have a 10 underneath which would be a 20 for his hand if you split the eights let's assume you get some good cards you split the eights and you get a 10 with the 8 so now you've got 18 and you do that again with the other 8 you get a an ace let's say that's a 19 so you've got an 1819 chances are the dealer has a 20 you're going to lose both hands that means you're going to lose twice as much I'd rather you either stay on the 16 or hit the 16 don't split the eights another thing on hitting on a 16 the deal the book says always hit the 16 against an ace or a face card meaning a 10 I find that the odds are pretty much even as a toss-up whether you hit 16 or you stay on 16 why because there are 13 cards in the deck eight of those 13 cards will bust you will bring you over 21 can bust your hand meaning you'll lose a 6 a 7 and 8 a 9 and a 10 let's say 6 7 8 9 10 Jack Queen King 8 out of 13 cards will bust you if you hit on a 16 that's 60% a 60% chance that you will bust and lose the hand if you hand on a 16 so with a 60% chance you're going to bust why would you do that if it's 50/50 yeah okay that's an even shot but you only have a 40% chance of not busting so that's why I prefer to stay on a sixteen okay some other tips on playing blackjack you're going to try and play short sessions and make your money quickly and then stop the longer you play at the casino the greater the house advantage is they will wear you down they'll chip you down little by little because over the long term that two and a half percent advantage that the house has even if you play perfect basic strategy is going to wear you down so you want to go in there and try and make your money in 15-20 minutes a half an hour take your profit be satisfied with a profit and leave or go play some other game go to the restaurant get a comp meal enjoy yourself so very few people are happy with a 2 or $300 win but to win consistently over the long term and beat the house you have to be happy with that couple hundred dollar went especially if your initial stake is only two or three hundred dollars you've doubled or tripled or quadrupled your money with 600 or 800 dollars that's beating the house you're doing better than 90% of the people playing so be satisfied with those smaller wins set a limit on what you're willing to lose and if you lose that do not go to the ATM to get more money do not go to your friends or your what your spouse or relatives to ask for more money do not go with your credit card to the cashier and then get an expensive cash advance to play if you go with $200 and you lose that 200 consider that the end of your session for the day some days no matter what you do you're going to get bad cards the deal is going to pull 21 out of out of the Hat and make 21 out of all kinds of hands I'm going to get Blackjacks a lot and as absolutely nothing you can do so minimize your losses I know one guy that plays at the Tampa High Rock and he's one of the few guys that I can truly say I know over the long term is up and what he does is he comes in three or four times a week and he is satisfied with those little winds of 200 $300 he gets out of there quickly and he does that day after day after day he's having a bad day okay he's down 150 $200 he leaves he knows that over the long term he's going to win more than he loses and that will make up for his loss and put him in the neck positive column so that's a good strategy I've seen it worked for him over the last three or four years and if more people followed that they wouldn't get themselves into a big hole and lose a lot of money some other tips insurance the if the dealer is showing an ace they'll offer you insurance let's say the insurance available does anybody want to take insurance you put half of your bet down and it pays two to one if you win however is only a 30% chance that the dealer will have the 10 in the hole face down under that ace because again you have 10 Jack Queen King 4 out of 13 cards it's 30% has a 30% chance to hell out of 10 is the 70% chance he won't so insurance is not a good bet don't take it another good tip when you come up to a table scoop it out for a while ask the the dealer or players playing at that table how the tables been sometimes the table has been hot for hours or a whole day and it stays that way stay away from those tables you don't want to play in a table it's been a hot all day long as plenty of other tables to choose from has the deal don't tell you they'll say oh I can't I can't lose today I'm hot as hell and you want to avoid those tables okay let's say another thing don't play with the drunks at the table on Friday and Saturday nights at 10:00 or 11:00 o'clock at night you're going to have people there for entertainment people that are used to partying and they're just there to have a good time Carol don't know what they're doing they're drunk they are not playing basic strategy they're trying to impress the girlfriend of the boyfriend or whatever and trying to make themselves look like a big-shot you don't want to play with drunks because drunks do not play some more and they will mess up the flow of cards and they'll mess up your strategy you don't want to play with people who are playing crazy or splitting tens against a dealer bus card the dealer bus card being four five and six you don't want to play against people that are standing on 13 or 14 against a dealer face card a 10 or RN ace don't play with drugs don't play with people playing stupid okay as far as chips and money management what you want to do is when you first start coming into the table you want to start out with the following formula for betting chips okay here's a good betting system it's not my original system I've read it in books a lot of people use it and it works it's called a telephone number system and you'll see why it tells you how many chips to bet when you're winning okay let's assume we're playing a five-dollar blackjack table $5.00 chips the first hand that you start out at that table you're going to bet two chips two units or ten dollars if you win it remember it's very hard to win two in a row three to rolled four in a row I usually goes back and forth dealer wins one the player wins one the dealer wins one the player wins one so you want to go back down to one bit on your second hand or $5 if you win that you want to go back to two bits if you win that you're going to put another chip on you're going to go to three bets now you're up to $15 you win that you're going to put four chips on the next hand $20 if you win that you're going to put five chips down or $25 it's whatever denomination you're using it's two one two three four five of course if you lose at any time then you go back to your original bet of one unit or $5 in this case if you're playing with $25 chips you're going to bet $50 or two chips on the first ten then 25 then 50 if you win that that's 75 if you win that a hundred if you win that 125 if you win there there are times when you get into a good run and the table is working well everybody's playing basic strategy they're playing smart they're playing the right way they're doing what they should they're doubling down they're splitting they're hitting they're standing when they should and everything is flowing right you want to catch that wave that one little good run of four or five hands make your money press and take advantage of that little good luck wave and then leave the table and then go to another table and try to hit that wave again or leave if you're happy if you've doubled or tripled your money so that's a good betting system the telephone number system try it out I think you'll be happy with it so again just to summarize what you want to do to win over the long term in blackjack and have more fun and enjoy yourself and and make a profit and minimize your losses is number one you're going to learn the basic strategy table which you can find on the Internet learn it memorize it by heart make a copy stick it in your pocket you can put it on your lap some casinos will let you even put it on the table use it religiously except for those cases we don't split ace against the face card and you may or may not want to hit 16 number two don't play with drunks don't play with people that are not playing basic strategy and just playing by hunches number three ask the dealer how the table has been going number four use this betting system and I think with those tips you should be in good shape and be able to enjoy the game more and make more money so good luck something to think about

Channel: John LaRosa

Views: 53,724

Rating: 4.1619048 out of 5

Keywords: Blackjack (Playing Card Game), casino gambling, basic strategy table, blackjack odds, betting systems, card shuffling machines, blackjack tips

Id: jXDIYc4abEI

Length: 16min 56sec (1016 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 11 2014