2008 - Blackjack Apprenticeship

Archive: 2008

  1. Can you beat Blackjack with Card Counting in Atlantic City?

    Comments Off on Can you beat Blackjack with Card Counting in Atlantic City?

    I received this message recently from a member of our forum:

    “””can I use your card counting system in Atlantic city? what is the difference between AC and Vegas? does it have any effect in winning?”

    Simply put: Yes. You can use our system in Atlantic City, Vegas, Reno, Tahoe, and anywhere else that you can find a decent blackjack game. Better yet, we HAVE used our system all over the US and even in Canada.

    Card Counting in Atlantic City

    So what’s the main difference between AC and Vegas? Besides one being on the ocean and the other being in a desert, the main difference between the two is the rules to the games you’ll find. In AC, you won’t find any games offering Surrender and rarely offering Re-splitting of Aces. Also, in AC, you can only split a pair up to 3 hands, as opposed to 4 hands. This will lower your overall EV slightly. But AC still offers a very beatable game. Heck, all this talk about AC is making me miss the boardwalk and smell of the AC casinos!

    PS.  If you’re wanting to learn how to be a professional card counter, our advice is to start with the Video Course. It contains the exact training we used to train players for our multi-million dollar winning Blackjack team.

    by Colin Jones

  2. How much does Penetration really matter?

    7 Comments

    Colin_avatar_1406222057I recently received this question from a member of our website:

    “hey can you explain the importance of deck penetration and if there is any change in strategy for different penetration. Thanks, love the site!”

    Member, thanks for asking, because deck penetration is incredibly important. First off, I’m going to assume that we’re all mature enough to avoid the jokes pertaining to the obvious sexual innuendo regarding “penetration”.

    In the world of blackjack, “penetration”, or “deck penetration”, is the amount of cards that the dealer cuts off, relative to the cards dealt out. In the first several months of card counting I gave no attention to deck penetration. I paid attention to the rules and the table minimum. That was it. Then, after reading “Burning the Tables in Las Vegas” by Ian Andersen, I realized that I should try to find games with better penetration. But it was still probably the third or fourth most important factor in my mind.

    As I’ve gotten more familiar with the math of the game, and as I have spent more time with simulation software, I’ve realized that deck penetration is drastically undervalued. People think that the main ways to make more money at card counting are to bet more and to play games with better rules.  Did you know that you can add much more value by finding a game with 10% better penetration than by betting 10% more on high counts. Let’s say you’re using a 1-10 bet spread. Now, on a typical game, you’d add around 10-15% to your EV by betting 10% more on all positive true counts. On that same game, if you get 10% better penetration, you’re going to add 40-60% to your EV.

    IMAG0650And that’s not where the benefits end with improved Penetration. The fewer cards that they cut off, the more of a sure thing that game becomes. One of the reasons I don’t play games with poor penetration is because it would take so many hours to overcome variance, it’s not worth the risk.  However, as the penetration gets better, the number of hours necessary to reach the “long run” becomes less and less. I typically won’t touch a six deck shoe game with more than 2 decks cut off.

    So next time you head out to a casino, pay careful attention to how many cards they cut off the back of the shoe before dealing out the deck. It often varies from dealer to dealer, so stick to those dealers that offer better penetration. It’ll take fewer hours to guarantee a profit, and your $/hr will skyrocket!

    Deck penetration is just ONE of the things you need to understand to beat blackjack. Start our FREE Card-Counting Mini-Course to gain the skills necessary to (legally) beat blackjack for profit…

  3. Question from Katie: Can Casinos Hurt You?

    5 Comments

    This week I got this letter from our friend and member Katie:

    “When you count cards at a casino, are the casino employers (Backroom people, ect.) allowed to use physical force against you if they find you counting? I’m not talking throwing you out kind of force, but like breaking your hands, cutting off your fingers, leaving you in a hole in the desert to die force. My father said they still do this in places like Vegas but I told him that they were probably not allowed to use that sort of force against anyone, even if it is on private property. My mother said the same thing. I would like to know what they would do to you if you were caught and the options available as a punishment (Barred from the casino, Backroom, ect.) Thank you for your time.”

    Well Katie, I’m glad you asked. First of all let’s get some perspective here. Most casino surveillance look like this:

    casinosur-copy.jpg

    Instead of being armed with baseball bats and brass knuckles they are armed with betamax VCRs and donuts.

    Now there two things I’m going to do to explain this little concept. The first is to talk about the nature of giant corporations.

    A long time ago Vegas (and all other casinos) were run by mobsters and crime families. Nowadays they are owned by big giant corporations. Now in the “good ol days” the mob was the law. If you were counting cards or cheating or ate at the wrong pizza parlor you would find yourself buried in the desert or wearing concrete shoes at the bottom of the river. Well, the times have changed. Now we have the equivalent of Home Depot, Disney and MGM owning casinos.

