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5 Best Tips for Winning at Blackjack. Learn Basic Strategy and stick to it. The player should always assume that the card they can’t see is a 10 and statistically, the odds are high that it is. 11 Blackjack Tips the Casinos Don't Want You to Know Bill Kaplan, co-founder of the MIT blackjack team that took Vegas for millions, has a few tricks up his sleeve. Step 1: Play at the Right Casino It is the first step to win your game, and I cannot emphasize enough on this important first step of winning at blackjack. The good thing is that it’s not hard to figure out which is the best online casino, simply pick out one that’s among the most popular. I am a professional gambling player for more than 7 years and would like to share some tips and tricks so that you would win at casino. Know the Odds of Winning. This might be a very common one but this is the one people do not think about that. They think playing blackjack would be too complicated rather than playing a slot.

One of the popular myths surrounding blackjack in casinos is that the average player can get an edge over the casino if he just plays his hands correctly. In other words, a lot of people think that you can win at blackjack just by mastering basic strategy.

But basic strategy isn’t enough to win at blackjack in most instances.

You need an additional strategy – an advantage technique – to get an actual edge over the casino in blackjack.

This might mean counting cards, but there are other ways, too. I’ve written extensively about counting cards in blackjack in the past.

But today I want to take a different approach.

Here’s how to win at blackjack WITHOUT counting cards.

The First Step to Winning at Blackjack Is Mastering Basic Strategy

In blackjack, you have a finite number of potential situations to deal with. The dealer can only have one of the following face-up cards: ace, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10.

And you can only have one of a handful of potential totals, starting with a total of 3 and going up to a total of 21.

And many of those situations offer obvious strategic decisions. You’d always stand with a total of 21, for example. It’s an automatic winner. You’ll also always stand with a total of 20. You have far too many ways to bust in this situation to ever make it worth your while to hit in that situation.

The same holds true for a lot of your smaller totals, too. Any hand totaling 11 or lower is impossible to bust, so you’ll always at least hit in that situation.

But for many hands, you must compare what you’re holding with the dealer’s face up card to determine the playing decision with the highest expected value. In a lot of these situations, your expected value is negative. Imagine having a hard total of 16 against a dealer’s face up 10, for example. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t in that situation.

But, in those situations, some plays have a lower negative expectation than others. Your job is to make the play that loses the least amount of money in the long run.

How To Win Money At Blackjack Casino Games

Luckily, basic strategy is easy to memorize and implement. When you use basic strategy for every blackjack decision, you reduce the house edge to its theoretically lowest possible number. In most casinos and under most rules, this means that the basic strategy player faces a house edge of 1% or less.

You still can’t win in the long run with a house edge of 1% or even 0.5%.

But your probability of being a winner in the short run improve dramatically.

An average blackjack player with no knowledge of basic strategy is probably giving up between 2% and 4% of their house edge.

Advantage Play Techniques and Blackjack

An advantage play technique is a way of playing a casino game that gives you an edge over the casino. The most common advantage play technique is counting cards, but that’s not your only option. You can win at blackjack without counting cards, even though it’s probably the easiest way to get an edge.

How does card counting in blackjack work?

Counting cards is just a means of roughly tracking the ratio of high cards (aces and 10s) to low cards in the deck. When the deck has a higher proportion of high cards, the player is more likely to get a blackjack. That’s a 2-card hand that totals 21, and players love this hand because it pays off at 3 to 2 odds.

Bet $100 on a hand of blackjack, get dealt a natural, and you’ll get a payout of $150.

Card counters raise the size of their bets when their probability of getting a blackjack goes up based on the count.

And counting cards isn’t hard, either.

You just subtract 1 from the count every time you see a 10 or an ace.
You add 1 to the count every time you see a card worth between 2 and 6 points.

If you’re playing in a game with multiple decks, you adjust that running count to account for the extra decks of cards in play. That’s as simple as estimating how many decks are still in the shoe and dividing the running count by that number.

Win

For example, if the running count is +8, and you estimate that there are 4 decks left in the shoe, the true count is only +2.

Why does this matter?

Because you raise your bets proportionally related to the count. You’ll bet more when the count is +8 than you would if the count was +4.

Not everyone wants to learn how to count cards, though.

You Can Win at Blackjack Without Counting Cards by Getting Lucky

The house edge in blackjack is a long-term phenomenon. In other words, your short-term results might look like anything. You’re mathematically expected to lose between 0.5% and 1% of your action at
the table in the long run.

But, in the short run, anything can happen.

So, one way to win at blackjack without counting cards is to keep your session short and walk away when you’ve won a specific amount of money. This is called having a “win goal.”

Most gamblers who use win goals set a win goal based on a percentage of their bankroll. For example, you might sit down at a $10 blackjack table with a $200 bankroll for the session. Your win goal might be 50% of that $200 – or $100. In that case, if you ever get to a point where you have $300 or more in chips, you walk away from the table and book your win.

How To Win Money At Blackjack Casinos

Since blackjack is a negative expectation game, you’ll have more losing sessions than winning sessions over time.

But, unless something weird happens, you WILL inevitably have some winning sessions.

Another Way to Win Is to Bet Really Big and Negotiate Better Rules
Don Johnson is a living example of a blackjack player who won really big at the game without counting cards. He won over $6 million on blackjack in a single evening. Here’s how he did it:

To start with, he had mastered basic strategy. Everyone who’s ever been interviewed about him said that he played perfect cards. If you want to duplicate Johnson’s success, start with mastering basic strategy.

