Most people have already heard that blackjack is the best game in the casino, odds-wise. You might even believe that if you follow the right strategy, you can get a mathematical edge over the house. This isn’t true, but you CAN get the house edge at blackjack low enough that it might seem that way.

1. How To Increase Your Chances In Blackjack 2
2. How To Increase Your Chances In Blackjack Card Game
3. How To Increase Your Chances Of Winning Blackjack
4. How To Increase Your Chances In Blackjack Games
5. How To Increase Your Chances In Blackjack Game

In this post, I explain – in detail – how to increase your chances of winning at blackjack.

Learn the Rules Before Sitting Down to Play

All the basic blackjack strategy and card counting skill in the world won’t increase your chances of winning unless you already understand how to play.

• Blackjack - Increase Your Odds With Basic Strategy Plus Blackjack Basic Strategy, played perfectly in a game with favorable rules, will reduce the edge against you to about one half of one percent.
• Increase your chances of winning Maximise the amount you win (through doubling down) Minimise the chances of going bust Minimise any losses (through folding or deciding against doubling).
• Increase Your Odds of Winning at Blackjack. Blackjack is an exciting game that appeals to both beginners and experienced players. Because of its fast movement and easy playability, Blackjack is one of the most popular games in the casino. The odds on this game are much better than many of the tables and games in casinos.

Table games typically provide the best odds, and playing blackjack is your best shot at winning some money. The house edge (or mathematical advantage the casino has over you) is only 0.5%. To know when to hit, split, or double down, print off a strategy table and take it with you to play.

Here’s the thing:

If you make mistakes, some of them will cost you money.

When I first learned to play blackjack, I ignored things like doubling down and splitting because I didn’t understand the rules for those. By leaving those out of my game, I lowered my chances of winning dramatically.

Luckily, you don’t have many options to understand.

When you’re playing blackjack, here are the only actions you can take:

Everyone knows that to hit is to take another card.

Everyone also knows that to stand is to refrain from taking any more cards.

Doubling down is like hitting, but you double the size of your bet. You also agree to take one more card and then stand – that’s part and parcel of doubling down.

Splitting might be the most complicated move you can make, and it’s not the easiest thing to describe in text. It’s easier to understand once you’ve already done it in a real game.

Nonetheless, I’ll explain splitting.

Each of the 2 cards in your original hand becomes the first card in each of your 2 new hands.

That’s about all there is to splitting.

Finally, surrendering is like folding in a poker game. Only in blackjack, you only give up half your bet. Surrender is rarely the correct move.

Master Basic Strategy

Unlike some games, blackjack has been “solved.” We know the correct play to make in every possible situation. It’s just basic math.

You have no room for hunches or guesses in a game of blackjack.

The correct move is always the move that has the best expected value for the player.

You have 2 pieces of information in every blackjack hand:

• You know one of the dealer’s cards – it’s face-up.
• You know which 2 cards you have and what their total is.

There’s a mathematically optimal way to play every total versus every dealer face-up card.

Basic strategy encapsulates all those possible moves into a simple chart where your total is listed on one side and the dealer’s up-card is listed along the top. Cross-reference the 2 pieces of data, and the table tells you what the best move is.

You shouldn’t rely on a basic strategy table forever, though – you should memorize the right play in every situation.

But you could play with a basic strategy chart every time, if you wanted to. The casinos don’t mind.

After all, even with basic strategy, you’re at a mathematical disadvantage.

Find the Games With the Best Odds of Winning

Different casinos have different blackjack variants with different rules in place. The biggest rules change to look for is the payout for a blackjack.

A “blackjack” is a 2-card hand totaling 21 – it’s always a hand made up of an ace and a card worth 10 points.

In most casinos, a blackjack pays off at 3 to 2 odds.

How To Increase Your Chances In Blackjack 2

This means if you bet $100 and get a blackjack, you get $150 in winnings.

But in some casinos – at some tables – blackjack only pays off at 6 to 5 odds.

This means if you bet $100 and get a blackjack, you get $120 in winnings.

Some casinos even take advantage of the mathematically illiterate by acting like they’re doing you a favor with the 6 to 5 payout.

Since 6 is a bigger number than 3, it sounds like a 6 to 5 payout is better than a 3 to 2 payout.

Of course, this ignores the fact that this is a ratio.

