Tag Archive: counting cards

Though the rules of blackjack are relatively simple, the game play, rules, and winning strategies, can be more taxing, especially for the novice player. Without a deep understanding of this popular table game, you might be nervous about betting with your own money. That's why we recommend that you seek out free blackjack games at online casinos. You can practice for as long as you wish, without spending a single dime. Only when you're feeling confident, should you start to play for real money

Thanks to Hollywood, everyone has an idea about counting cards at the casino. It's a technique in blackjack that can bring the odds into your favor by a tiny percentage. But enough to make a difference over the long term. The payer needs to keep a real and a running count in his head at the same time. From this, he'll know the type of cards left in the deck. Though counting cards is not illegal, and you'll not get arrested, as you can imagine, the casinos are not enamored with card counters.

Compared to many other casino table games, the blackjack house edge appears to be much lower. In fact, in a regular game it hovers at around 2%. Because blackjack is a game of both luck and skill, it's quite possible, that by playing perfect blackjack strategies, you can lower this down to around 0.5%. Only by using card counting can you get to this amazing figure. But the truth of the matter is that the counting of cards is very difficult at a land-based casino, and impossible online.

The renowned blackjack player and team manager, Tommy Hyland has certainly had his fair share of hair raising moments during his card counting team career. Not just being content to count cards, back in those days, you could actually bring a tiny computer into the casino hidden on your body, and take advantage of it's computing power to allow you to place wagers at the optimum moment. Just imagine how overjoyed the casinos were to discover suck tricks.

Stanford Wong was the pen name of the blackjack author and team manager, John Ferguson. Having been interested in card games in his youth, he later was to form 2 very successful card counting blackjack teams, who would take casinos to the cleaners. But money was never his driving force. That was to better his knowledge, and he often took much less of the profits as he regarded the data collected from their adventures to be the most valuable commodity. Eventually, his identity was revealed on TV.