Can You Look At Your Cards In Blackjack
- Can You Look At Your Cards In Blackjack Against
- Can You Look At Your Cards In Blackjack Game
- Can You Look At Your Cards In Blackjack Without
- Can You Look At Your Bottom Card In Blackjack
Aug 22, 2014
If the face-up card has a value of 10, the dealer will look at the face-down card to check for a blackjack. If he or she has blackjack, he or she will turn over the cards and take your bet and your hand away. If you have blackjack, the dealer will take your cards, but you keep your bet. Values of two through six can make for the trickiest decisions. In fact, if you remove any significant number of small cards from the shoe, blackjack not only becomes easier, the player gets a mathematical edge over the house. This is where card counting comes in. Counters track the proportion of small cards to face cards and aces. Second, you can focus on your opponents and not on your cards.” I have heard this same basic argument made by many different people over the years since I first started paying attention to poker.
Card counting is the gold standard when we’re talking about winning at blackjack. But some blackjack experts claim you can win without counting.
Can You Look At Your Cards In Blackjack Against
Blackjack is a casino game. That means that the house has an inherent mathematical advantage over the player. Theoretically the more the player plays, the more the casino drains from their pockets. But blackjack stands out from other games like slots, baccarat and roulette because the player can use advantage play techniques to turn the tide in their favor.
One can never make a living from roulette, but one can from playing blackjack. The most obvious way to do this is by using a card counting system. There are numerous systems out there but all of them are designed to make the player aware of when the odds are in their favor so they can place a very large wager.
That being said, some prominent voices doubt the necessity of counting cards to win consistently.
Leon Dubey and the no-counting situational approach
In 1980 blackjack expert Leon Dubey published a book called No Need to Count in which he promotes a strategy for winning at blackjack which is much different from most blackjack books, which are almost exclusively about basic strategy or card counting. His approach is the most commonly-cited non-counting system in use.
Essentially he argues that you can end up with the same result as you would by counting without actually counting. Whereas counting takes a mathematical approach, Dubey’s no-counting system takes a holistic approach to making yourself aware of when the odds are in your favor.
This is also referred to as a “situational system” as the player considers the current situation to decide how to play the upcoming hand. It is quantitatively, not qualitatively different for a standard counting system.
Dubey’s approach relies on three “situational” indicators that the next hand will be (or will not be) in the player’s favor
• If the player has won the previous hand it is an indicator that advantageous cards (face cards) were dealt, so the chances of good cards being dealt again are lessened
• If the player lost the previous hand the vice-versa occurs, as being dealt poor-quality cards means it’s more likely one will be dealt high-quality ones upcoming
• If the last hand was a push the chances of a player loss on the upcoming hand are magnified even more, as the previous hand most likely resulted in both the dealer and player being dealt face cards
These rules are extremely simple but Dubey testified that they had been mathematically tested and approved, a claim which was accepted by blackjack legend Arnold Snyder.
Dubey was not the first to show that the outcome of the next hand can be predicted in part by considering the outcome of the previous hand. There are other positive and negative indicators as well. For example, following a non-ace pair split the player’s expectation should rise; following an ace split it should drop. And expectations should rise after any hand – player or dealer – which involves someone taking four or more cards.
The critique of this system
Dubey and followers are 100 percent correct in asserting that analysis of the previous hand can be useful in predicting the outcome of the upcoming hand, and they have the mathematical studies to prove it.
The question is: so what? The correlation between the last hand and the previous hand is quite small. So small that some analysis has found that correctly betting in accordance with these simple indicators lessens the house edge rather than tips the edge into the advantage of the player.
Another thing: non-counting systems are not pit boss-proof. Some believe that situational techniques are not detectable by casino staff. It’s true that one is less likely to be sniffed out using this system than when counting cards directly, but some blackjack players have been given the back-off for situational playing.
In the words of Snyder, “situational play is valid, but not a very good moneymaking system.” If done properly you’ll win more than you would using basic strategy alone, but not enough to significantly increase the size of bankroll.
A situational system is essentially a watered-down counting system. It’s easier to use but much less lucrative. At the end of the day it isn’t worth the trouble.
Why card counting is the best way to win
Non-counting advantage play strategies like Dubey’s can give the player a higher chance of winning but they are simply not as precise as using a card counting system. They amount to a sort of advantage play “cheating,” the desire to tip the house edge in one’s favor without putting the time in to learn a proper counting system.
