Gambling Results With Jeff

I had a huge night yesterday in my local casino where we have a shoe-based single deck blackjack game and it wasn’t thanks to my card counting skills… I spotted someone consistently playing a solid game varying his bet sizes throughout the shoe and decided to low-bet one shoe and see if I could do my basic KISS-count to see if his bets made sense…

They did — and for the coming two hours I followed his pattern of minbets up to 15x minbet to end up winning $4900. When he left I played on for about ten minutes before cashing out with $4700 profit. Not too shabby.

On my way to the cashier I noticed my hero playing the roulette — so I walked over and whispered a “thank-you for your excellent count” in his ear… He smiled and said: “Ha, I noticed”.

Great stuff — hope to spot him at the casino again soon!

I came back from Vegas +/-$14,200 winner. Time to give all of you the rundown of my net losses and wins. I rounded to hundreds, so it might not add up to the detail, but you’ll get the general idea.

Texas Hold’em Poker: +$4,800
Punto Banco / Baccarat: +$5,900
Blackjack: -$1,100
Pot Limit Omaha Poker: +4,900
Roulette: -$2,100
Craps: +$300
Stud Poker (against the house): -$600
Slots: -$100
Casino Hold’em: +$2000 (got extremely lucky and quit ahead hehe)

I’m happy.

I feel sick. Came home last night feeling sick. Played poker for about 3 hours, turned $750 into $3500 — donked off all my profit in half an hour at the blackjack table….

I’m usually quite the disciplined player, but for some reason I failed yesterday. Feels so stupid once you walk out of the casino. DAMN.

Splitting pairs in blackjack gives you the chance to split a pair and play two separate hands with one new card for each.

The dealer will then deal you an additional card to each hand, and you will play each hand individually. It is important to know the different splitting pair types when you play blackjack. Not every pair should be spilt.

You should ALWAYS split a pair of Aces. Just over 30% of the cards in a single deck have a value of 10, so you have a good chance of hitting two more 10 cards and to improve both your hands into a blackjack. (Although the house may not pay out 3:2 on Blackjacks that come from split Aces).

Don’t split 10s you numpty. 20 is a winning hand. If you split 10s the dealer is morally obliged to slap you with a wet fish.

You should always split 8s. A total of 16 is not good enough to stand but you are likely to bust almost two thirds of the time if you hit. With a large proportion of the pack being 10s you have a good chance of ending up with two hands with a total of 18.

For other hands the decision should be made based on the dealer’s upcard.

Action: H = Hit S = Stand D = Double P = Split

I would stress that like doubling up; splitting pairs can also affect the effectiveness of your betting strategy. This is especially true if you are using the Paroli or Martingale system. You should make the decisions about when you are going to split pairs and the effect it might have on your betting system and stick to them.

Luck Doesn’t Last
Don’t start betting your mortgage because you have won 16 hands in a row (although you might want to go out and buy a lottery ticket), you cannot predict a lucky streak so don’t change your betting system because you are feeling lucky. The minute you overbet you can guarantee you’ll loose. Conversely, don’t get the hump because you have lost 16 in a row. You are not unlucky; you are just fortune challenged at present.

Avoid Distractions
Don’t drink while playing. We all know alcohol makes you do silly things. Some casinos will offer winning players drinks. This is not to be nice. The naughty casino people know if you drink you start to make mistakes. If you are playing online don’t sit and watch TV or the children whilst playing. You should be concentrating on what you are doing. If you are tired stop playing. You will only start making mistakes. Get some sleep, some exercise or some food or all three.

Use the Basic Strategy
Always use the basic strategy. Always. It is maths and you can’t argue with it. (Well you can but the maths will win) Even those times that you are dealt a bad hand, for example you have a 16 and want to stand when the dealer is showing a ten. By not using the strategy you increase the houses edge and we don’t want that!

In the end playing Blackjack is like anything else. Be disciplined and it will pay off.