Avoid Side Bets at All Costs

All blackjack games feature a side bet called insurance. You should never take insurance unless you’re counting cards and know that it’s the mathematically optimal move at that point in the game.

How does insurance work?

When the dealer has an ace as her face-up card, you can place a side bet the size of half your original bet. This side bet wins 2 to 1 if the dealer has a 10 in the hole.

Of course, if the dealer has a 10 in the hole, you lose your main bet, so the insurance bet acts as a hedge against losing in this situation.

The problem with the insurance bet is that it’s a hugely negative expectation proposition.

Sure, there are more 10s in the deck than anything else, but the other cards still outnumber the 10s by a statistically significant margin.

If you’re counting cards, you might know when the deck has gotten lopsided enough for insurance to make sense mathematically.

But otherwise, just skip insurance.

You can also safely skip any other unusual side bet that the casino is offering. The house edge on those side bets is always high – especially compared to the house edge for the blackjack game itself.

Learn How to Count Cards

So far, all the advice I’ve offered will reduce the house’s edge to its lowest possible number.

That still won’t give you a mathematical edge over the casino.

To do that, you’ll need at least one advantage gambling technique.

Counting cards is the traditional advantage gambling technique used in blackjack. It involves keeping rough track of the ratio of high cards to low cards in the deck.

Since a blackjack is made up of high cards – 10s and aces – if the deck has more 10s and aces in it than lower value cards, you have a higher probability of getting that blackjack.

This can be as simple as mentally subtracting 1 from the count every time you see an ace or a 10 and adding 1 to the count every time you see a 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6.

You raise the size of your bet to correspond with how positive the count is.

You also adjust the count based on how many decks are being used.

Keep in mind, though, that casinos consider card counting cheating. It’s not illegal, but casinos sometimes back players off the blackjack table or even ban card counters from the casino altogether.

And always start the count over when the deck gets reshuffled.

If you’re playing in a blackjack game with a continuous shuffling machine, you can’t get an edge by counting cards anyway, so don’t even try.

Practice Playing at Home

If you’re serious about playing blackjack in a casino, you should practice at home – ESPECIALLY if you’re planning to count cards.

How To Increase Your Chances In Blackjack Card Game

How you practice is up to you but be deliberate about it.

You can find plenty of blackjack software tools that will help you practice basic strategy and card counting techniques.

You can also enlist the aid of a friend and play practice hands with a real deck of cards at the kitchen table.

And most online casinos offer free, play-money, blackjack games where you can play for free and test your skills. Most of the time, at least when dealing with a reputable online casino, you face the same odds and probabilities you’d see at a casino with a real deck of cards.

Try Online Blackjack Games

I’m not a lawyer, so I’ll refrain from offering legal advice about playing blackjack for real money online. Suffice it to say that I trust you to analyze legalities and risk levels when gambling online for yourself and making an appropriate decision.

If you decide you’re comfortable with the risk or that it’s legal where you live to do so, give online blackjack a try. You can get in twice as many hands per hour as you’d see playing in a brick and mortar casino.

And sometimes online casinos offer better games with better odds than traditional brick and mortar casinos – especially if you’re playing for low stakes.

Conclusion

How do you increase your chances of winning at blackjack?

Start by learning the rules and follow that up with learning basic strategy. Don’t settle for games with rules that aren’t acceptable, like 6/5 blackjack games.

Finally, if you want to take it to the next level, learn how to count cards.

Increasing your chances of winning at blackjack is easy, but it does take some work.

I’m not an advantage player nowadays. I gamble recreationally, but my background as an advantage player gives me a perspective on gambling that I think is helpful to the average player.

I realize that there are several types of gamblers. One type of gambler is the person who goes into a casino and just wants to turn their brain off. They’ve brought a certain amount of money, and they want to enjoy their time gambling, drink their free drinks, and just get away from it all for a little bit. I can understand this perspective. My wife accuses me of seeing mindless movies, and my response is, ‘I just spent the whole day going over spreadsheets and documents, I just want to turn my brain off and enjoy the popcorn.’

I just want to be ‘stupid’ for a little bit.

I call these gamblers the ‘vacation’ gamblers because gambling to them is a little vacation. They want to get away from the daily hustle, if just for a little bit.

