Why You Should QUIT Playing Blackjack IF You Are Serious About Making Money In The CASINO!

1 – Blackjack is the best game in the casino IF:

• You have mastered BASIC STRATEGY
• You are an accomplished CARD COUNTER
• You can consistently not act on your urge to strangle every novice player at 3rd base who does not stand with a 12-16 against the dealer’s 6 up card and takes the dealer’s 10 count bust card
• You can find games where the casino pays blackjacks at 3-2 instead of 6-5 and stands on a soft (A-6) 17 instead of being able to hit it.
• You have an abundance of PATIENCE, DISCIPLINE and a very larger BANKROLL
• You can sit through COUNTLESS hands and shoes, being forced to make bets every decision, waiting for the COUNT to turn HIGH
• You can find FAVORABLE PLAYING CONDITIONS on a REGUALR basis, such as the RIGHT NUMBER of PLAYERS at the table, or NO OTHER PLAYERS if you favor HEAD TO HEAD play with just YOU and the DEALER
• You can find casinos with GOOD SHOE PENETRATION
• You can avoid being detected as an obvious CARD COUNTER…harder and harder to do these days
• You can form or become a member of a “Blackjack Team” which increases your odds of long term success and decreases your individual bankroll requirements
• You have a substantial (minimum $10,000) PLAYING BANKROLL and are able to avoid getting on the Casino’s “Blacklist.”  

The bottom line is, the casinos are in business to make money and ANYONE or ANYTHING which will hurt their profits is considered a THREAT and will be dealt with swiftly and directly.

They have read all the books and seen all the YouTube videos about how card counters try to DISGUISE their card counting activities.  You may get away with it for a while but certainly not forever.

How much and how often would you have to win playing blackjack in the casino to be treated like a THREAT and barred from playing?

In some cases, it is not even the amount of money or units won that will get you thrown out of the casino. For gambling newbies…a “UNIT” is a dollar amount that is your lowest bet.  It can be $5, $10, $25, $100 or $10,000. The casinos have banned card counters who won small dollar amounts, using just $5 units, just because they were doing it with some REGULARITY.

The casino fears and distrusts any blackjack player who wins consistently – regardless of the amount of money involved.

I recently watched a YouTube video about card counting which claimed that when using great basic strategy and excellent card counting skills, you could average just $10 an hour…with a $10,000 bankroll behind you so you could survive the deep drawn downs which can be quite regular and common.

I could compare all of this to the last Presidential election.  Donald Trump had to overcome more obstacles to get elected than a card counter does to make money in the casino.

The press hated him and made it no secret.  The Democrats had a shoe-in candidate with enormous momentum, popular support among minorities, union workers, teachers and just about any large group you could name. Even his own party did not widely support him.

The final fatal blow appeared to be the video clip from Access Hollywood with Trump telling Billy Bush what he could do to women. After that was aired, even some of his staunchest supporters had the moral excuse to become “Never Trumpers.”

All that was left, after that clip was released, was to put a fork in it….Trump’s presidential campaign was toast.

We all know (for better or worse) was happened on November 9th.

My main point of making this comparison is to say that Trump only had to run this gauntlet ONCE.  As a card counter, you have to run it EVERY TIME you go to the casino to play blackjack.

So, what is the solution?  Should you quit playing altogether even though you want to be a regular winner in the casino?  Is there ANOTHER way to be a consistent winner?

The answer, based on my personal experience, and that of my students, over the last 3 years is – YES!  There is a card game which can actually be beaten on a regular basis!

In my opinion, the perfect answer to the blackjack card counters dilemma is BACCARAT!

Baccarat turns 98% of the disadvantages of blackjack into advantages or nonissues.

In many ways, Baccarat is like a blackjack game where you can actually bet with the dealer and win with him when he pulls a 5 or 6 card 21 against your 20 or has 3 blackjacks in a row!

When the dealer wins 12 hands in a row of course, and you to lose them all, you could potentially win the MAJORITY of those bad beat hands if you were playing baccarat instead.

The goals are very similar with both games but the logistics are night and day different.

