- One of the best rules in blackjack is the 3 to 2 payout when you get an ace and a ten on your initial hand. This is called a “natural” or a “blackjack”. But you’ll find more casinos than ever offering games where the payout for this hand is only 6 to 5. Here’s how that works: In a normal blackjack game, you bet $100. You get a natural.
- SmartCards blackjack software provides some of the best card counting training available anywhere. It is not a home blackjack game, but a professional software tool that builds the skills you need to beat the game consistently. SmartCards does this by providing a large range of exercises and practice environments.
If the player's first two cards are ace and ten-card, making total of 21 in two cards then it is a natural win or 'blackjack'.If dealer first two cards make a total of 21 then the dealer is natural winner. SmartCards blackjack software provides some of the best card counting training available anywhere. It is not a home blackjack game, but a professional software tool that builds the skills you need to beat the game consistently. SmartCards does this by providing a large range of exercises and practice environments. It supports virtually any card counting system, with features not found in many.
Some blackjack players are so preoccupied with mastering perfect basic strategy and card counting that they neglect their money management. In blackjack, just like in any other casino-banked game, managing one’s bankroll adequately is of great significance.
Having said that, we would also like to point out bankroll management is powerless when it comes to decreasing the house edge. What it does help with is longevity, or preserving your blackjack bankroll for a longer period of time. No matter how perfect your play is, you are guaranteed to lose your money without discipline and proper bankroll management.
Building a Bankroll – How Much Money Do You Need to Play Blackjack?
Let’s start by specifying that your bankroll is the money you have set aside strictly for the purpose of playing blackjack. We suspect you already know this but just to play it safe, we shall say it again – you should never use money you need to cover your day-to-day expenses for playing blackjack, regardless of your level of skill or previous experience.
Our advice is to place your blackjack bankroll in a separate account and withdraw from it when you plan to attack the blackjack tables. Once you finish with the assault, you go back and deposit whatever you have left alongside any winnings you have generated during the session.
You should leave your bankroll alone in the beginning and avoid using it for any non-blackjack-related purchases. Once you succeed in building your bankroll, you can reward yourself by buying something with some of the winnings you have generated.
Table Limits and Session Bankrolls
With this clarification out of the way, we warn you there is no uniform bankroll size that applies to absolutely all blackjack players. The edge skilled players get inevitably manifests itself over the long term. Anything can happen over the course of a single session, a week, or even a few months.
Experiencing short-term losses, even if you are an accurate card counter, is hardly anything unheard of. The bottom line is as a serious blackjack player, you need a bankroll that is large enough to withstand the losses you may incur on a short timescale.
The overall amount you allocate for blackjack play should be broken down into smaller session bankrolls. How much you allocate for a single session is closely linked to what table limits you play.
If there are lots of casinos in your area but you have limited funds for blackjack play at your disposal, the smartest thing to do is scout the different gambling halls and find a table with low enough limits to accommodate your small bankroll. Provided that there is a single casino with high limits in your city, you better wait until you save a sufficiently large bankroll to play such stakes.
Show MoreHide MoreA session bankroll should be at least 50 times the lowest bet at the table. This is the bare minimum, recommended for basic strategy players and flat bettors. Respectively, players who count cards and move their bets with the true count are recommended to put aside at least 100 times their top bets.Thus, if there are $10 tables in your vicinity and you flat bet at this minimum with basic strategy, your session’s bankroll should be at least $500. Your max bet should not exceed the amount of $10 under any circumstances. Provided that you are a novice card counter who uses a less aggressive bet spread like 1 to 5, you will need a session bankroll of at least $5,000.
Each number 1 through 5 corresponds to the number of base bets you need to wager when you move with the true count. You put out 5 units or $50 on a count of +5 or higher, 4 units or $40 on a count of +4, and so on. One unit of $10 is wagered on a count of +1 as well as on neutral and negative counts.
Evaluating Your Risk of Ruin
Disciplined players who exercise good money management are well-acquainted with the term “Risk of Ruin”, abbreviated as RoR. For those of you who are not, RoR denotes the probability of a given player losing their entire bankroll.
There are several values you need to take into account when estimating your Risk of Ruin, including your standard deviation, your bankroll in units, and your win rate per every hundred hands. There are free RoR calculators on the web players can use to accurately estimate the likelihood of busting their full bankrolls. Your other option is to use blackjack simulators that can calculate the RoR for you.
We can distinguish between two types of Risk of Ruin, namely session RoR and the RoR for players’ full bankroll. The former denotes the likelihood of the player losing their entire bankroll for the session while the latter shows you the probability of busting your overall lifetime bankroll.
To give you an example, let’s suppose you have a session bankroll of $2,000, play perfect basic strategy, and flat bet $10 per hand. You have 200 base betting units at your disposal. The software you are using has calculated that you have a session RoR of 18%.
This means that eventually you will end up losing your $2,000 around 18% of the time. And the opposite, your bankroll will increase 82% of the time. Meanwhile, if you cut your bankroll in half to $1,000, or 100 units, your RoR will jump to nearly 32%, which exceeds the tolerable limits. In the other 68% of the time, you will increase the bankroll.