    So what does this mean? If word gets out that they are breaking in people’s faces or chopping off their fingers, or hell, segregating people in wheelchairs, the ACLU and association of handicapped card counters will sue their asses and they will be in the newspapers and everyone will stop buying frappuccinos or going to Disneyland or whatever the company is trying to sell and they will lose hundreds of millions of $dollars$. All for what? Some card counter that cost them 2 or 20k? Doesn’t really add up.

    So, more likely, what you will get is some guy in some corporate suit that is much more scared of you than you are of him saying “…uhhh excuse me sir/mam…c..c…c…cccould you please stop playing blackjack cause if you don’t I could lose my job.”

    Here’s the second thing to think about. A casino security guard has no more power than the checker at Walmart. These people are not God, they are not the president, they’re not even cops . So imagine me walking up to you at Walmart and saying “Show me your ID, follow me to some backroom or I’m going to punch you in the face and put handcuffs on you.” You would (or at least you should) say “Shut up you idiot, I’m an American Citizen and this isn’t the wild west. If you look at me again I’m going to sue you for sexual harassment or emotionally scarring me!!!”

    Whatever, you get the idea. A lot of people think that because they have some shiny piece of metal that the casino gives them and call it a badge you have to listen to what they say or obey them. Keep in mind you are an American citizen and they are too. Nothing more, nothing less. You have as many rights to punch them in the face and break their knee caps as they do, which, unless it is self-defense, is nil.

    A few final notes. Believe it or not, not all security guards are screened for their IQ, and there are even security guards that have not passed the bar exam, which means the 10 cent legal rundown that I just gave you might seem like foreign policy Al Qaeda nonsense to them. Awesome, let them handcuff you and take you to the ground. Just make sure it is on video camera and let your lawyer explain to the judge why his client does not like to be assaulted and detained and physically and emotionally abused in public (but for 100k his client is willing to forget it ever happened).

    Also, watch out on Indian Reservations. Technically they are what is called a “sovereign nation”, which means you are no longer in America. So, you are subject to their laws or lack of them. I always take extra care when in these situation, but remember that these places are still not run by the mob, and they are still the equivalent of giant corporations. Newspaper headlines showing them chopping off customers fingers is not good for business. In all my years of card counting I have had one “bad” experience and I wrote about it here.

    Finally, what should you to do to avoid situations like this? If you are approached by security, declare “I am going to cash out my chips and leave the property.” If they ask you to follow them declare again very loudly “I want to leave the property.” Unless they are accusing you of cheating (which you can sue them for later) they are not allowed to detain you.

    Then you, (now listen carefully), you put your hands by your side and you walk towards the cage or exit in full site of all video cameras. The last thing you need is to give them an excuse where they can say we handcuffed him in self-defense because he pushed us or whatever.

    So, Katie, tell your parents to rest assured that card counting is really quite safe. You are much more likely to get a hex put on you by the degenerate Asian lady sitting next to you for stealing her blackjack then getting your fingers cut off.

    Next week, I will post on how to defend and counter-spell against the hex.

  4. Why the differences in Basic Strategy?

    8 Comments
    UPDATE: Download our blackjack basic strategy chart here!

    If you want to play blackjack right, and have any chance of taking the casino’s money, you must learn basic strategy! But if you’ve started poking around the internet, you may have noticed that different basic strategy charts have slight differences.

    What the heck? Do the BJA guys not know what they’re talking about?

    Rest assured, we would never lead you astray.

    Basic strategy represents the default optimal strategy for every hand of blackjack. The problem with basic strategy for blackjack is that it depends on the rules of the game you’re playing. 99% of the time, the difference in strategy centers around one simple, but very important rule: Does the dealer HIT or STAND when they have a Soft 17? If the dealer stays when they have a soft 17 (S17), you are going to treat a few hands differently than if the dealer will hit until they have a hard 17 or better (H17). There are really only a few hands that are played differently depending on the game: A,8 versus 6; 11 versus A; A,7 versus 2.

    We recommend learning ONE basic strategy chart, and ours is based off of an “H17” game. This is by far the most common rule variation offered. And if you are serious about beating blackjack, then you will want to learn card counting. And a card counter will learn a handful of “deviations” from basic strategy. Those deviation charts (which we teach to our Members), will be based off of the specific game you will be playing, whether it’s H17 or S17.

    Now, if you want to know whether you’re playing an H17 or S17 game, here’s how:

    Look at the blackjack felt, and it will either say, “Dealer must draw to 16 and stand on all 17s” for S17, or “Dealer must Hit Soft 17” for H17.

    Stand 17 Table Felt

    Hit 17 Table Felt

    If you start practicing Basic Strategy with our Blackjack Training Drills, know that it’s based off of H17 Basic Strategy (just like our charts).