There are more gamblers of this type than those gamblers care to admit. Those gamblers are sometimes shamed into the closet, but if my observations at the blackjack table are accurate, these type of ‘vacation’ gamblers are the majority of gamblers. I mean, how many times have we seen a person stand on a 14 to a dealers 10 or a person hit a hard 16 on a dealers 6 up?

There’s nothing wrong with gambling just to get away. Even at the worst play style, you might be at a 5% disadvantage against the house. Roulette is worse than that.

For these gamblers, giving advice such as, ‘get a basic strategy chart’ is not realistic. The advice must be the type of advice that requires almost no effort.

So in that spirit, I want to start a series of tips known as Stupidly Simple Tips that Require No Strategy.

The point of this series is to give genuine tips that are so absurdly simple that people rarely ever talk about them. They sort of overlook these tips because they’re so obvious, or actually, sometimes, they’re not so obvious because they’re right in front of your face and you looked past it.

So here we go…

Four Stupidly Simple Tips to Increase Your Chances of Winning at Blackjack That Require No Thinking

TIP 1: DO NOT EVER BET YOUR ENTIRE STACK, BET HALF

This is one I see quite often. Guy steams, and slams his entire stack into the betting circle. Then he gets an 11, or worse yet for him considering his predicament, a pair of aces.

So now he has a dilemma: either play the hand out and hit the 11 and the aces, try to sell off one of the aces, or pull out more money. Either way, he is giving up a huge advantage if he does the first two options.

The third option is more of a cost-benefit analysis type situation. I’m never a fan of pulling out more money at the table unless you go in with a strategy to do so. The problem with pulling out the extra money to double down is that if you lose the hand, you will almost surely play the rest of the money. It’s bad bankroll management. If it wasn’t your intention to play an extra buy-in, then you will have increased your hourly expected loss by playing an extra buy in. So before you pull out that extra bill, ask yourself honestly, ‘was I really going to buy in again?’

If you’re honest with yourself, you probably didn’t anticipate that happening, so whatever answer you give to yourself is irrelevant. Just don’t do it.

So let’s talk about the remaining two options, playing the hand out without a reload (meaning you don’t double down or split). The best option depends on the hand. If it’s a pair of aces, then you should ask someone at the table, ‘hey do you want to partner with me on this hand?’ You can agree that you will split the wins and losses equally, or you can each pick an ace to be your own. For example, say, so the Ace of diamonds is yours, the Ace of spades is mine. For something like a pair of aces, it’s practically guaranteed that someone will incorporate with you because everyone intuitively knows that a pair of aces is so powerful.

Actually, for something like a pair of aces, the advantage is so high that I might even go so far as to say, pull out that extra bill. But remember, be honest, you most likely are going to gamble that extra bill, if you lose.

If the hand is a double down hand, don’t incorporate. You derive no benefit from sharing with someone, but you lose the benefit of hitting again if you want to hit again.

TL;DR

All the above can be avoided if you just follow this tip: do not ever bet your entire stack; rather, bet half, so that you can double or split, if needed.

TIP 2: PLAY AT A FULL TABLE TO CUT YOUR EXPECTED HOURLY LOSS

When it comes to gambling, in general, your statistically most probable result is a loss. Remember, you are playing a game that favors the house. You are at a disadvantage. So given enough trials – whether those trials be spins of the while, rolls of the dice, or hands dealt – you are more likely to meet the expected result, which is a negative result.

Each hand in blackjack, as per the average and common rules in the US, has a house advantage of .5%, if played with perfect basic strategy. Let’s say you play poorly and the house edge on you is 2%. While 2% sounds high for a blackjack game (it is), it’s still far better than many games on the gambling floor. So don’t feel bad. You’re still doing way better than that guy over there in the corner playing roulette perfectly.

At a 2% house edge, if you are betting $10 a hand, you are expected to lose 20 cents per hand. That’s less than a game of Spy Hunter at the arcades when I was a kid (for us older kids). So if you play 100 hands of blackjack, an hour, that’s going to cost you $20 an hour. If somehow you could slow down the game and play only 50 hands an hour, then that ‘free’ cocktail is only going to cost you $10 an hour. So would you like to pay $10 or $20? The obvious answer is to pay $10 an hour.

How do you slow down the game? By sitting at a full table. Since the dealer will have to contend with other players, it will take time to get to you.

This helps you win because not only do you pay less per hour but also because you have far fewer trials (hands) you have a greater probability of meeting the expected result, which is a loss.