The next thing he did was negotiate with the casino. High rollers like Johnson, who bet $10,000 or more per hand, don’t have to play by the same rules as the average casino-goer.

Casino

It’s common for high rollers to get loss rebates. This means that the casino offers a player a discount on his losses. For example, if the casino is offering a 10% discount on your losses, and you lose $100,000, you only really lose $90,000 because of the rebate.

How To Win Money At Blackjack Casino

Some casinos also give high rollers bonus money to gamble with up front just to get them started gambling. Online casinos do this all the time, but brick and mortar casinos save this kind of treatment for their higher rollers.

Don Johnson negotiated a 20% loss rebate on his action the night he won all that money in Atlantic City.

On top of that, he negotiated specific blackjack rules that reduced the house edge to a tiny percentage. They played with a hand-shuffled, 6-deck show, and the dealer was forced to stand (rather than hit) a total of soft 17.

In total, all the rules changes wound up making this blackjack game a game with a house edge of only 0.25% — making it almost an even money game.

But on top of that, because of his loss rebate/discount, he was only risking 80 cents for every dollar he stood to win.

He had to buy in for a million dollars, but he was guaranteed a 20% discount on his first $500,000 in losses. Also, he wasn’t required to lose the entire million. He could lose the $500,000, quit, and get his $100,000 rebate – leaving him with “only” a $400,000 loss.

On the other hand, if he started winning – which he did – he could just keep playing.

And that’s how he won over $6 million without counting cards.

Other Advantage Techniques in Blackjack

Counting cards isn’t the only strategy for getting an edge at the game of blackjack. Advantage players use other techniques, some of which are well-known.

Dealer tells is one of these techniques. This describes the tendency that a dealer has to give some kind of physical clue after looking at his or her down card. The savvy blackjack player can then adjust his decisions based on the information he gleaned from the dealer tell.

Shuffle tracking is another advantage technique. The idea is that even though decks of cards get shuffled and randomized, they don’t get completely randomized.

If you can keep up with clusters of cards that are heavy with 10s and aces, you can raise the size of your bets when the dealer gets close to using those cards.

Money

Hole carding is similar to dealer tells. It’s when a dealer accidentally reveals his actual down card when he looks at it to check for blackjack. The advantage of knowing which 2 cards the dealer has is obvious from a strategic perspective.

Other advantage play techniques exist that advantage players don’t share in public, too.

Conclusion

Counting cards is definitely the easiest way to win at blackjack, but you can without this technique. It’s harder to do, though, and I recommend learning to count cards if you’re serious about becoming a blackjack winner.

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How to win at Blackjack - and why most players don't!

How To Win Money At Blackjack Casino No Deposit

Players who are new to Blackjack often think that the object of the game is to get a points total as close to twenty one as possible. It isn't.
Thinking like this has led many an unsuspecting gambler into losing their entire bankroll. The simple fact is that the object of Blackjack is not to get twenty one, but to beat the dealer - and you can do this with a points total of nineteen, fifteen or even twelve.

The lowest house edge

Like all casino games, the rules of Blackjack favour the house in the long run. Although the house edge in Blackjack is the lowest of all casino games (around 0.6%) it still means that the casino expects to make an overall profit from Blackjack players. Most of this will come from those trying to get twenty one!
But although it may seem that the dealer has the advantage, in certain circumstances the player has the edge.
This is because you are free to play your hands any way you like. You can decide to Hit or Stand on any points total. The dealer is not free. He has to abide by a set of house rules that dictate whether he Stands or takes another card. These rules are set up to ensure the house edge in the long run, but they don't always work in the dealer's favour in every game.
(NB There are numerous Blackjack variations, but for the purpose of this article we'll assume you're playing one of the versions that has the standard rule that the dealer must stand on seventeen.)

How to win with just 13 points

there aren't many beginners out there who would think of standing on thirteen, as if there's something shameful about winning on such a low score

Consider the situation: you have a points total of thirteen and the dealer has a five showing. You know he's going to Hit the five because the House rules dictate that. His next card is always going to leave him on a points total less than seventeen, so you know he'll have to take another card after that. Even if his next card was an eight, nine, ten (or picture card) or Ace, meaning he had a higher total than you, he couldn't stand - he'd have to take another card, increasing the chance of him going bust (over 21).

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If you thought that Blackjack was about you getting twenty one, you'd be tempted to Hit your thirteen, hoping for an eight. But you could just as easily get a nine or ten value card and go bust. Now, knowing that you just have to beat the dealer and that taking two more cards means that he has a fairly high chance of going bust, you'd Stand on thirteen.
I can guarantee there aren't many beginners out there who would think of standing on thirteen, as if there's something shameful about winning on such a low score, but I can also guarantee that there are thousands of successful Blackjack players who do!
Of course, your decisions are never going to be completely accurate as you can only see one of the dealer's cards, but basic probability and a little bit of intuition will give you an indication as to his total.

Adopt the best strategy

Winning at Blackjack, then, is a simple matter of calculated risk. Given your total and the dealer's shown card, what is the most likely result that can occur? The answer, as always, is: it depends. But in Blackjack, the variables are much less than for games such as Roulette and the best strategy can be predicted.
Numerous Blackjack strategy cards exist that show you what you should do under every possible combination of your hand and the dealer's face up card. Learning these should be your ultimate aim if you want to be a winning Blackjack player.
If you're relatively new to the game, you may find these cards a little daunting. That's why I've devised a simple 3-stage Blackjack strategy that will take you from beginner to high stakes Blackjack player with the minimum of fuss.
So forget twenty one, and remember - to win at Blackjack all you have to do is beat the dealer!