Blackjack Tips

UFC President Dana White says he only sleeps three to six hours a night, and that’s only when he isn’t up all night at the blackjack table in Vegas, which is often. On those nights, when he gets involved in marathon blackjack sessions playing for $25,000 a hand, he’s lucky to get home in time to drive his two kids to school. He can handle it.

I was living in New Jersey in the late 1970s, when casino gambling became legalized in Atlantic City. The casinos that began opening there were clamoring for casino dealers. Soon, casino gambling schools began opening that taught students the skills necessary to become a casino dealer.

When you are dealt a pair of 6s in the game of blackjack you have two viable playing options:

The law of independent trials is fundamental principle that allows the casino gaming industry to accumulate mass amounts of wealth from unsuspecting customers. Every game in the casino has the perception of being completely random in nature. This means there is no predictability of the outcome of an upcoming event.

Previous articles covered how I got started with blackjack, how I learned the basic playing strategy and card counting, my playing experience in Atlantic City after the first casino opened, and my first barring.

When you are dealt a pair of 9s in blackjack you have two viable playing options:

In the previous article in this series about my personal experiences with blackjack, I explained how I first learned how to play blackjack, and how I mastered the basic strategy (circa 1969).

In this article you will learn how to play a hard 16 when you play blackjack. A hard 16 is a blackjack hand that contains either no Aces, or if an Ace is present, it counts as one. Some examples of hard 16 are:

I learned to play blackjack after I lost my meager bankroll in a casino on my very first trip to Las Vegas. Here’s how this happened.

Picture 44 electronic player terminals spread out in a stadium-configured arrangement in a casino. A live blackjack dealer stands in front of the stadium facing the players. Players (in this example, up to all 44) make their bets by touching the casino chips across the bottom of the screen on their interactive terminal.

Ever since Ed Thorp published his book Beat the Dealer in 1962 it has been an accepted that the diligent player can beat the casino at blackjack.

The first step in playing blackjack is to use the correct basic strategy and the deviations to from that strategy based on the ratio of cards that remain. Soft 18 in blackjack (A-7) is a commonly misplayed hand.

One of the hands that blackjack players sometimes misplay is soft 19. This is a hand that totals 19 and contains an ace counted as 11. Examples of soft 19 hands are A-8 and A-3-5.