When I was a child my mother told me nothing comes for free in life. And really? The same could be said about your profits from casino games.
It seems the easier a casino game is, be it a casino game online or in a brick and mortar casino, the worse the odds are. This should tell you something.
Let
It is July 1st and that means one thing for the Seminole Tribe. Well, okay, it means two things but as a blackjack player I am really only concerned about one of those things.
The Seminole compact that took a Tolkien amount of time to be agreed upon is now in effect. This means that blackjack tables are now legal in five of the seven Seminole casinos. Of those five brick and mortar casinos, three are located in Broward County, one in Immokalee and the fifth casino can be found in Tampa.
The debate on whether the Seminoles would be allowed to have blackjack tables had been an ongoing since 2007 when Governor Charlie Crist signed a compact with them that would allow them blackjack at all seven of their casinos. State legislature quickly said that was not legal.
Ever since the blackjack tables were alternately called legal and illegal. This past May the Seminoles, Crist and state legislatures finally came to an agreement: the Seminoles would be allowed exclusivity on blackjack with five casinos being allowed the tables. The Seminoles will also have a twenty year exclusivity on Vegas style slot machines. In exchange the Seminoles will be playing $1.5 million over five years.
Now if the deal is broken by pari-mutuels being allowed blackjack in less than five years or Vegas style slot machines in less than twenty years, the respective portion of the Seminoles
Did you know that the edge in an average game of blackjack starts out at around 7.8%? This applies to blackjack in a brick and mortar casino and to online blackjack. Does not matter where you find your blackjack, it all starts out at 7.8%
So if blackjack starts out at 7.8% why do most places tell you it really starts at around 5%?
That one is simple to answer really and it is the most direct to take away the dealer
I read this morning that blackjack is intimidating. Yes, I know, I was just as surprised. But apparently casino folk consider blackjack to be intimidating.
Now this rather puzzles me considering that blackjack does not have a lot of fancy rules and strategy. If you can add the numbers 1 through 11 then I do not see how blackjack can be hard. Add up the total of your first two cards, and decide if you want to try to increase your hand total by hitting or decide to stand with your total against whatever the dealer has.
To me adding 1 through 11 is not all that difficult, so I fail to see how blackjack is intimidating there. But it is also being said that strategy for blackjack is intimidating. Really?
Because the first form of blackjack strategy that comes to my mind is basic strategy, and I am sorry, there is no form of strategy that is easier.
Basic strategy is the most commonly used form of blackjack strategy. And it is a chart! If you can locate your hand total on the left side and locate the dealer
With the fairly recent approval of table games for casinos in Pennsylvania, the latest debate is about what kind of casino chips to use at the blackjack tables. Casino managers voice their concerns about the security of chips at their blackjack tables.
Earlier this week I discussed how the Meadows in western Pennsylvania has already decided to use casino chips with micro chips embedded in them. They are meant to make for quick adding up of wagers made and for quick cash outs at the casino
Are you a blackjack player near coastal Louisiana or coastal Mississippi? If so you might just find your blackjack games at brick and mortar casinos beginning to show the effects of the two month old BP oil spill.
I am in no way saying that blackjack or gambling is more important than the animals or ecosystems in the Gulf of Mexico that are being affected by the continuous flow of oil. Those animals and those ecosystems are way more important.
But as the summer tourism season gets underway coastal areas who rely on tourism will find that they are feeling the pinch of the oil spill in another way. It is likely that tourists will be choosing other destinations for their summer plans, which will hit areas hard. This will be an especially hard hit to areas that are still recovering from 2005
Imagine a game of blackjack in which you place your chips on the table and your betting total is instantly calculated by the casino. The casino is watching you and your chips, and how you are betting in blackjack, how much you a betting.
Sound a tad Big Brother?
Well, it does kind of sound that way. It seems casinos may have found a way to track their chips. The Meadows in Pennsylvania says that it might have in place microchipped casino chips. These chips would use a radio frequency identification technology to communicate with the casino.
According to the Meadows these microchipped casino chips can be used at a blackjack table to add up a player
For those who play blackjack fairly often, for those who have researched blackjack, studied blackjack, they know the odds. They know that blackjack games start with a house edge of 2% to 5%. These studied blackjack players know that they can reduce the house edge to 0.5% just by playing perfect basic strategy.
Unfortunately 0.5% is the best odds an online blackjack player can be after. For blackjack players who play in brick and mortar casinos, they can employ their skills at card counting, and even out the odds or even tilt the odds in their favor.
But what do odds tell you about winning? They tell you the chances of you winning, but those odds apply to each and every hand. They do not tell you on average how often you could win at blackjack. And the well informed player should know how often they could win.
On average a player will only win 44% of the time while the dealer will win around 48% of the time. Those percentages apply to blackjack game when basic strategy is applied. But either the player winning or the dealer winning only accounts for 92% of games. The other 8% goes into pushes. Meaning that 8% the dealer and the player will have a push.
Of the average 44% of games that the player will win, 5% of those games will be won with a natural blackjack. Interestingly enough, the dealer
Lawmakers in Rhode Island are certainly taking their time in deciding what to do with a bill about expanding the gambling offerings in two slot parlors. The two slot parlors are the Newport Grand and the Twin River in Lincoln.
The bill would allow for gambling expansion, which includes adding blackjack tables. But it seems that either lawmakers are a bit intimidated by blackjack, or there simply are not a lot of blackjack players in Rhode Island.
The bill would allow the state to determine how many blackjack tables there would be, their placement, their rules and odds, and to collect receipts from blackjack.
In 2006 citizens were allowed to vote on an amendment that would allow the Narragansett Indian Tribe to become partners with Harrah, and open a casino in West Warwick. The citizens voted no.
So lawmakers are aware that Rhode Island citizens are not crazy about the idea of having full casinos within their state. However, the state is hurting for money like a good number of states. And like those states, the lawmakers are eyeing revenue from legalized gambling to fill in some of the holes in the budget.
But lawmakers are not being too nasty about this and trying to force this through. There have been several revisions of the bill since it was first voted on. And for once the lawmakers are being considerate. They are going to have another review before voting.
But some citizens are not happy even with the lawmakers taking time to review the bill again. Barry Flynn, a resident of Newport, referred to the lawmakers as
For being one of the easiest casino games to play both in the casino and in an online casino, there are a fair few misconceptions about blackjack. I understand that it is a card game and not quite as simple as pushing or clicking Spin on a slots game, but blackjack is not nearly as difficult to understand.
In looking over thirty sites with the objective of blackjack given, twenty seven of them were inaccurate.
Now poker, that I can see someone building misconceptions on and not understanding. But not blackjack.
So, I am going to discuss one of the biggest misconceptions about blackjack.
The biggest misconception about blackjack is its objective. Many people, players, nonplayers and so-called experts, claim that the objective of blackjack is to obtain a hand total of 21 using only two cards: an Ace and either a face card or a 10.
For starters the actual objective of blackjack, both blackjack played in a brick and mortar casino and online blackjack, is to beat the dealer