Jan
24
As a resident of Vegas, and frequent blackjack player, it was years before I ever bothered to learn basic strategy. I would lay down my money at the blackjack table and play using a rudimentary sense of the rules and a weak instinct for “the right move.” Over the years, I picked up basic strategy by playing next to players who were more disciplined and better educated at winning than I was. So before I ever picked up a book on basic strategy, I had a decent sense of how it worked.
Of course, if I had known more (a lot more) about strategy for blackjack in general, I would have kept better track of how I played, and the results so that I could compare when I first started to later, when I was playing like a pro. There is no question that I could have benefited from playing with basic strategy from the beginning.
It’s amazing, though, how many people start playing just like me. Players with no interest in understanding the house edge or how to play the game right. To many casual players, it is just a game and one they expect to lose. Some people look at gambling as an entertainment, and that means accepting that every hand is a gamble. Some know enough to just accept steep house odds but consider it almost like an “entertainment tax.” You pay a premium in the casino restaurants, at the shows and in their gift shops, so why not at the blackjack table?
The mystique of blackjack has always been the fact that you can beat the house. Basic strategy is, simply put, a way to reduce the house edge to less than 1%, if played correctly and consistently on every hand. And what makes it more remarkable is that you don’t need to know any math (except addition) and you don’t need to understand anything about probability. All of the calculation has been done for you. All you have to do is memorize the right move, and you are automatically positioning yourself to have the best chance to win at 21.
It is a powerful notion that basic strategy works for anyone, including the expert blackjack player and the amateur who just turned 21 years old and is going to Las Vegas for his first ever trip. It’s an idea that is popularized by feature films and sensational non-fiction accounts and perpetuated by merchants selling so-called unbeatable blackjack systems. The hype convinces people they that can win too. The lure of big money and walking away from the casino a winner is irresistible to some people. And those people find themselves in the casino with just enough know-how to convince themselves they can win, and they don’t. What happened?
Seasoned players know that it takes more than basic strategy to really win at blackjack. That means, in addition to learning the right play, you have to know how to bet high when the cards are in your favor, and learn to calculate whether the cards are running hot or cold. Successful professional players use a combination of basic strategy, counting cards and betting strategy in order to win, and even then, they are subject to up and down runs of the cards. And most importantly, the best players know when to leave the table have the will power to get up and go. They take blackjack very seriously and play with a high level of concentration and self-control.
So if you are caught up in the hype, it’s important to understand that winning at blackjack, really winning, takes effort, know-how and a pretty good sense of timing. It’s also worth being honest with yourself, will learning basic strategy and executing a betting strategy and even the notion of counting cards take all the fun out of playing? If the answer is yes, then you need to scale back your expectations of winning.
What is great about blackjack is that, hype aside, basic strategy really works. It tells you how to play your hand in order to optimize your chances of winning, and is completely based on mathematical calculations that have been used for decades in actual play. I played many years just on instinct, hoping that I was doing the right thing on every hand. Now I know better. It’s not about walking out of the casino with riches, it’s about giving myself a fighting chance to win.
Brian Jamie is the author of the Philosophy of BJ series. His most recent book, The Philosophy of BJ on 21 is available for download at philosophyofbj.com.
January 24, 2008
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One Response to “Learning Basic Strategy Never Got Me Anywhere”
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Well, this article is rather interesting. It admits, on the one hand, that basic strategy is a good way to lose. I quote: “Basic strategy is, simply put, a way to reduce the house edge to less than 1%.”
Then, paradoxically, it switches gears and reads as if someone else was writing the piece.
It gets amnesia and forgets that it admitted basic strategy was not a winning strategy when it states: “What is great about blackjack is that, hype aside, basic strategy really works. It tells you how to play your hand in order to optimize your chances of winning…”
Actually, if basic strategy “really works,” it would provide more winning hands than losing hands, and the writer admits this is not the case.
This is actually symptomatic of all Old School blackjack tomes of late. Caught in a quagmire, of knowing the basic strategy approach invented in the 1950s and 60s isn’t a winning strategy, yet wanting to sell it or portray oneself as an expert, the writer then glosses over the truth of the matter and pumps it up as if the truth didn’t exist.
When my book Cutting Edge Blackjack came out, I was rigorous in detailing the flaws of the Old School systems. Yet it dawned on me later on that all I had to do was to quote the Old School writers themselves, most of whom at some point would admit their shortcomings.
Here you have it: the writer admits basic strategy gives the casino the edge (which, incidentally, varies, depending on the number of the decks in play, the house rules and even the number of betting spots in play). Yet, he closes by claiming it’s the way to go.
Go figure!