STREETWISE Blackjack

Money for Nothing

In a related matter, a few Sundays ago, I was attempting to assist a novice sports bettor comprehend some handicapping intricacies. As one who perennially seeks value, I customarily bet on underdogs, almost never on favorites. Gary has taken mental notes from my lessons and applied them, but much to my horror, decided that day to bet every baseball underdog across the board. I was appalled. I tried to explain there was handicapping involved; you couldn't blindly bet every game. I used the notion that if one looks at a sport at the end of a season, in most cases, you'll find that underdogs and favorites have almost split the winning ticket, fifty-fifty. That's how superior the oddsmakers are at performing their work.

To achieve a winning percentage in sports betting, one must beat the line or spread greater than 52.4 percent. In reality, some amount of handicapping -- the act of comparing past performance to future expectationsãis involved. If one bets across the board, blindly, one shouldn't hope to win. There are simply too many games with too many chances things can go awry. When informed he needed to be more selective, Gary said, "That's too much like work!"

I hear the same song concerning blackjack. People want to win but don't want to take some necessary steps to get there -- it's too much like work. My rhetorical answer is, "Why do you think the casinos win so often? Do you think they're all that lucky?" Recently, a man asked me for a complex booklet filled with a count's indices. The word strategy was part of the title, so he assumed hidden amongst the myriad charts and graphs filled with those bothersome numbers would be a summation, or and end run around them. Like most, he wanted to win without extending much effort -- he didn't want to be troubled with the math. He wanted a simplified formula for success.

Usually, anything worth doing requires some effort. And if it were that easy for players to win, casinos wouldn't flourish. Blackjack happens to be a deceptively difficult pastime masquerading as an easy game. Who wants to mess around with all of those numbers? The winners, that's who!

Trillions, even quadrillions of computer simulations after the fact have proven Basic Strategy works. Yes, Virginia, there is a better way to play the game. No guarantees, but a very useful tool in the player's arsenal. If you were to go hiking, you'd take some vital equipment -- water, the right clothing and footgear, maps, etc. You need to outfit yourself accordingly for a casino excursion. In the casino sense, your water or life-sustaining substance might be your bankrollãwithout it you dry up, lifeless. Your map is a Basic Strategy chart or set of count indices, it depends on how far you want to trek, how high you want to climb.

Lacking this equipment, you will be wandering through the desert, unprepared for the environment and volatile conditions. Like Gary the sports bettor above, do you play every hand the same way? Bet the same amount each hand? You don't if you want some measure of success! It is the simple reason casino personnel fear card counters like nothing else in the gambling universe -- they understand counters comprehend when there are true opportunities and seize the advantage by betting larger sums. They turn a game with a negative expectation for the player into one that is positive.

The fact of the matter is that there are so few who have mastered this art the proportion is overwhelmingly on the casino's side. Blackjack is unlike any other casino game, the only one the casinos truly sweat. Casino executives know most players lose, yet they deploy squadrons of employees and spend millions on services and high tech equipment to deter a relatively small percentage of counters. They usually win the battle because it all comes back to this simple truth -- most folks want to get paid handsomely for exerting a minimal effort. As long as this goes on, the casinos will reap rewards. No one ever got burned from knowing too much math!