Blackjack and Basic Casino Strategy

Cards are counted to estimate the probability of getting a card of the required value from the deck. Of course, a normal player cannot remember all the cards played, especially if the game is played with several decks, so card counting should be taken literally. They are counted. For example, in the popular Hi-Lo system, cards with a value of 2 to 6 are counted as +1, cards with a value of 7 to 9 are counted as zero, and cards from 10 to Ace are counted as -1. If the total value of the cards played is greater than zero, then there are more high-value cards left in the deck. This knowledge (along with following the blackjack strategy) gives the player an advantage over the dealer, who is forced to play according to a rigid and well-known strategy.

That's the theory. In practice, even a few minor player errors per hour are enough to even out the game.

Basic Blackjack Strategy for standard Moscow rules



Do not insure and do not take equal money.
"Firm" hands.
Against the dealer's 2, 3 - take up to a solid 13.
Against the dealer's 4, 5, 6 - take up to a solid 12.
Against the dealer's 7, 8, 9, X, A - take up to a solid 17.

"Soft" hands.
Against the dealer's 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 - take up to soft 18.
Against the dealer's 9, X, A - take until soft 19.

"Hard" double.
With your 10 and 11 - double against the dealer's 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
With your 9 - double against the dealer's 3, 4, 5, 6.

"Soft" double.
With your A, 2 and A, 3, double against the dealer's 5, 6.
With your A, 4 and A, 5 - double against the dealer's 4, 5, 6.
With your A, 6 and A, 7 - double against the dealer's 3, 4, 5, 6.

Splitting.
With your 2, 2 and 3, 3 - split against the dealer's 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
With your 4, 4 - split against the dealer's 5, 6.
With your 5, 5 - do not split (double against the dealer's 2-9).
With your 6, 6 - split against the dealer's 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
With your 7, 7 - split against the dealer's 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
With your 8, 8 - split against the dealer's 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
With your 9, 9 - split against the dealer's 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 (from 2 to 9, but not against 7).
With your X, X - do not split (stand).
With your A, A - split against the dealer's 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, X.

Surrender, refusal.
Against dealer A - refusal on your hard 5, 6, 7 and 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 (including pairs).
Against the dealer X - refusal on your hard 14, 15, 16 (including 7, 7 and 8, .
Against the dealer's 9, he folds on his solid 16 (split on 8, .

X stands for any ten-value card, A stands for an ace.