TL;DR Play at a full table to slow the game down, resulting in a smaller expected hourly loss and a greater chance of winning.

TIP 3: PLAY AT A DOUBLE DECK GAME OVER A SIX DECK GAME AND ASK THIS ONE QUESTION THEY DON’T WANT YOU TO ASK

How To Increase Your Chances Of Winning Blackjack

If given the choice, and given that the same or similar rules apply to a double deck versus a six-deck game, you want to play at a double deck game versus a six or eight deck game. The reason is that the more decks are involved, the greater the house edge.

In Las Vegas, the best double deck games are confined to the high limit rooms. Outside of Las Vegas, there are quite a few tables that have excellent rules.

So if you don’t want to think, then before you sit down at a blackjack table, first make sure that it’s a 3-2 game and not a 6-5 game, and then ask the dealer this one question: can I double after a split?

In my entire 30+ years of playing blackjack, I have never seen a bad double deck game where you were allowed to double after a split. Every double deck blackjack game where you can double after a split is a good blackjack game, assuming it’s a 3-2 game and not a 6-5 game.

TL;DR If you see a double deck blackjack game, ask the dealer, ‘can I double after a split?’ If the answer is yes, then it a great game.

How To Increase Your Chances In Blackjack Games

TIP 4: IF YOU DON’T KNOW BASIC STRATEGY, YOU ARE BETTER OFF ASKING THE TABLE THAN GUESSING ON YOUR OWN

Have you ever watched an episode of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? The guy in the hot seat gets stuck on a question, so he polls the audience. The audience will usually get the answer right; not always, but usually. Sometimes they’ll get it wrong, but it’s not debatable that the audience gets the answer correct more often than if the contestant guessed blindly.

This is known as crowdsourcing. When you do not know an answer, the crowd is generally going to be able to answer a question more accurately or more intelligently compared to you. The earliest observation on crowdsourcing was done by Francis Galton. Here is the Wikipedia entry on Francis Galton and crowdsourcing:

‘In 1906, visiting a livestock fair, he stumbled upon an intriguing contest. An ox was on display, and the villagers were invited to guess the animal’s weight after it was slaughtered and dressed. Nearly 800 participated, but not one person hit the exact mark: 1,198 pounds.

Galton stated that “the middlemost estimate expresses the vox populi, every other estimate being condemned as too low or too high by a majority of the voters”, and calculated this value (in modern terminology, the median) as 1,207 pounds. To his surprise, this was within 0.8% of the weight measured by the judges. Soon afterward, he acknowledged that the mean of the guesses, at 1,197 pounds, was even more accurate.’

In other words, when all the guesses were calculated and averaged, the average was more accurate than the individual guess.

Even the CIA has dabbled in crowdsourcing. If it’s good enough for the CIA, then it’s good enough for you. So when you don’t know the answer, be like the guy on Who Want to Be a Millionaire: poll the audience and ask the people at the table. Just ask, out loud, what should I do? People’s fear of you ‘taking the dealer’s bust card’ will compel them to answer (this topic is a future entry).

From my personal observations, the people at the table will not give you an answer that comports perfectly with basic strategy. Most of the time, they’ll actually be wrong. However, my second observation is that while people are generally wrong about basic strategy, they’re generally more correct than a person who has no idea of what they’re doing. So given a choice, you should ask for advice on what to do, rather than guessing blindly.

TL;DR The people at the table will generally be able to more accurately give you a correct decision than if you were to blindly guess what to do. So ask.

How To Increase Your Chances In Blackjack Game

Again, here is a caveat because I know quite a few blackjack aficionados and experts are rolling their eyes. My objective here isn’t to get you to play perfect basic strategy; rather it’s to get you to do the least amount of damage to yourself at the table, which will then result in a greater chance of winning. There’s a lot of advice out there for people who are well versed in basic strategy. Many articles exist on how to extract the extra .01% out of a game. But from what I see at the blackjack table, the vast majority of people do not follow the basic strategy or any other type of optimal strategy. So for those players, much simpler advice is warranted and needed. These ‘vacation’ players – who want to take a break, turn off their brains, enjoy their free drinks, and chit-chat with their buddies – need much simpler advice. They’ve been ignored for too long.

I hope this guide helps you if you are that kind of player.

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