Blackjack – Online Blackjack Net

Archive for July, 2011

Playing Las Vegas Strip Blackjack on the computer for fun money. Three times this happened with buying insurance. One time I bought insurance with a Jack and an eight while the house had an A and J, I won the bet. How can that be? The house had Blackjack. I don’t get it. Shouldn’t have the casino won? I understand the game but not that bit with buying insurance.

Answer:
The insurance bet is a separate bet that the dealer has a blackjack. You put up half the amount of money of your regular bet and if you win you are paid 2-to-1. So you win your insurance bet but you also lose your regular bet to the dealer’s blackjack. Thus, in that round you break even. You win, yes, and you lose.

The insurance bet is a bad bet.

All the best in and out of the casinos!

The biggest secret is counting cards!

Counting cards is nothing more than wagering more money when the cards remaining in the deck are rich in 10s and aces. What counting cards does is establish mathematically the degree to which the as-yet-undealt deck favors either the player or the dealer by tracking the changing imbalance of big to little cards.

A deck that has previously dealt a bunch of low cards and is now rich with high cards (10, jack, queen, king, ace) favors the player, while the reverse, an excess of low cards (2, 3, 4, 5, 6) remaining, favors the dealer.

At your kitchen table with a shuffled deck of cards, try this one-level count system called Hi-Lo. At the outset, assign the following count values to each card:

With a starting figure of zero, slowly peel off one card at a time, adding to, or subtracting from, the constantly shifting figure as each card’s value changes it.

On a live game, you would factor in possible discards, then vary your bets from one hand to the next, guided by the constantly updated imbalance figure, which predicts whether the next hand will favor you or the dealer.

Card counters, in theory, have an advantage of 0.5% to 1.5% over the casino on a handheld or shoe game. At a casino that offers only continuous shuffling machines, you gain no advantage by counting.

American inventors are now marketing Square Shooters, the first set of dice developed for playing poker, rummy, and Internet Blackjack games.

Carmelyn Calvert of Eldred, Illinois and Paula Johnson of Nutwood, Illinois have created the “first deck of cards on dice.” These dice are particularly intended so players can roll and win at rummy, war, poker, and Internet Blackjack games, among others.

While they invented the game 15 years ago, the game is only finally finding a marketing now. 2010 has been a flourishing year for the game developers. The game was licensed by Heartland Consumer Products LLC, who in turn has been distributing it in diverse Walgreen locations throughout the region.

Moreover, Square Shooters won “Dr. Toys Best Picks Chlidren’s Products 2010”. The game was selected by Stevanne Auerbach, Ph.D. who selects 100 games and toys each year to help customers who wish to obtain affordable, educational, and safe playthings for their young ones. As an award winner, it was displayed at the International Toy and Game Fair in New York, New York. Afterwards, diverse stores began to order and sales began to skyrocket.

Now Square Shooters is sold in over 700 stores. In 2011, the dice set will also be sold in through three mail-order catalogs. Not least, when earlier this year The Strong Museum’s National Toy Hall of Fame (Rochester, New York) inducted traditional playing cards, they chose to include a set of the Square Shooter dice on display.

Because Square Shooters uses six-sided dice to represent the full deck of 52 cards plus 2 jokers, traditional Internet Blackjack strategies will not work well with Square Shooters. Though the object, of course, would remain the same, the odds of rolling any combination are quite different than that of drawing traditional cards from a deck. Likewise, all forms of card counting are completely impossible.

That said, Square Shooters offers intriguing potential to offline and online casinos which may develop games which are a successful hybrid between Internet Blackjack and craps

As rules change between different internet blackjack games, so does the best blackjack strategy. In a six-deck game, basic strategy calls for doubling down on 11 against any dealer face-up card if the dealer hits soft 17 but not to double down against an Ace if the dealer stands on all 17s.

In a six-deck game, we’ll never split a pair of 4s if we’re not allowed to double down after splitting pairs, but will split ’em against a 5 or 6 if we can double. Other strategy variations take into account number of decks in play, whether we’re permitted to double down and whether surrender is offered.

But the common blackjack rules variation that has the biggest impact on the game comes when casinos pay 6-5 on blackjacks instead of the standard 3-2. That raises the house edge by 1.4 percent, and we don’t really have a strategy option that can whittle down that game-changer.

A player figured he might have something when we wrote about the possibility of treating a blackjack like any other 11.

“If you are absolutely stuck in a casino that only offers this game (and cannot easily go anywhere else),” he tought, “would you be better off to double down on blackjacks at all times, or at least when dealer is showing 3, 4, 5 or 6?”

the best thing to do in this situation is to shoot craps, check out the video poker pay tables, or maybe play a little baccarat. It is not recommmended to play online blackjack game where two-card 21s pay only 6-5. It’s the full 3-2, or do not play.

But to answer the specific strategy question, no, it is not in your best interest to double down on blackjacks, not even when that horrendous 6-5 rule is in effect. Many casinos don’t even allow you to double on blackjacks, but in those that do, it remains a bad idea.

Trouble is, when you double on 11 even in a highly favorable situation such as the dealer showing a 6, you’re going to lose sometimes, and sometimes you’ll push. You’ll win enough that you increase profits by doubling down on 9-2, 8-3, 7-4 or 6-5.

But a blackjack wins against a 6 every time. You’re paid before the dealer even plays out his hand. The bottom line is that even with a 6-5 payoff, you win $6 for a $5 wager. Double on 11 vs. 6, and your average profit is $3.35 per $5 in initial wagers.

Even if blackjacks pay only even money, you’re still better off just to take your winnings than to double down. Your best blackjack strategy, however, remains to avoid tables with 6-5 payoffs on blackjacks.