Most people who have been reading about casino gambling for any length of time already know that blackjack is one of the only opportunities you have to get a mathematical edge over the casino.

Not everyone understand exactly why this is, though, so the purpose of this post is to explain why you can beat blackjack even though most casino games are unbeatable.

Casinos stay in business because they offer games to the gambling public where they have a mathematical advantage. Every casino game has this advantage, and, in the parlance of our times, this advantage is called the house edge.

How does the house edge work?

Its just the difference between the odds of winning and the payout odds for the bet.

The easiest example to understand is in roulette.

If you place a single-number bet in roulette, your odds of winning are 37 to 1. You have 37 ways to lose that bet and only one way to win that bet.

When you do win, the payout on that bet is 35 to 1. The payout is lower than the odds of winning, so that difference the difference between 37 to 1 and 35 to 1 is the house edge.

When you convert that to a percentage, its 5.26%, which is the average amount of each bet the casino expects to win from you in the long run.

If youre betting $1 on single-number bets repeatedly at the roulette table, the casino averages a little over a nickel per bet in winnings over the long run. Nothing you can do changes that amount.

With all casino games, the casino has a single subtle rule that creates this edge. In roulette, that rule is the one that puts a green 0 and a green 00 on the roulette wheel.

In real money blackjack, the house gets its edge by making you play your hand before the dealer finishes her hand.

Its that simple. If you bust before the dealer plays her hand, you lose your bet immediately. The dealer is as likely to bust as you are, by the way.

But if the dealer busts, too, its not a tie.

You lost that bet when you busted, regardless of what happens later in the hand.

You can still beat blackjack, though.

When you play roulette, the odds are the same every time you place a bet. No matter what, the same 38 numbers are on the wheel, and you have the same 1/38 probability of a ball landing on a specific number.

But lets consider a hypothetical:

What if the number got eliminated from the roulette wheel after it had been hit?NNN

Do you see how this would change every probability in the game?

Heres an example:

Suppose you bet on the number 5, and it hits. You win your bet, which is cool, but that ball stays in that spot for now which changes the probability of hitting a 5 on the next spin. What was a 1/38 probability has changed to a 0 probability.

But all the other probabilities have changed, too now you only have 37 numbers on the roulette wheel, so the probability of winning a single number bet now has changed from 1/38 to 1/37.

Now suppose five numbers in a row have hit, and theyve all been filled in.

Now you have a 1/33 probability of winning a single number bet.

If that bet continues to pay off at 35 to 1, you have a clear mathematical advantage over the casino.

Of course, thats never going to happen, because the casino doesnt eliminate numbers from the wheel as you play. Thats why I said to think about this hypothetically.

But guess what happens when you play blackjack?

In most blackjack games, the casino doesnt shuffle the deck after every hand. Any cards that have been dealt are eliminated from the deck, which changes the probability of getting certain outcomes.

Thats a big part of why blackjack is a beatable game.

The house advantage in blackjack is notoriously low to begin with if you know how to play correctly. And playing correctly is as easy as memorizing a basic strategy table. Ive written about basic strategy in multiple previous posts, but to make my point here, you need to understand this:

The house edge for a blackjack game when played with basic strategy is usually only 0.5% or so.

Thats dramatically different from the 5.26% advantage that the casino has when you play roulette.

And you saw how easy it was to turn the casinos advantage to a players advantage in a roulette game just by removing some numbers from the wheel after they hit.

Now, think about the implications in a blackjack game.

The first thing to understand is that blackjack has a bonus payout any time youre dealt a natural. Thats also called a blackjack. Its just a two-card hand consisting of an ace and a 10, which adds up to 21, the best possible total in the game.

Most blackjack wins pay off at even money, but when you get a natural, you get 3 to 2 on your bet.

And, of course, the only way to get a blackjack is with a 10 and an ace.

If youre playing in a single-deck game where all the aces have already been dealt, your probability of getting a blackjack have dropped to 0. Its impossible to get a blackjack without aces in the deck.

And every 10 that gets dealt also decreases your probability of getting a natural.

But the good news is this every time a lower value card gets dealt, your probability of getting a blackjack increases.

Since the cards have been randomized, sometimes the deck will have proportionally more high cards (aces and 10s). Other times, it will have the proportion of high cards to low cards youd expect. Still other times, the deck will have a higher proportion of low cards to high cards.

If you could raise the size of your bets when youre likelier to get a natural and lower the size of your bets when youre less likely to get a blackjack, you could get a mathematical edge over the casino.

And thats why blackjack is beatable.

Ill explain the how of it soon, but first, lets talk about how big an edge you can get and what that means for your wallet.

The best estimates Ive seen for the kind of edge you can get by counting cards in blackjack is about 1% over the house.

What does this mean in dollars and cents?

Lets assume youre able to get in 75 hands per hour and average $10 per bet. Thats $750/hour in action, and if you win 1% of that in the long run, youre looking at earning $7.50 per hour for your efforts.

Thats right.

If youre a low stakes card counter, you could probably make more money by getting a job at a fast food restaurant.

But theres a solution:

Increase your average bet size. If youre averaging $100 per hand, your hourly wage increases to $75 per hour.

Thats more like it.

Just keep this in mind to avoid going broke, you need a big enough bankroll that you wont be hurt during your inevitable losing streaks. If you have $500 and are betting $100 per hand, you wont last long as a card counter.

On the other hand, if you have a bankroll of $100,000, youre unlikely to go broke betting $100 per hand. It could happen, but the probability drops dramatically. In fact, if youre comfortable with a higher risk of going broke, you can get by with a bankroll of $40,000 or $50,000.

Counting cards is entirely legal. Youre just thinking about the game youre playing. They cant outlaw that.

Casinos can restrict you from playing blackjack, though, and they can even trespass you from their property altogether.

Learning to count cards is easier than you think. Basically, youre going to assign a value (usually +1 or -1) to the low cards and the high cards. Your running count then estimates the ratio of high cards to low cards in the deck.

When the count is positive, the deck is relatively rich in aces and 10s, and you should raise the size of your bets. When the count is zero or negative, you should bet the minimum until the ratio changes to where the count is positive.

The most important thing about learning how to count cards is to practice at home until youre so proficient at it that you can do it effortlessly. You must be able to count cards without moving your lips or even looking like youre concentrating at all.

You dont want the casinos to know what youre up to.

Are you up for the challenge of learning how to beat blackjack?

Frankly, most people arent.

I know how to count cards, and Ive won some money doing so.

But its not a regular activity for me.

Dont feel like that just because the game can be beaten you must be the one to beat it. Its all right to be a recreational blackjack player who loses less money than the average player.

Whats not all right with me and I dont think it should be okay with you, either is to ignore basic strategy while you play. I dont see any reason to give the casino more of a mathematical edge than they already have.

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