| You don’t play blackjack in a vacuum, though. First of all, you won’t find many one-deck blackjack games offering these favorable rules. For example, the dealer didn’t stand on soft 17 in this game, which gave a 0.2% edge back to the house. Pretty much every casino offering single-deck blackjack employs this sort of trade-off. If the casino offers both one-deck and multi-deck games, the rules in the one-deck game will be less favorable, to compensate for the player’s single-deck edge. Anyway, I started out betting $15 a hand, which was a bit more than the other five players in the game. This got me noticed right away, which is good if you’re seeking out comps and bad if you’re counting cards. With six players in the game, the dealer could only deal two rounds before reshuffling. So I usually got to see about 20 cards and then had to make whatever counting decisions I was to make, based on those 20 cards. Ten minutes into the game, the first round contained an impressive assortment of fours, fives and sixes; so many little cards came out that I suspected the dealer wouldn’t deal another round before shuffling—a major problem for the non-counter. You see, if lots of little cards have come out, the deck becomes player-favorable, because with lots of tens and aces left, blackjacks happen more frequently. Because the house merely wins when it gets a blackjack, but you win 1.5 times your bet when you get one, exchanging blackjacks with the house is very profitable. Also, because the dealer must hit stiff hands (12, 13, 14, 15 and 16), while you can exercise strategy and stand with these bustable hands, an excess of tens in the deck means the dealer will be busting more often. As a result, this "little card" first round meant a very favorable situation for all players, even if they weren’t counting and didn’t realize their advantage. So where’s the problem? If the house is counting—and in one-deck games, it often is—the house recognizes this favorable situation and reshuffles. So the players—whether they are counters or not—never get to face the more favorable situations. They get to play in an even game, or an unfavorable one, but not a favorable one. In this case, though, it was a $2 table and most people were betting small, so the dealer went ahead and prepared to deal the next round. As soon as I realized I was going to get a hand at this favorable count, I increased my bet from $15 to $50. The dealer looked over her shoulder to the floorman, who took a sudden interest in the game, and I knew I’d been "busted." It had taken exactly one hand, and exactly one increased bet (and a not hugely increased bet, at that), for the house to suspect they had a real player in the game. The hand was dealt out, and my 17 lost to the dealer’s 20 (an important lesson for you would-be counters: just because you’ve become a tiny favorite doesn’t mean you’re going to win!). Those of you who have read my book, Casino Gambling the Smart Way, probably came across a section in the introduction where I related the story of how the book’s name got changed by the publisher. I’d wanted "Casino Self Defense" for the title, the publisher wanted something that emphasized winning, and CGTSW was the compromise at which we arrived. |
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