Start of discussion Avax, on January 13 04:00
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Coin_8, 13.01.2014 20:17
Coin_8
Thorpe returned to Las Vegas several more times to collect tribute.
from the gaming tables.
One day in 1964, while he was playing baccarat in Las Vegas, he
offered a cup of coffee with sugar and cream. He took a couple of sips.
kov and suddenly felt strange. That time Thorpe came to Las-
Vegas with a friend and his nurse wife. She looked him in the eye.
for and saw the familiar look of a drug addict brought in by ambulance
after an overdose. Everything turned out well, but the episode scared Thorpe. He re-
sewed that it was worth finding a new testing ground to test his strategies.
Thorp immediately turned his attention to the largest casino in the world -
Wall Street.
Coin_8, 13.01.2014 20:14
Coin_8
Combination of Thorp's Blackjack Winning System and the Op-
Kelly's optimal bets were a powerful weapon. Thorp and Kimmel
continued to beat the dealer despite all the obstacles.
In a few days they doubled their initial capital of 10 thousand.
hundreds of dollars.
Shortly after publishing the results of his research in Wa-
Shington Thorpe saw a programme about gambling on television.
The reporter asked the casino owner if it was possible to win from his
"When a bullock is led to the slaughterhouse, it may kill the butcher,"
the owner replied. “But we always bet on the bull.”
Thorpe smiled. He knew he had beaten the butcher. How would he write
later: "The day of the bull has come."
Coin_8, 13.01.2014 20:12
Coin_8
When Hand arrived, the trio went to the famous casino
Harold's Club, located in a huge building in downtown Reno.
A significant jump up from the second-rate casino where Thorp played
last night. That made the test even more serious.
They sat down at a table with a $500 limit, the highest bet
in the casino. In 15 minutes they won this amount, betting from
25 to 250 dollars. The girl dealer pressed her foot on the hidden under
button on the table. Thorpe noticed that from the other end of the room a
Harold Smith, the casino owner, was hovering.
Coin_8, 13.01.2014 20:11
Coin_8
Thorpe gave the work the provocative title "The Formula for Success"
ha: strategy for winning at blackjack" (Fortune's Formula: A Winning
Strategy for Blackjack). The agency's reporter learned about the study
Associated Press and wrote an article about the brilliant professor of mathematics.
tiki that outsmarted blackjack. The article was published in newspapers around the world.
across the country. Suddenly Thorpe became famous.
Coin_8, 13.01.2014 20:10
Coin_8
Kelly capped his bet. He thought he was all in.
you can go only when the chances of success are 100%. Situation-
tion is very rare, almost unbelievable in a casino. However, Thorp has repeatedly
would run into her a few years later on Wall Street.
Kelly's mathematical calculations suggested exactly how much
you need to add or subtract, depending on the contents of the wallet-
ka, to achieve maximum winnings. According to Kelly,
the formula described how to make money “grow geometrically”
"tricyclic progression" and at the same time avoid ruin.
Coin_8, 13.01.2014 20:05
Coin_8
He kept his experiments with roulette a secret.
*
, and not return-
had been visiting them for months. But maybe Shannon is interested
this topic?
“I have been researching roulette games,” he replied, “and I have succeeded.”
get some... interesting results.
"Seriously?" Shannon's eyes lit up. He gestured to sit down.
Thorpe back in his chair. - Continue.
A few hours later, Thorpe walked out of Shannon's office into the darkness.
November night.
Coin_8, 13.01.2014 20:04
Coin_8
That summer in Cambridge, Thorpe continued to combine numbers
in blackjack and gradually approached the discovery that would become pro-
a breakthrough in the history of the game. He loaded incredible amounts of data into the computer.
bulky data, looking for hidden patterns that he could
use for victory. By autumn he discovered black-
Jack elements with which you can win against the dealer.
Coin_8, 13.01.2014 20:00
Coin_8
In high school, Thorpe began to look into gambling.
One of his favorite teachers returned from a trip to Las Vegas with a
a collection of instructive stories about how players are completely destroyed
were losing at roulette. “It’s simply impossible to win,” they say.
the teacher said. Thorpe wasn't so sure. In the area around their town-
there were several slot machines spewing out a stream of coins,
if you pull the lever correctly. The roulette probably has a similar one
Achilles heel is a statistical vulnerability. Thorpe continued to develop
thinking about it in the spring of 1955, in my second year of postgraduate study,
Rantura in the Physics Department of the University of California.
Coin_8, 13.01.2014 19:58
Coin_8
Thorpe became the first quantum, the first
a pioneer who paved the way for a new tribe of traders-mate-
maths, who in a few decades will reign on Wall-
street - and almost destroy it.
Moreover, the basis of most important breakthroughs in history
the ideas of this strange, cunning mathematician became quanta,
one of the first to learn how to use mathematics to de-
to lay money - first at the gambling tables of Las Vegas, and then in
Wall Street Casino of the World.
Avax, 13.01.2014 16:11
Avax
We live in the Internet era, and everyone can easily communicate with those who are still creating new blackjack counting systems today - Arnold Snyder, Stanford Wong, Don Schlesinger... In recent years, experts have developed theories of optimal bets in blackjack, the theory of risks and capital management, new unbalanced and highly specialized counting systems for specific rules have appeared. Despite the obvious deterioration of the game conditions, a blackjack player can still nibble at the casino today.

The casinos themselves are becoming increasingly harsh towards "advantageous" players, worsening the rules and conditions of the game, even to the detriment of their own reputation. Blacklists, attempts to push through favorable bills - all this is not only American, but also Russian reality. In half a century of struggle, casinos have not yet realized that they are cutting off the branch they are sitting on. The very fact that you can win at blackjack attracts countless amounts of money to these establishments. And hardly more than 1% of players in the world pose a more or less serious threat.

However, in order to save a dollar, casinos spend millions on the latest computer technology, facial recognition programs, computer databases, and invent new devices to combat counters. Moral and ethical standards are seriously violated, and sometimes casino owners even cross the line of legality. The insert shows a table with the Basic Strategy. So, I guarantee that if you come to any Moscow casino and announce out loud that you are going to "play according to the base", you will immediately be "blacklisted" - that is, put on a black list.

