Advanced Blackjack Strategy – Counting Cards

Blackjack is one of the few table games that does involve some real skill to play. That doesn’t necessarily mean you will win, but it means there are ways to minimize the House edge, or even swing it in your favor. Here are some elements of advanced blackjack strategy to consider.
Tips for Advanced Blackjack Strategy: Start with Basic Strategy
You’ve got to start with the basics. If you don’t have basic strategy down in blackjack, you can’t progress to any more advanced strategies. You should know the correct play in every situation instantly, and if you don’t, you should be playing online, where you can keep a basic strategy chart open on your monitor to refer to. Unfortunately, many advanced blackjack strategies don’t work online.
Tips for Advanced Blackjack Strategy: Counting Cards
Don’t bother trying to count cards in an online blackjack game. You can’t beat the online casino’s random number generator, and you can’t really count into a virtual shoe. If you want to count cards, you’re going to have to put your pants on and go to a live casino. Once there, employ some variant of a point count system, where low cards are worth a point and ten point cards and aces subtract a point. When the count is high, you know the deck is rich in tens. This is favorable to the player, so this is when it is time to raise your bet.
Tips for Advanced Blackjack Strategy: Playing as a Team
It’s difficult to succeed as an individual counter for two reasons. One, you may waste a lot of money trying to find a table that offers a high point count, and two, if you suddenly boost your bets when the count gets high, casino personnel will have an easy time catching you. The solution is to play as a team. Multiple players sit at tables generating counts. When a count gets high, a player signals to a lookout that the table is ripe. The lookout then sends a big player over to that table. This player immediately sits down and starts making big bets, profiting from the high count. As long as you don’t get caught or make any mistakes, this is a way to make big money over the long term playing blackjack.