Category: Top Stories

Ace-Neutralised/Reckoned – In counting systems that are Ace-Neutralised, any ace will have a value of zero applied to it, and will effectively be discounted. In contrast, Ace-Reckoned systems will assign those aces a negative number. This makes Ace-Neutralised strategies more efficient to calculate, but such systems do have other problems. If you’re playing with multiple decks and want to calculate a proper true count, you’ll need to keep a separate count of the number of aces dealt if you’re using an Ace-Neutralised system.

Action  – This refers to the total amount of money bet

Basic Strategy – This is the theoretical ‘optimum’ way to play Blackjack. Experts will argue about exactly which card to play, but you can keep the house edge to a minimum by sticking to Basic Strategy. (Also see ‘Matrix’)

Blacks – Alternative term for $100 chips, the colour of which tends to be black

Burn Card – After a dealer has shuffled the cards, they may remove the top card before dealing – this top card is the ‘Burn Card’

Cage (or Cashier’s Cage) – The area in a casino where players go to redeem chips

Cold – A player currently experiencing a significant losing streak

Counting System – Counting systems attach values to different cards to determine when there may be lots of high or low cards left. The more high cards that are left to be dealt, the greater the chance that the player will draw a Blackjack – bringing with it a juicy payout, typically of 3:2. (Also see ‘Positive Count’)

Discard Rack – This plastic tray is used to store cards that have been used or dealt. It’s transparent, so card counters can sometimes use it to estimate how many decks have been dealt

Draws the Paint – If you hit and draw a card with a value of Ten, this is known as ‘Drawing the Paint’

Eighty-Six – In casinos, somebody who has been barred has been ‘Eighty-Sixed’. The phrase was originally used in restaurants and bars, and meant something that had been taken off the menu or counter – Article 86 of the New York Liquor Code governs those situations where liquor should be withheld.

Face – Refers to any card that’s a Jack, Queen or King.

Firing – The placing of large sums of money

First Base – Where there are multiple players, the one sitting to the dealer’s left will have their cards dealt first. This player or seat is known as the ‘First Base’. (Also see ‘Third Base’ and ‘Under the Gun’)

Front-Loading – This refers to stealing a look at the dealer’s Hole Card as it’s being tucked underneath the Up Card

Grinder – A player who always puts down small bets

Hi-Lo – As outlined by Edward O. Thorp in his classic book Beat The Dealer, the Hi-Low system is one of the simplest and easiest of counting systems. The 2-5 cards are assigned a value of +1, and the Ten-Ace cards a value of -1. (6-9 are given no value.) The bigger the score gets, the greater the likelihood that there’ll be some high cards coming up.

Hole Card – The dealer has two cards, one face up and one face down. The card that’s left face down until the player hands have been completed is called the Hole Card. (Also see ‘Hole Card’)

Loaded Deck – This is a deck that has had extra cards inserted in order to mislead onlookers

Matrix – A chart based on Basic Strategy that shows you what to play in any situation

Mechanic  – Somebody who’s highly skilled at manipulating the skills. This is often associated with some kind of cheating

Natural – Alternative term for a Blackjack – a hand containing an Ace and any Ten-value card.

Paint – Alternative name for a picture card (Jack, Queen or King)

Pat Hand – A Blackjack hand with a value of at least 17 points

Penetration – This refers to the depth of any card deal

Positive Count – In card counting, if the remaining decks appear to have a greater proportion of high-value cards, this is known as a Positive Count

Push – Both the dealer and the player draw a hand of the same value. Casinos would generally rule this to be a tie

RoR – This means Risk of Ruin, and tells you how likely you are to lose your entire bankroll

Shill – A player employed by the casino who tries to incite interest and draw players to the table

Shuffle-Tracking – Following specific cards as they get shuffled so that you can tell when they’re likely to come up again

Snapper – A Blackjack consisting of an Ace and a Ten

Steaming – Raising your bets in order to chase your losses

Ten Rich/Poor – A deck with either a higher proportion of tens (Ten Rich) or a lower proportion of tens (Ten Poor)

Third Base – Where there are multiple players, the one sitting to the dealer’s right will have their cards dealt last of all. This player or seat is known as the ‘Third Base’. (Also see ‘First Base’)

Toke – A tip given to the dealer

True Count – Counting systems are very effective at calculating the likelihood of high or low cards being turned up. But the more decks are being used, the more distorted the count will become. A True Count will adjust the running total to reflect the number of decks being used.