It is important to specify that different players are willing to put up with different RoR percentages. At the end of the day, this is all a matter of individual tolerance. The bottom line is the bigger your bankroll is and the more base betting units you have, the lower your RoR will be.
Understanding Standard Deviation
The term standard deviation (SD) is normally used in mathematical statistics in relation to the distribution of expected results. In blackjack, it denotes the distribution of players’ results within a range of probable outcomes.
It tells you how frequently a specific outcome will deviate from your expected average. This is important because it enables you to assess whether you are playing a losing or a winning game as well as to decide how big your bankroll should be for any given session.
It is unrealistic to think you can win each and every blackjack session, even if you are perfect at basic strategy and count cards with great accuracy. A low standard deviation indicates the actual results fall closely within one’s expectations.
We shall explain how standard deviation works with a simple coin-flipping example. A coin has a 50% chance of landing on tails and a 50% chance of landing on heads. Yet, you cannot expect the coin to land precisely 50 times on tails and 50 times on heads in every 100 trials, or at least not in the short term. Sometimes it may land only 45 times on tails and 55 times on heads which happens roughly 2/3 of the time or around 68.3%.
Show MoreHide MoreIn the context of blackjack, the standard deviation of a single hand you play in a six-deck game is estimated at 1.14. Thus, you are expected to win or lose roughly 1.14 bet units around 68.3% of the time within one standard deviation, 2.28 betting units will be lost/won 95% of the time within two standard deviations and 3.42 units will be lost/won 99.7% of the time within three standard deviations. The distribution of these results is shown on the so-called Gaussian bell-curves.Knowing their standard deviation enables players to calculate the probability of winning or losing a given number of units over the course of a certain number of hands. You do this by multiplying your standard deviation by the square root of the number of hands you play.
So if your sample size involves 400 hands with a standard deviation of 1.14, you can expect to lose or win √400 x 1.14 = 20 x 1.14 = 22.8 betting units around 68.3% of the time. Respectively, 95% of the time, you can expect results within two standard deviations where you will lose √400 x 2.28 = 20 x 2.28 = 45.6 betting units over the course of 400 hands. And finally within three standard deviations, you will lose √400 x 3.42 = 20 x 3.42 = 68.4 betting units every 400 hands 99.7% of the time.
Standard deviation may be complex to understand if you are a novice but is nevertheless of great importance. You need it when calculating your RoR, which in turn helps you determine the bankroll you need. Do not be intimidated, however, as you can figure out what your RoR is by using a simulator software or one of the online RoR calculators.
House Edge and Hourly Losses
The beauty of using basic strategy is that it reduces the house edge in blackjack to such an extent that you are nearly playing a break-even game. Yet, basic strategy is not powerful enough to completely overcome the built-in casino advantage.
Even if you are perfect at basic strategy, the house edge will inevitably cause a dent in your blackjack bankroll over the long run. This dent, however, will be far more significant if you rely on gut feelings and hunches instead of using the optimal strategy.
Knowing the house edge of a blackjack game helps you calculate the hourly losses you can expect to incur in the long term. Suppose you choose a table with more liberal rules like those offered across Las Vegas Strip casinos where the house edge revolves around 0.36%.
You multiply this percentage by the average number of hands you play per hour and your average bet size. Assuming you are a recreational player who joins mostly full tables and bets $30 per hand on average, you will be able to go through roughly 80 hands per hour.
Therefore, the long-term hourly losses you can expect to see will amount to ($30 x 80 hands x 0.36)/100 = 864/100 = $8.64.You will inevitably arrive at this figure when you get enough playing hours under your belt. By “enough”, we mean tens of thousands of hours as anything can happen in the short run.
Unlike basic strategy players who are practically betting on a negative EV game, skilled and disciplined card counters are able to overcome the house edge. They have an advantage of around 1% at six-deck games with decent rules.
This enables them to grow their bankrolls overtime instead of incurring long-term losses. They calculate their expected hourly winnings with the same formula, i.e. by multiplying their edge by the average bet size and the number of hands they play per hour.
Respectively, an accurate counter who plays heads-up at an empty table with at a 1% advantage and goes through 100 bets of $30 per hour can expect long-term hourly returns of ($30 x 100 hands x 1)/100 = 3,000 / 100 = $30.
Handling Losing Sessions
Variance is inherent to all casino games, including blackjack. All players, no matter how skilled they are, will inevitably end up going through some losing sessions. Knowing how to handle these and when to call it quits is of great significance for preserving your bankroll.
Needless to say, chasing your losses is a terrible idea. The rule of thumb all smart blackjack players should follow is to always leave a table before they have busted their entire session bankroll. The general recommendation is to throw in the towel when you are left with fewer than six betting units.
So if you bet $50 per hand, you must ensure you have at least $300 before you continue playing; if you wager $100, you end the session when you are down to less than $600 and so on.
The reason for this is simple – you need enough money to back up any potential splitting and doubling decisions in line with basic strategy. The bottom line is you should never stay at the table if you are so underbanked that you can no longer exercise the optimal playing decisions. Doing the opposite will ultimately cost you money in the long run.
