I’ve been emailing back and forth with a reader who’s in his mid-fifties and is about to kiss Corporate America goodbye. Because he’s had some success as a card counter recently, the thought occurred to him that it might be fun to become a professional Blackjack player.

6 bb/100 = $1.50 (6 x 25c) per 100 hands at each table. $1.50 per 100 hands x 4 tables = $6 per 400 hands. $6 x 0.85 = $5.10 an hour. (We play 85 hands an hour on average in short-handed games, so we multiply $6 by 0.85 to get our hourly winrate) $/hour = $5.10; Daily winrate example. You play 1 table of full ring $1/$2 NL Hold’em and have a. To perform many of the calculations, Blackjack Risk Manager needs to be supplied with only two values: Win Rate per 100 hands and Standard Deviation (SD) per 100 hands, both expressed in units. Win Rate and SD values can be readily obtained from several sources, such as: values published in blackjack literature; values from simulations run.

The first thing I told him is that it’s not fun, but it’s certainly satisfying and, under the right circumstances, can be very profitable. Making a living at the Blackjack tables is tough, unless you can put up with smokers, drunks, hustlers, big losses, rude players and casinos that want to toss you out because you’re too good at what you do. If you can deal with all that, it’s fun to play “their” game – their cards, their rules, their dealer – and walk away with “their” $$$.

The way to do it is simple and I’ll prove it right here. The way to keep doing it is more of a problem and although I can give you some ideas on how to survive, it’s really up to you to present yourself in such a way that the casinos will allow you to regularly make a profit at the game.

Proper game selection and an adequate bankroll are key items in the equation. These days, the best opportunities lie in double-deck (DD) games, in my not-so-humble opinion.

1. Learn how professional blackjack players can earn over $100,000 a year at the casinos. (2000 hours per year) to win $100,000. If you play 100 hands per hour.
2. You’re playing the same 50 hands per hour at $100 per hand. Again, you’re putting $5,000 into action each hour ($100 x $50). 1% of $5,000 is $50. Now, instead of losing $25/hour, you’re winning $50 per hour. Effects of Different Rules on the House Edge. The conditions under which you play blackjack affect the house edge. For example, the.

I know of at least 10 casinos in the U.S. that offer very beatable DD games – “beatable” in the sense that they give good penetration, allow decent bet spreads and have fairly good rules.

In my mind, penetration has to be 70 cards (of 104) minimum or 67%. I’ll let the dealer hit soft 17, but I do insist on double on any first two cards and after splitting pairs. Games like this where the dealer stands on soft 17 and late surrender is available do exist, but you’re not going to read about them here. After all, I need to keep a few secrets of my own!

For this discussion and for the math I’ll show you, the game used is this: Two decks, the dealer hits soft 17, you may double on any first two cards, including after split; split Aces receive only 1 card and surrender is not available, but insurance is. Penetration is at least 70 cards and I’m going to use a $50-$400 bet spread.

I’m also going to assume that one does not leave the table when the count drops; this is a “play all” situation, meaning we sit and play, regardless of the count. I’m going to also assume – and this is critical – that the player uses the Basic Strategy variations I show in Lesson 23 I feel comfortable with a bankroll of $50,000, which would mean that our player should have about $8000 available for a four hour playing session.

Because this is designed for a full-time player who basically has no means of replacing his $$$ through a job or something like that, the risk of ruin (losing it all) must be very low – preferably less than 1%. With a top bet on one hand being $400 (I’ll also show a bet schedule for two hands), a $50,000 bankroll has a risk of ruin of 0.68%. In other words, there’s less than a one in a hundred chance of you losing everything because of “variation” alone. For those of you who have a means of replenishing your bankroll, a total of $25,000 will give you a 10% risk of ruin factor.

The betting schedule for always playing only one hand at a time looks like this:

You can see that the bet schedule is “$100 times the True Count” other than when it’s lower than 1.I like it because it’s aggressive and easy to remember. In a game like I described above, the player will have a long-term edge of 1.37% and the average bet will be $112.50. This works out to be an expected value of 0.0137 x $112.50 = $1.54 per hand. From here on out, the math is simple; play 60 hands per hour and you’ll make an average of $92.40 per hour. Okay, it’s not $100 per hour, but at a $50 minimum bet table, it’s fair to say that it’ll seldom be full, so there should be no problem in getting at least 75 hands per hour. At that rate, the expected income would be $115+ per hour.