Under the Gun – The player who has to go first in a betting round. (Also see ‘First Base’)

Up Card – The dealer has two cards, one face up and one face down. The card that’s face up is called the Up Card. (Also see ‘Hole Card’)

Weight – In a card counting system, the Weight refers to the value assigned to a card

Wonging – Named after the legendary card counter Stanford Wong, this practice refers to only placing bets when there’s a Positive Count

1. The name ‘Blackjack’ was coined by American casinos. Originally, if you drew the Ace of Spades along with either the Jack of Spades or the Jack of Clubs, this was referred to as a ‘Blackjack’, and entitled you to a payout of 10 to 1. The offer was dropped once it had drawn in considerable crowds, but the name remains

2. French players often refer to Blackjack as Vingt-et-un. A Spanish version, Ventiuna, is referred to as early as 1602, in a book by Miguel de Cervantes (most famous for Don Quixote).

3. The ‘shoe’ that is used to store cards in baccarat originated in Cuba in the 1950s. Many of the Cuban dealers were very poor, and casino owners suspected they were susceptible to cheating – particularly through slipping players a lucky card or two in return for a generous tip. The ‘shoe’ was devised so that cards would be hidden inside. Combined with an increase in the number of decks to four, this helped eliminate dealer cheating, and led to a significant increase in house takings.

4. The year 2000 saw the launch of the first Continuous Shuffling Machine (CSM). Known as ‘The King’, devices like this one became widespread as casino bosses looked to repel card counters. They also remove the need for dealers to waste time shuffling cards, increasing the rate at which hands are played by as much as 40%.

5. New cards often aren’t truly random. The 10-point cards will be grouped together in each pack, and one shuffle isn’t enough to completely break up this arrangement. Only with at least two shuffles will the cards be randomly distributed.

6. Discarded cards are placed in a translucent red tray. Combined with special tinted glasses, this makes it easier for dealers and security teams to spot cards that have been daubed with inks or daubs.

7. Blackjack has its own hall of fame, at the Barona Casino in San Diego, California. None of the members of this esteemed club are allowed to play at the casino there. They do get free food and drinks for life, though!

8. The game has frequently been banned. It became popular in the USA only after being banned in France during the French Revolution. It was then banned in the USA in the 19th century, and only became legal again in the 1930s.

9. Blackjack is famous for its incredible low edge – 0.5%, with some players claiming this can be brought down to almost 0.4% – making it the most player-friendly casino game. But don’t be deceived by this figure, as you need a really developed style of play to achieve this low percentage – for most players, the house edge will be very much wider.

10. Getting a blackjack should pay you 3:2. This is an important part of eroding the house edge, so make sure the game isn’t fobbing you off with 1:1 blackjack payouts.

11. The more decks there are, the higher the house edge becomes. That rule can be deceptive though. Some casinos are starting to offer a variant called Single Deck 6:5 Blackjack. This lures players in with the promise of only having one deck to handle, but it compensates with poor payouts that result in the house edge rising to 1.6% or more.

12. The dealer goes last. This is a critical advantage that accounts for the dealer winning 48% of the time, while a player will win only 44% of the time.

13. The average hand for the dealer is just above 18. It pays, therefore, to be a little aggressive and to try and get a score in excess of this.

14. Mathematically, 16 is the worst hand in the game. Those hands with lower scores have a smaller chance of making you go bust, while those hands with higher scores have a greater chance of winning outright.

15. It’s unsurprising that 21 is the best hand, followed by 20. Less predictable, though, is that the third best hand is not 19, but 11. That’s because you can hit once without running the risk of going bust, but still have a very good chance of making up an extremely strong hand. With one more card, you have a 46.2% chance of getting 19 or more, and a 30.8% chance of securing an unassailable 21.

16. When the dealer has between a 2 and a 6, there’s a 35-42% chance that they’ll go bust trying to set a good score. This figure falls to just 23-26% for cards between 7 and 10, and to a mere 17% when the dealer has an ace.

17. Check the rules very carefully. Look for games where the dealer must always stand on 17. Some casinos allow dealers to hit if they have a soft 17 (A6, for instance). This gives the casino more of an edge, so steer clear of those games. Ensure you know the minimum and maximum bids.