What does the future hold for a simple counter? There are two opposing opinions so far.

Dark. Technology will kill the game. Casinos will come up with some electronic nastiness that will simply not allow a competent player to gain an advantage. Blackjack will die, turning into another slot machine. Casinos will "shepherd" all players, all blacklists will be combined, and the game of advantage will end.

Light. "What one man builds, another can always take apart." Players will constantly invent something new in response to changes in the rules of the game. Casinos will at some point realize that they receive huge income precisely due to the "weakness" of blackjack.

Let's remember the history of this gambling game. Lone genius Jess Marcum secretly develops a winning method. The Magnificent Four come up with the Basic Strategy, which almost no one cares about. Players put down 5% of each bet. Then the great Thorpe and his book. In theory, there is an advantage of 2-3%. Casinos respond with mass paranoia, kill the rules, but after a few months restore the status quo. After the appearance of Julian Brown's simple counting systems, the hunt for counters begins. Team players provoke another wave of repression against counters and tightening of the rules. Keith Taft's computers appear on the scene, providing an advantage of 3-4%. Under pressure from casino owners, a bill is passed that puts an end to the use of computing devices in gambling establishments. The team game MIT Team leads to the introduction of high-tech and detective methods of combating players. The game is analyzed to the smallest detail. Every detail can bring money. Casinos are tightening their rules once again, cards are being shuffled more frequently, shuffle machines have been invented for continuous shuffling. New games are being invented that look like blackjack but have nothing in common with it - all in order to distract the public's attention from the only casino game where luck is on the player's side and the ability to count can be converted into money.

Personally, I hope that human reason will prevail. Let the war between players and casinos continue. Let both sides rack their brains to beat each other. Let this fight be fair, fierce and respectful to the opponent.

Intelligence will always win.
Avax, 13.01.2014 16:11
Avax
Another little-known name that had a huge impact on blackjack was Keith Taft. The engineer, computer scientist, and inventor created his first blackjack computer ("George") in 1970, just four years after Thorp's second book was published.

It took Keith two years to build and debug George, which ran on a 16-bit processor. He protected the device with a copper shield and hid it in his shoes. At first, Keith was lucky, but eventually he lost and gave up. At first, after retiring, Keith thought about writing a book, but then professional players approached him.
A few years later, more powerful components hit the market. The new computer - which was later renamed from "George" to "David" - was based on the Z80 processor. It was this version that caught the eye of Uston, who ordered several units for his team. In the first week of operation, Uston and his comrades doubled their capital. In the second, they tripled it. And then they were caught, and their computer and money were taken away. Uston's lawyer was Oscar Goodman, now the mayor of Las Vegas.

On the ruins of this project a new one was organized - this time without Uston. The "Thor" project brought Taft and the players considerable money, fortunately the new computer was not noticed in the casino. Then Keith came up with the "Seven-Up" scheme, which connected seven players at a table in a network.

Even though the rules of blackjack were worse by then than they had been at the beginning of the Thorp Era, the advantage of players who cooperated with Keith was 3-4%, which was twice as much as any card counting system.

When video cameras appeared in casinos, Keith began using radio and satellite communications. Again, failure, arrest, accusation of cheating - and acquittal. When the use of computers in American casinos was finally declared illegal, Keith stopped playing blackjack. Now he lives at home and works in his laboratory. I wonder what he is working on?
It's fun to beat dad together

The blackjack boom of the 70s and 80s, and the public description of team play methods, led to the creation of the largest blackjack teams. Perhaps the most famous was the Massachusetts Institute of Technology team, or MIT Team. The idea was innovative at the time - instead of gathering a group of people with money, the team operators taught the game to college students and offered them to play blackjack as a way to earn money during vacations. They literally hung up notices in classrooms: "Blackjack players wanted!"

At first the team was small, but its management raised money from outside investors, and the project grew to enormous proportions. These young guys and girls lived a double life - five days a week they attended lectures and ate lunch in the student cafeteria, and on weekends they flew to Las Vegas, bet 10 thousand on boxing, lived in luxury apartments and rode around in limousines at the casino's expense.

In order not to arouse the casino's suspicions, the students deliberately made mistakes in the game, thereby reducing the project's profitability. But when you bet 5-10 thousand, having even a one percent advantage, it quickly turns into gigantic winnings.

