Perfect Blackjack Strategy

[mitch]

Last night I was giving some of my favourite casinos some freeplay. I decided to play in the multi-player rooms, which I never normally do.

I mainly watched the play rather than betting but the play was amazing I did not see one player playing basic strategy!! I observed more than 20 players all making basic errors, taking insurance always, not drawing with 13-16 against 7-10, splitting 10s, not doubling 11 and 10 against even a 6. Someone held A23 against a 6 !!!. (I was quite pleased when he lost)

It appears that casinos don't need to look for bonus whores they could just bar all BS players and increase their profits without affecting their turnover much as these players appear to be a very small minority of the total players.

Clayman

You never deviate from BS. Do you feel you have ever been barred from any casino purely because of your adherence to this strategy.

Anyone else with thoughts on this subject?

Mitch

"win don't gamble"

[nafanny29]

I see this all the time on the cryptos!!

I seem to remember being told by one of the maths gurus here that even a terrible strategy will still give a 93% return though. I guess the sort of play I see is bad but not really bad so maybe they are giving the house 2 or 3% (guess ). That still makes it better odds for the player than American roulette.

Any casino that has tables full of these players day and night are minting money.

[Dirk Diggler]

Most online casinos tend to state their blackjack payout at about 98% - which goes to show what not playing basic strategy does.

[Slotster!]

I think when people are playing for fun, they tend to go a bit mad anyway... I know I do. Doubling on all sorts etc just to see what'll happen. Probably a different story on 'play for real'.

[arbster]

Depending where you were playing, some casinos don't shuffle after every hand on multi-player BJ. You may have been seeing some over-enthusiastic counters thinking that a count of +2 half-way into the first deck was significant

[BakuPT]

Depending where you were playing, some casinos don't shuffle after every hand on multi-player BJ. You may have been seeing some over-enthusiastic counters thinking that a count of +2 half-way into the first deck was significant

Who are the casinos/software that don´t shuffle after every hand?

[arbster]

(Some) Cryptos (Will Hill and ukbetting.com to name two) have a specific "Shuffling..." message which appears periodically on multi-player. I've not played multi-player enough to actually count how many hands it is, and it's possible it's a number of cards rather than hands.

[Dirk Diggler]

IIRC - thats just for show (or to encourage card counters to make large bets - depends upon how you want to look at it), the decks are really shuffled after every hand.

[arbster]

Confusingly, the Rules on ukbetting.com say:

Multi Player Rule Exceptions

Rule Exceptions: The deck is shuffled after each hand, pairs may not be re-split, and players may not draw additional cards on split Aces.

Multi Player Summary of Rules

8 52-card decks are used
The deck is re-shuffled after approximately one-third of the shoe (the 8 decks of cards) has been dealt

[Clayman]

I mainly watched the play rather than betting but the play was amazing I did not see one player playing basic strategy!! I observed more than 20 players all making basic errors,

It is amazing the poor quality of play when it is just as easy to play right. I thank each and every one of them.

Just last weekend up at the new Niagara Fallsview casino I got yelled at, as usual, many times by players at the table for making the RIGHT play! Granted this was at Spanish 21 where ABSOLUTELY NO ONE in 9 hours of play played BS. One guy actually had a BS card that you buy but it was for a different game! I could tell from 6 feet away by the colored patterns it was wrong. When I told him, he said "that's allright - close enough".

No, I think I just get banned for only playing with bonuses, betting small, playing lots of hands and, worst sin of all, winning money consistently by letting the mathematics of the game do its thing. But it all begins with Basic Strategy.

DirkD - you can't go too much on those payout figures because they are total dollars paid-out over total dollars wagered. Bet size variance is not taken into account. But, assuming bet sizes even out, you're right.

Can't imagine how badly one must play BJ to consistently realize a 98% pay-out. Lifetime, I'm at 100.17% assuming flat-betting, 100.94% based on profit- less-bonuses over dollars actually wagered and 106.41% including bonuses.

Arbster - you're right - counting is useless on the internet even when they don't shuffle for 4-5 rounds. Maybe you get a TC of +1 or -1 once in many shuffles, justifying a departure from BS. And, if you are going to deviate from Basic Strategy based on some "feel", for heaven's sake, at least do it on the close plays. As we all know, most of the gain from card-counting is from change in bet size rather than change in playing strategy.