• You do NOT have to play every hand to keep your seat.  You can, in most games, sit out 5, 10 or 20 hands in a row and no one will say a word to you.
• You do NOT need to know or memorize anything to play.  All the “player 3rd card banker hit card” rules are summarized in just 4 numbers: 38,427,547 & 667.
• You can bet both sides – banker or player, and are not limited to playing just one side of the table.  This is what I meant by saying you could sit beside the dealer figuratively.
• You will never want to break another player’s fingers because they took a card they should not have taken thus screwing up your bet and everyone else’s at the table – why and how?  Because once the 8 decks are in the shoe, the outcome of ALL the hands dealt WILL NOT and CAN NOT be affected by ANYTHING the DEALER or any of your FELLOW PLAYERS do.  The decision outcomes are “carved in stone” because the card drawing and hitting rules in baccarat mean that input by the human element is removed 100%.
• You are allowed and encouraged write down and keep track of all the decisions and every single CARD dealt from the shoe (try that at the BJ table). If you forget to bring paper and pen to keep track of ANYTHING you want to at the table, the casino will happily give you recording cards and pens!
• You can leave the table for up to 20 minutes in most casinos and they will HOLD YOUR SEAT at the table.
• You are playing against the LOWEST fixed house edge of any table game in the casino (except the mythical, almost nonexistent, favorable blackjack game when you are counting cards).  Playing baccarat, betting on the banker side, has only a -1.06 house edge.  Craps is -1.40 on Don’t Pass and Roulette players are giving up, a whopping -5.26% to the house, on every spin of the wheel.
• You can win as much and as often as you want without ever worrying about being BANNED.  
• You can use any size units you can afford, within maximum bet table limits, and the casino will welcome you with open arms every time you come back for more.  I know of players who regularly win $30,000-$50,000 a day and the casino does not bat an eye.

Why such a difference if you won the same amounts, or even much less playing blackjack? With baccarat and the certain house EDGE, the casino believes that no matter how much you win, they will eventually win it all back, with interest, if you keep coming back and continue playing. I have seen this happen many times with players who have no stop win or stop loss goals. Regardless of how much they win or are ahead…they do not know when to leave and consistently lose and give it all back.

• You will receive comps on a regular basis whether you win or lose since the long-term outcome is, in the casino’s mind, predetermined.
• You can enter a game at ANY TIME.  Unlike blackjack, there are no “Mid Shoe Entry” rules.
• You can play as many, or more, hands per hour compared with BJ when you play heads up with the dealer.
• You need a much smaller playing bankroll while playing baccarat.  With a good bet selection and money management, 50-100 units is more like a lifetime baccarat bankroll versus 50-100 units, per shoe or session, for a BJ card counter.
• You can play baccarat for as little as $5 a hand, even in some large casinos.  There are almost always $25 minimum games available everywhere.

Back in the 70’s when blackjack was finally offered on the east coast at The Resorts Casino in Atlantic City the card counters were ready.

A fellow named Kenny Uston put a blackjack card counting team together and took the casinos for $10,000,000-$12,000,000 dollars before the casinos figured out what had happened.

There was a famous court case, which Uston won, preventing the casinos from barring him from playing blackjack while card counting.  

To protect their profits, the casinos made it impossible for Uston and his teams to continue winning by changing basic rules of how often the cards were shuffled, deck penetration and bet size limits among other countermeasures.

What does this history lesson have to do with baccarat?

The main point is that the huge amounts won by Uston and other card counters was the result of their card counting giving them an EDGE over the house of from 0.5 % to 2.5%.

There are baccarat bet selections which can achieve over a 10%-20% player edge in some shoes.  It does not need to be that large every time.  When you think about it, you are always playing close to a 50/50 game with a house edge of only -1.06% to start with.  That is not that much to overcome.

I don’t mean to indicate that a serious winning method like mine will take no effort to learn and apply but compared to card counting, I believe the average player would have a much better chance to be a consistent winner using it than the average card counter playing blackjack for all the reasons described earlier.

I recently received this from a prospective student in Canada who is a professor at a college there. It is a perfect summary and illustration of everything I have just said.

“I began by writing programs to calculate blackjack outcomes to try and optimize my game. Ha! After 2 years of playing blackjack every single day (every day!), spending thousands of hours learning to count cards and place corresponding high or low bets…I netted a profit of $300. Two years! The pit said I was the only person he knew who was profiting from playing blackjack at the casino. I learned that counting cards is not reliable at all. I haven’t played blackjack for years nor will I ever again. Imagine a game where you can bust yourself and the dealer just sits there and waits for it to happen. Ridiculous.”

If you want to stack the odds in your favor for casino success, play the best game under the best conditions, with the best strategy…that is a game plan you can COUNT ON!