My friends and I stayed at the Aladdin Hotel (before it was demolished and rebuilt). Then I was off to Vegas to try my luck with a whopping $40 of gambling money. It took a heck of a lot of practice and was tedious to learn, but I eventually felt comfortable with it. So I bought a book on blackjack, learned the rules of the game, memorized the basic strategy, and then studied a simple +/- card counting system. I quickly learned that most of the casino games were skewed to give the house an advantage - how unfair is that? - but blackjack was supposedly beatable if you learned a technique known as card counting. I decided to read up on some of the casino games before I went, so I could be prepared.

When I was 21 years old and living in Los Angeles, some friends and I decided to take a weekend trip to Las Vegas, my first trip there as an adult. This part simply provides some background info for the curious. Based on my experience, I saw that variance returned to my favor after an average of 5000 bets.Having played a fair amount of blackjack (I learned card counting when I was 21), I’ve noticed some interesting patterns in the way people play the game that seem to reflect larger life patterns.įeel free to skip ahead to the “Interesting Observations” section if you just want to read the lessons. Because unlimited decks are used and we never know when the variance will return in our favor. If we talk for stake, making a profit here is near impossible and is entirely based on luck. To be in favor of the player, 4 of the 6 decks must be used. or if a casino using 6 decks uses these 6 decks halfway (after playing with 3 decks, it is shuffle the deck), so it is very difficult to get an advantage. If the casino's blackjack rules are bad, you may not be able to take advantage of it.įor example, in a casino that does not accept double after split, the house edge increases by 0.20%. you need to pay attention to some points.

If you do perfect basic strategy and card counting at the same time, this gives you an advantage of 0.50% to 5%. In fact, the only game where we can make money at the casino is blackjack (against home.

Can a pro win money at blackjack