Because such a high-minimum table will seldom be full, the wise player will spread to two hands whenever appropriate. Of course, that’s done only when the count is favorable AND when it doesn’t threaten your “longevity” in the casino. But a lot of high-stakes gamblers (as opposed to advantage players like us) often play two hands to “alter the flow of the cards” and other nonsense like that, so why not look like a gambler from time-to-time? Here’s the betting schedule I recommend for that:

With this bet schedule, you’d only go to two hands when the True Count is 2 or more, so there’s no change from the schedule for one hand only at lower counts. I like this because it gives you the flexibility to play two hands if, say, someone leaves the table just as the count goes up or if the “pit critter” all of a sudden isn’t watching you and so forth. This bet schedule ultimately gets more $$$ on the table, yet the top bet is only $350 (on each of two hands), so it’s at least modestly deceiving to casual observers (like the Pitboss). By using this schedule, the player’s long-term edge is upped a bit to 1.55% and the average bet is $135.00 per round of play. This works out to be an expectation of 0.0155 x $135.00 = $2.09 per hand. It does, however, raise the risk of ruin to over 1.5%, so bear that in mind. Also, there is nothing to be gained by playing two hands when alone with the dealer unless the table’s maximum bet is less than $400; this is a technique to use when other players are at the table so you can “eat” the good cards.

As I mentioned earlier, the real problem with all of this is avoiding the old heave-ho. Playing Blackjack like this is going to attract attention in all but the biggest casinos, mainly because you’re almost always playing with $100 chips. The “pit critters” watch the black chips very closely and pay even more attention to consistent winners. While nobody wins all the time, this approach will, on average, see you winning about 70% of all your sessions. But, if it was easy, everybody would be doing it.

Numbers Don’t Lie

By Henry Tamburin

Dominator, who is my good friend and fellow blackjack instructor, will probably kill me when he reads this article. He’s always preaching to me that blackjack players 'don’t want to know how the clock works, they just want to know what time it is, so don’t bore them with a lot of numbers.' But I’ve decided to risk life and limb and discuss some of the more important blackjack statistics in my column this month, because I believe it helps players better understand the fundamentals of winning blackjack strategies. I’ve got to admit, however, that numbers are boring to most folks, so I crafted this article as a fun quiz (at least I hope you find it entertaining, as well as informative). So let’s get going, and Dom, if you are reading this …have mercy on me.

1.Ignoring ties, the percentage of hands that you can expect to win when you play blackjack is about:

a. 45 percent

b. 48 percent

c. 50 percent

Answer: b. When you ignore the 9 percent of the hands that tie, you can expect to win 48 percent of the hands dealt to you, and lose 52 percent. Notice that you will lose significantly more hands than you win. So how do you win money playing blackjack? For starters, the average amount of money that you win on the winning hands is slightly greater than a single betting unit because the latter are sometimes hands where you get a blackjack and are paid at 3-2, or you double down and win double the amount of your bet. Losing hands, on the other hand, often lose only a single betting unit. The result is that monetarily you will be close to, but not quite even when you play (this assumes that you use the basic playing strategy for all your hands). If you want to go a step further and win much more money on winning hands compared to the amount you will lose on losing hands, so that overall you show a gain, then you’ve got to learn card counting.

2.If you are dealt three consecutive hands, what is the chance that they will all lose, excluding ties?

a. 1 percent

b. 14 percent

c. 30 percent

Answer: b. You have about a 14 percent chance of losing three hands in a row when you play blackjack. Surprised? Most players probably guess 1 percent because they figure the chance of this happening is very low. Well it isn’t, so don’t panic and abandon the basic playing strategy when it happens.