18. Blackjack’s suitability for card counting has made it much loved with those trying to defeat the house edge. Card counting means that you assign values to different cards. By looking at which cards are being turned up, and doing some running calculations in your head, you can get an idea of whether there are lots of high cards or lots of low cards left. At certain times, this knowledge gives you a significant advantage, allowing you to reverse the 0.5% house edge. There are lots of card counting techniques, but the easiest revolve around assigning cards values of -1, 0, or +1. Most of the successful card counters work in teams, allowing them to avoid detection for longer. The edge gained by the best teams is said to be in the range of 2-4%.

19. Edward O Thorp turned the gambling world on its head in 1962 with the publication of Beat the Dealer. This work showed that you could overturn the odds and beat the game, with skill. It would inspire the legendary Lawrence Revere to create his own card counting strategies, and these proved so effective that Thorp returned the favour by insisting on Revere’s techniques being featured in the subsequent reprint of Beat the Dealer. Thorp has since gone on to be a very successful hedge fund manager.

20. Al Francesco digested the card counting techniques of Thorp and Revere, but became disillusioned after getting barred from casino after casino. It was then that he came up with the concept of team play, putting together seven-strong teams where six players would operate as ‘counters’, sending a signal to the ‘Big Player’ when a particular table seemed to have a particularly significant number of high or low cards left. He and his team were highly successful for six years, until Ken Uston’s 1977 bestseller, The Big Player, unveiled all their secrets. Subsequent big name card counting teams all followed the basic rules set down by Francesco.

21. Perhaps the most famous card counting team, the MIT Blackjack Team, consisted of students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Initially unsuccessful, the team was transformed after Bill Kaplan joined – he was invited to come along after a chance encounter in a restaurant, when one of the members happened to overhear Kaplan telling a friend about his years of card counting. Kaplan introduced new discipline and rigour, and eliminated the numerous errrors that had plagued the team to that point. They would go on to be hugely successful, taking considerable sums over the course of the 1980s.

22. Card counting isn’t illegal, but British casinos reserve the right to refuse to let you play. Trespassing on Private Property is always available if you’re unwanted.

23. Casinos now use multiple decks and regular shuffles (often with the help of an automatic device), so card counting is almost impossible. Many online games also seem to preclude it, with their use of Random Number Generators in place of real cards. It’s possible that the emergence of Live Dealer games could bring back card counting, although it seems hard to believe casinos won’t thwart these ambitions with more decks and more shuffling.

24. The seats around the dealer are called bases. The one nearest to the dealer is First Base, and the one furthest away is Third Base. Third Base gives card counters the best chances of success.

25. In general play, stand on low hands of 12/13, if the dealer has a 6 or lower – they’ll probably go bust trying to chase your score. If the dealer has 7 or more, they have improved chances of winning, so you need to be aggressive yourself. This is particularly true if the dealer has an Ace or a card with a value of 10.

26. You need to take advantage of the double down option, but only when the odds are in your favour. Use it only when the dealer has a 6 or lower, and you either have A6 or A7, or your hand is worth between 9 and 11. If you have an 11, you can allow the dealer to have as much as 8.

27. Splitting should also be utilised. Always split 7s, 8s and Aces. 2s up to 6s are low enough that you should be looking to draw again rather than split, while 9-10 will be good enough as they are to win.

28. Always turn down Insurance. The odds simply don’t pay out over time, as you’re effectively breaking even on a 30.8% chance.

29. Don’t bother with side bets. These are there to give a significant edge to the house.

30. There are some great apps that allow you to perfect and fine-tune your basic play. Try Blackjack MH (Apple) or BlackJack 21 (Android).

Every so often, an innovation comes along that burns its way through the gambling industry like wildfire. The Live Dealer option has had just such an effect in recent years, injecting excitement and glamour – and even a touch of increased security – into a previously rather lonely and joyless gaming experience. Here we’ll look at what exactly Live Dealer is, and whether it’s all that it’s cracked up to be. But first, let’s go back and look at what it’s replacing.

RNGs

Initially, many casino sites relied on an RNG (Random Number Generator) to pick cards at random. Technically, these sites are monitored very closely, and it’s not possible for the house to cheat the player with manipulated numbers. In reality, it’s doubtful whether the oversight extends to much more than looking at the percentages and making sure that, overall, everything’s above board. That certainly doesn’t preclude a casino from massaging the numbers at key points, or from targeting a particular player. It’s also fair to say that, while the graphics have become fairly slick in recent years, you’re still very much aware that you’re playing a computer simulation. It’s you against the machine and, for many players, that lack of a human presence makes the whole experience feel somewhat downbeat.