This is probably the most highly skilled team in the history of blackjack. They won about $10 million over several years. But then things went wrong. First, the casinos doubled down on their vigilance. Players were monitored, their MIT affiliations were identified, and they were put on national blacklists. In addition, casinos became much more aware of the principles of team play, and every big player immediately came under the microscope.

But even that wasn't the worst thing. A "rat" appeared in the team. One of the players sold himself for thirty pieces of silver and turned all the team members in to the casino security service. In addition, part of the money was simply stolen, and eventually the team fell apart. And although it was revived several times in different guises and compositions, it was no longer as successful as before. However, according to rumors, you can still find curious ads in the institute...

And the founders and managers of the team are now famous people. One, our former compatriot Semyon Dukach, is engaged in buying and selling Internet companies and conducts seminars on blackjack, and Andy Bloch became a professional poker player.
Team play, despite its advantages, has many disadvantages, mainly of an administrative nature. It requires huge capital investments in a risky business. That is why 99% of attempts at team play end in financial disaster.
Avax, 13.01.2014 16:11
Avax
The mathematical developments of the pioneers of the game and the creation of simple and effective counting systems gave birth to a whole galaxy of professional players and experts in the field of blackjack. Revere invented a new simple counting system and first described a method for bringing the current count to the real one. Stanford Wong refined and perfected the Hi-Lo system, and also developed the Halves system. Humble, Bryson, Gordon, Dubner - all of them made a significant contribution to the development of methods of the game.
In the late 1970s, professional gambler Al Francesco apparently created the first blackjack team in history. He hired enthusiasts, taught them the Revere counting system, and sent them out to play. He also invented and implemented the "Big Player" principle - when some team members would secretly play small, and the "drunk and rich sucker" would make big bets on signals. Although they had the same 1-2% edge, their profits were simply enormous due to the fact that they made exclusively large bets.

Ken Uston was included in this team. Before meeting the Revere system, Uston worked as a vice president of the stock exchange. However, his acquaintance with the counting systems led to Ken quitting and changing his formal suit for a silk shirt with a huge collar, as was fashionable at the time.

Uston played for Francesco's team for quite a long time and with varying success, but apparently he was not a team player by nature. In the end, he left Francesco and wrote several books about his adventures. Several books that blew up the gambling world.

The Big Player revealed the secrets of team play. Million Dollar Blackjack, which I consider my bible, is filled with incredible stories, in between which technical things are explained, several counting systems are given, a bunch of tables. Uston made it known to the general public that it is not only possible to win at blackjack, but to win millions of dollars. In addition, from Ken's books, readers learned how casinos react to professional players (threats, blacklists, cheating, false accusations). Uston himself, with his career, also earned an honorable place on blacklists around the world, having won about 8 million dollars with the help of a team.
By the way, Al Francesco, as well as other players, are still unhappy with Uston's actions, having published methods of the game, previously available only to a few.

Uston's next surge in popularity came in the early 80s, when Ken won a lawsuit in New Jersey against a casino. Since then, no casino in that state (unlike, for example, Las Vegas in Nevada) has the right to prohibit a person who can count cards from sitting at a table. However, this court decision led to the fact that from now on, the rules in all New Jersey casinos became significantly worse than in Vegas.

The Uston era saw another wave of struggle between casinos and counters. Casinos realized that a well-funded team of professionals could cause serious damage to the establishment. It was then that multi-deck games and frequent shuffling began to become fashionable everywhere, and several good rules died out. Special detective agencies began to gain strength, engaged in surveillance, collection and dissemination of information about professional players.

For example, a multi-deck game, now widespread in Russia, is worse than a single-deck game by about 0.5%, which is a lot, considering the small advantage of the counter. There are restrictions on the possibility of doubling - for example, only by 9, 10 and 11 points (another minus 0.2% of the mathematical expectation).

Uston invented new methods of playing, used makeup, attracted more and more people to the teams, began to play abroad. He also wrote books and articles, acted in TV, developed new counting systems. By the way, Ken wrote a book about the optimal strategy for the game Pac-Man.