Last updated on April 7, 2019
Blackjack is one of the simplest and most straightforward game in the casino, and if played correctly, can give the player the best chance at winning. Based only on the probabilities of the cards in the shoe, Casino Sage has calculated the most mathematically advantageous playing strategy for the player.
Blackjack Rules
The basic rules of this card game involve adding the value of an initial two cards in hand, while hoping of being dealt a value of twenty-one. If a value of less than twenty-one is dealt, the player may choose to be dealt single cards until they either reach a value of twenty one, reach a value they feel comfortable to play, or reach a value that exceeds twenty-one.
The winner holds a hand with a value of, or nearest to, twenty-one without exceeding it. Much of Blackjack’s popularity is due to the mix of chance, skill, and the publicity that surrounds card counting (calculating the probability of advantages based on the ratio of high cards to low cards).
As long as the blackjack player uses the best possible strategy (a strategy which is known as “Basic Strategy”), the house advantage in blackjack is usually less than 1%. This is very favourable to the player compared to other casino games. Of course, many blackjack players do not know Basic Strategy or do not follow it, so the true house advantage in those cases is much higher.
The game is played in many variations at casinos with different table rules so choosing the right table is important in Blackjack. Looking for a table with the least number of decks and a table that does not ‘Hit17’ is a must! In my opinion once you master the Basic Strategy and learn counting cards you’re left with the luck factor, the same luck factor found in roulette that we try to overcome by using a betting sequence.
Blackjack Betting Strategy
Blackjack Betting Online
The Casino Sage has calculated the best move for that combination of cards and came up with the below blackjack betting strategy table. Playing exactly by the table will allow the player to even the odds as much as possible. Depending on the online casino you choose to gamble at, using the basic statistical strategy can lessen the casino’s edge to less than 2%.
Ok, enough statistics … here’s the basic blackjack table for most casino using multiple decks when the dealer must stay on a soft 17:
This strategy, when utilized for the long-term, can give the player odds close to 50%. However, this does not mean that the player will never lose using this table. You will never have a true odds advantage in the casino, but casino gambling will have large short-term swings. The trick is cash out during an up-swing and not get greedy!
Doubling Down: Your best chance of winning money is on a smart double down. Beware, though, players that double down when odds are not in their favor tend to lose the most. Always double down on an 11, and sometimes on a 9 or 10 or certain soft hands(look at the chart). Never, ever, double down on an 8!
Splitting: You may have heard “Aces & Eights” when people are talking about when to split. This is absolutely true, if you have a pair of aces, or a pair of eights, always split them! You’re much better off with two 11’s or two 8’s than a 12 or 16. Never, ever, split two face cards!
Insurance: Do not take insurance, even when you have blackjack. You may have amateurs tell you that you should, but the house always has the edge. Every time you accept insurance you are statistically losing money.
Surrender: in the late surrender the player may choose to surrender after the dealer checks for blackjack. Surrending may be useful when your net statistical return is less than 50%. There are only four different scenarios when this occurs. When the dealer has a 9, 10, or an Ace, and the player has a 16, the player should surrender. The fourth scenario occurs when the dealer has a 10 showing and the player has a 15. Unfortunately, most online casinos don’t allow you to surrender, but many land-based casinos do.
Counting Cards
Firstly do note that in reality card-counting mentally (or on paper if playing online) is not illegal and is not considered cheating. Basic strategy provides the player with the optimal play for any blackjack situation based on billions of hands played in the long run.
However in the short run, as the cards are dealt from the deck, the remaining deck is no longer complete. By keeping track of the cards that have already been played, it is possible to know when the cards remaining in the deck are advantageous for the player.
Card-counting, if done correctly, can give the player an advantage, typically ranging from 0 to 2% over the house.
Blackjack Betting System
The basic principle behind card counting is the fact that high cards, particularly aces and tens, are better for the player and low cards, particularly 4s, 5s and 6s, are good for the dealer. A high concentration of Aces and tens give a higher chance of Blackjacks and the tens also increase probability of a hand totalling 20, which are almost as good.
Basic card counting assigns a positive, negative, or zero value to each card value available. When a card of that value is dealt, the count is adjusted by that card’s counting value. Low cards increase the count as they increase the percentage of high cards in the remaining shoe, while high cards decrease it for the opposite reason.
Blackjack Betting Guide
For instance, the Hi-Lo system subtracts one for each dealt ten and Ace, and adds one for any value 2-6. Values 7-9 do not affect the count. The High-Low system is considered a single-level or level-one count, because the count never increases or decreases by more than a single, predetermined value.
A multilevel count, such as Zen Count or Wong Halves, makes finer distinctions between card values to gain greater play accuracy. Rather than all cards having a value of +1, 0, or −1, an advanced count might also include card ranks that are counted as +2 and −2, or +.5.
Blackjack Betting Strategies That Work
Advanced players might additionally maintain a side count (separate count) of specific cards, such as a side count aces, to deal with situations where the best count for betting accuracy differs from the best count for playing accuracy.