3.How frequently does a player get a blackjack?

a. Once every 15 hands

b. Once every 21 hands

c. Once every 30 hands

Answer: b. The game is 21 and you can expect to get a blackjack once in every 21 hands. This brings me to the point why I harp that you should never play any blackjack game that pays 6-5, instead of 3-2, for a winning blackjack. Suppose you play two hours’ worth of blackjack on one of the heavily advertised, $10 minimum, 6-5 single deck games. Let’s assume you are dealt 100 hands per hour, so over the course of two hours you played 200 hands of blackjack. Getting a blackjack once every 21 hands means that you should theoretically have gotten about 10 blackjacks. Sometimes you’ll get more blackjacks in two hours of play, sometimes less, but on average you’ll get 10. Each of those blackjack hands cost you $3 on a 6-5 game (the difference between getting paid 3-2 vs. 6-5, or $12 instead of $15, for your $10 wager). So you forked over $30 to the casino for the privilege of playing a single deck game (yeah, right). Save your money and avoid playing any 6-5 single deck games.

4.How frequently does a basic strategy player bust?

a. Once every six hands

b. Once every eight hands

c. Once every ten hands

Answer. a. A basic strategy player can expect to bust about 16 percent of the time or once every six hands. When a player busts, he always loses. Not so with the dealer (see next question).

5.How frequently does the dealer bust?

Blackjack Win Rate Per 100 Hands Per

a. One time out of every seven hands

b. Two times out of every seven hands

c. Three times out of every seven hands.

Blackjack Win Rate Per 100 Hands Drop

Answer: b. The dealer busts about 28 percent of the time, or about two times out of every seven hands. Unlike a player bust, the dealer often wins when she busts, because players who act first and bust automatically lose (this is how the house has a built-in edge in blackjack). The 28 percent is an average over all possible dealer upcards. In fact, the dealer will bust significantly more times when she shows a 2-6 upcard (about 42 percent with a 5 or 6 upcard), and much less with a 7 through Ace upcard (with an Ace, it’s only 17 percent after checking for a natural). Because the dealer’s chance of busting is higher when she shows a small upcard, you should not risk busting a 12-16 stiff hand and should always stand (with two exceptions - it’s slightly better to hit a 12 against a dealer’s 2 or 3). However, when the dealer shows a strong upcard from 7 though Ace and has a much lower risk of busting, you should be more aggressive and hit your stiff hands until your hand totals 17 or more (even if it means you risk busting).

6.You can expect your initial two-card hand to be a hard 12-17 about:

a. 30 percent of the time

b. 35 per cent of the time

c. 43 percent of the time

Answer: c. About 43 percent of the time you’ll be holding a 12 through 17, and the only way you can win is if the dealer busts, or you improve your hand. So any time you hold a 12 through 17 it’s bad news and you should expect to lose. In fact, approximately 85 percent of your financial losses occur with these hands. The best you can do when you are holding a 12 through 17 is to play your hand optimally using the basic playing strategy to minimize your losses.

7.The dealer has an Ace upcard. What is the chance she has a 10 in the hole for blackjack?

a. 15 percent

b. 24 percent

c. 31 percent

Answer: c. The dealer will have a ten four times out of 13, or roughly 31 percent of the time. The remaining 9 out of 13, or 69 percent of the time, the dealer won’t have a 10 in the hole. When you make the insurance bet, you are betting that the dealer has a ten in the hole when she shows an Ace. Assume you make a $10 insurance wager. Four times you’ll win $20 on the insurance bet (2 to 1 payoff odds) for a total win of $80. The other nine times you will lose $10 on your insurance bet for a total loss of $90. In other words, you lost more than you won. Therefore, it’s wise to never make the insurance bet.

8.The edge that card counters have over the casino is approximately:

a. 1 percent

Blackjack Win Rate Per 100 Hands Held

b. 10 percent

Blackjack Win Rate Per 100 Hands Sanitizer

c. 50 percent

Answer: a. Most players are surprised at the tiny one percent edge that card counters have over the house. Oftentimes, depending upon the game and the card counting system being used, the card counter’s edge is even less. With an edge this small, it means in the short run, luck will play a great role in the fortunes of a card counter, even though he will show a profit in the long-run.

So how did you do on the questions? It really doesn’t matter how many you got right or wrong, but whether or not I motivated you to play better. And I hope I did.

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Henry Tamburin is the Lead Instructor in the Golden Touch™ Blackjack course (www.goldentouchblackjack.com) and editor of the Blackjack Insider newsletter. For a free 3-month subscription to his blackjack newsletter with full membership privileges, visit www.bjinsider.com/free.