One of Kenny's most scandalous projects was the creation of a team to play against a computer. They used hidden microchips on their bodies and in their shoes, which calculated the current situation in the game much more accurately than any "human" strategy, and gave the player the necessary signals. His teams literally smashed several casinos to smithereens, but after some time they were "burned", arrested, their computers were confiscated and they were accused of fraud. However, experts, including from the FBI, proved that there was no fraud, and the charges were dropped. And two weeks later, the Nevada Supreme Court made the use of computing devices in casinos illegal...

Uston's life was cut short unexpectedly in 1983, and there is still a legend that casinos were involved in his death.
Avax, 13.01.2014 16:10
Avax
Masses of people, having read the book, considered themselves potential winners and rushed to the tables. However, most of them, poorly understanding the mathematics of the book, only brought additional profit to the bigwigs of the gambling business. Casinos received confident in their abilities, but losing clients. And since then their number has only grown.
The system outlined in the first edition of Thorpe's book was complex even for a professional, and few could apply it in real-life situations. Something had to be simplified.

Julian Braun never played a single hand of real blackjack in his life. But he played billions, if not trillions, of hands on a computer. Braun, a good mathematician and programmer who worked at IBM at the time, was interested in Thorp's idea and asked him to collaborate on programming and calculations.

Brown invented the Hi-Lo counting system. He was behind almost all modern systems named after Revere, Humble, Wong, Uston... He wrote only one book in his life ("How to Play Winning Blackjack"), but what a book!

Brown improved Thorp's Fortran program, made significant changes, and the second edition of Thorp's book already included the Hi-Lo system in almost its modern form. It was a revolution. Based on Brown's calculations, the player best known as Lawrence Revere developed his own counting system and presented the results in the form of convenient tables that are still used by all the counters in the world. Lance Humble relied on Brown's developments when creating the HiOpt systems. Each of these systems was relatively simple and highly effective - they all gave the player an advantage of about 1-2% and were much simpler than Thorp's original system.
Avax, 13.01.2014 16:08
Avax
In case you weren't aware, we are currently living in the '43rd Era of Thorpe. [This is the same Thorpe who, along with Claude Shannon, tried to "beat" roulette (see the article in this issue, as well as KT #540)] This man had such a strong influence on the game of blackjack and the entire gambling industry that a statue of him should be cast in his lifetime, and at the expense of the casinos.

Edward O. Thorp liked the above article so much that he decided to re-examine the results of the "fab four" and see if they could be improved. Thorp described his results in the book "Beat The Dealer", the total circulation of which is approaching a million copies.

Unlike Baldwin and his friends, who were more interested in the mathematical model of the game, Thorp used an IBM mainframe to simulate "real" hands. After doing the calculations, he realized that the cards that were dealt out had a significant impact on the player's chances. Thorp's basic idea was to remember the cards that were dealt out in a somewhat simplified way and, when the situation became favorable for the player, make a larger bet. This concept still underlies all methods and systems of counting in blackjack.

The counting system first proposed by Thorp was extremely difficult to use, requiring great concentration and a great deal of complex mental arithmetic. However, with some training it could be used in casinos.

Thus, it was Thorp who first published a method for achieving an edge over the casino. In those years, the rules were much better than today, and the flawless application of the strategy gave the player an advantage of about 2-3%, which is a lot, considering the speed of the game. Thorp himself played in the casino according to his strategy - and quite successfully, although in his book he suspected several dealers of cheating.

Thorp's book instantly became a bestseller. Every reader dreamed of huge winnings. Casinos were seized by a genuine panic. In 1962, after Thorp's book was published, all gambling establishments in Las Vegas tightened their rules, fearing a massive influx of "system players". The possibility of splitting cards was cancelled, sharp restrictions on doubling the bet appeared, etc. The player's mathematical expectation according to the Basic Strategy fell to about minus 2-3%, and no counting system, including Thorp's, could bring the player into the plus.

However, the effect on the casino was exactly the opposite - people stopped playing blackjack altogether. And after a few years, the casinos returned to the previous version of the rules, which remain relevant - with some variations - to this day. In American casinos, a player using the Basic Strategy has a disadvantage of about 0.5%. In our country, there is no single standard for blackjack rules yet, and the spread of mathematical expectation is usually from minus 0.5% to plus 0.5%. Yes, yes, plus. That is, even without knowing the card count, playing only according to the Basic Strategy, in some Russian casinos you can have a small advantage.