That’s not to say that RNGs aren’t without their charms. Unlike the situation in a casino, you’re the only person playing. Therefore, the pace of the game can be adjusted to suit you. If you want to remove all the bells and whistles, and play a dozen hands a minute, you can. On the other hand, if you want to relax and deliberate (perhaps over a beer), you can do it that way too. The RNG is all about you in so many ways. And that’s both its strength and its downfall.

Live Dealer

A Live Dealer game, on the other hand, does away with (at least part of) the computer interface. Instead, you lock into a live video stream of a dealer (quite frequently female and highly attractive!), and watch the cards being dealt out in front of you. The experience suddenly feels a lot more real, especially if you get to play alongside other live players, joining in with their trials and tribulations. Some platforms even allow you to talk directly to the dealer and (possibly) the other players. It’s this sense of being part of something that makes Live Dealer a great option for many people. There’s also a sense of greater trust, as you see the cards being dealt in front of you, so the game has to be more trustworthy. Right? Well, we’ll come back to that one in due course..

Live Dealer games do offer considerably more in terms of pressure. You’re always aware that you’re being asked to make a decision, and the sense that other people are waiting for you can ratchet up the tension. This, of course, is one of the aspects that makes Live Dealer a more exciting experience. It could, though, make it less enjoyable for some players. You also have to go at a fixed pace, so you can’t cut down on the options in order to speed things up. There’s little doubt, though, that many see Live Dealer as a more attractive way of playing the game.

Smoke and Mirrors

Not that things are necessarily as they seem to be on the surface. Although it appears that the live videofeed is coming directly from a real casino, in most cases the stream is beamed from a custom-made set. There are exceptions, and Dublinbet’s feed, for instance, is set in a genuine location – Fitzwilliam’s Casino and Card Club in Ireland. As a rule, though, the casinos are artificial. That’s done essentially for practical reasons. The multiple cameras and OCR technology used to display and read cards would be hard to accommodate in a real casino. It’s easier to light properly, and there’s no chance that the filming can disrupt players who are physically present.

It’s also worth remembering that when you play Live Dealer games, the stream is usually coming from a third party (the platform provider). If you’re betting with William Hill, Bet365, Betfair or BetFred, for instance, the stream will probably be provided by Playtech. 888, Paddy Power and Unibet use the Evolution platform. Other names include MicroGaming, CWC, and Vuetec. This use of other companies isn’t as strange as it might seem, as most casino software used by online sites has been provided by a third party – worth considering next time you shout at your betting site after a string of bad cards. The use of third party streams does, though, throw up the peculiar situation where you might be playing alongside people from another site completely – so William Hill customers, for instance, could find themselves swapping battle scars with a player from B365, for instance. Alternatively, it might explain why, occasionally, you’ll end up with the same dealer you saw earlier in the day, even though you’ve switched to another site in the meantime.

Trust is the Thing

So how trustworthy are these Live Dealer games? For Blackjack players, that’s a particularly pertinent question, since this game is prime turf for card counting. RNGs tend to throw out cards at random, so there’s little chance that you can count the number of cards and try and predict what might be coming up. On the other hand, Live Dealers are drawing from a proper pack so, theoretically, a long run of low cards will suggest that some higher ones are due imminently – and vice versa. The problem is, you can’t guarantee this. Decks are generally changed at regular intervals, and often you can’t tell from the filming whether a deck has been altered or not. Casinos don’t see it as being in their interests to entertain card counters, so they’re quick to make it difficult, if not impossible, for such systems to work. A few players have claimed victory here, but generally, the consensus is that card counting won’t work, even with Live Dealer games.

The games do, undoubtedly, have higher levels of trust associated with them. Live video isn’t impossible to ‘fix’ – multiple outcomes could be videoed, and then dropped in to suit the situation. However, it is undoubtedly more time consuming to fiddle than a simple RNG. And because the same feeds are used for multiple players, it would be very difficult indeed to target a particular player. Given that casino games generally have a built-in edge in any case, it seems highly unlikely that casino sites and platform providers are colluding to cheat specific players. In truth, the Live Dealer option is probably the best for the sceptical gambler believing the sites are out to rob them of their money.

Is Live Dealer the Future?

The idea of the Live Dealer is unlikely to go away, although it will undoubtedly evolve. The video will become higher resolution, and as new user-input devices and Augmented Reality techniques are developed, the entire experience will become more natural to the feel, and more realistic. For Blackjack players looking for the ultimate online kick, that can only be a good thing.