Then there are cases where a player like the now-famous Don Johnson had a few big nights in Atlantic City casinos and won $15 million using only basic strategy. He’s an excellent blackjack player, but that style of play isn’t sustainable. There’s a reason he isn’t a professional blackjack player.
The truth is in blackjack there are no shortcuts to prolonged success. Advanced blackjack smart strategies require countless hours of hard work to learn. That’s exactly why aspiring players are looking for non-counting strategies, but there are simply no alternatives to counting.
To answer the question in the title to this article, yes, it is possible to win at blackjack without using a card counting system. But that doesn’t mean that one should attempt to do it.
Tags: Arnold Snyder, card counting system, Don Johnson, Leon Dubey, No Need to Count, non-counting advantage play blackjack systems, Situational Blackjack, smart strategies, winning at blackjack
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We’ll take a look at how the number of decks used in a game of blackjack impacts the house edge and card counting, and the number of decks used by land-based casinos.
Technically there’s no limit to how many decks of cards can be used in a game of blackjack. While a couple of friends playing at home can play a decent game of 21 using as little as one or two decks, casino blackjack is most commonly played with six to eight decks of standard 52 playing cards, excluding jokers.
How the number of decks affect the house edge
When optimal blackjack strategy is employed, the theoretical house edge for a game of 21 is less than 1% depending on the rules in play, making this the most player friendly of all casino card games. However, the house edge can vary significantly depending on the number of decks of cards that are used per game and the rules that are in place, with a 0.5% house edge typically reserved for fewer deck games with player-friendly rules.
As more decks of cards are added, the house edge becomes higher and higher, growing even further with the introduction of new rules that have been implemented by land based casinos to give the house an extra advantage (for example, excluding doubling on soft hands, offering lower payouts for natural blackjacks, unfair Soft 17 rules, etc).
The reason for the variation in house edge is that the more decks of cards that are used, the lower your chances are of drawing a natural blackjack (a hand with a 10 value card plus an ace), with fewer decks giving you a better chance. With fewer decks in use, the dealer also has a lower chance of drawing a natural blackjack against the player’s natural blackjack, which means there is a lower chance that a pushed tie bet will occur.
Impact on card counting
Card counting is big in blackjack, with many players benefitting in big ways from being able to mentally calculate which cards have already been dealt versus which cards remain in the shoe in order to determine their next move.
Can You Look At Your Cards In Blackjack Game
With single deck blackjack, card counting could be mastered with some work even if you weren’t the most mathematically advanced type, with many card sharks publishing bestselling books teaching their card counting methods. However, the addition of each and every deck of cards makes card counting that little bit more difficult, so counting is very difficult for casual players who might not have the time or the patience to master the technique.
Why some land based casinos use fewer decks
It wasn’t too long ago that casinos around Australia used the single deck blackjack format, with similar rules to those we’re used to seeing employed with online six deck blackjack games, which is what put the house edge around the 1% mark. As more players honed their blackjack strategy and card counting began to grow in popularity and effectiveness, the casinos had to put certain provisions in place to protect the house against these player-friendly rules.
Can You Look At Your Cards In Blackjack Without
Initially, casinos kept the single deck format but introduced some rules that were so unfavourable to players that recreational punters were turned off the game entirely, which is what led to the introduction of the higher deck games, which you’ll find at some casinos. At Australian casinos like Crown Melbourne, Crown Perth and Star Sydney, blackjack games commonly use between four and eight decks.
However, to keep players happy by continuing to offer blackjack games using fewer decks of cards, some casino vendors imposed less player-friendly rules, like restricting splits, imposing lower betting limits and paying less for blackjack wins. So while players can benefit from using fewer decks, the unfair rules make the game work in the houses favour.
These blackjack games using fewer decks and limiting rules have become favoured by Australian casino vendors as they are highly favourable to the house, much to the disdain of punters. Dedicated blackjack players should consider switching to play online where the probabilities and house edges are more favourable to the player.
Benefit of online play
Online gambling was made illegal in Australia as of September 2017 following the introduction of the Interactive Gambling Amendment Bill 2016, so for Australians the content on this page is informational in nature only. The information about online blackjack is intended exclusively for international readers.
Online blackjack games from leading developers like Microgaming and NetEnt are typically played with six to eight decks of cards, but with rules that are much more favourable to players than some of the sketchy rules being employed by land based casinos. Playing online gives players the chance to choose from several 21 variants, including Single Deck Blackjack, so you can hand pick games with better house edges using the player friendly rules that you prefer.