Blackjack Online

I see a lot of people questioning whether or not you can count cards online, and the answer is usually no. Almost all online casinos reshuffle the entire deck before dealing again, so counting cards is impossible. But there are some exceptions. The multi-player blackjack games at the Sands of the Caribbean Casino and at Intercasino are 8 deck games where the dealer deals out a full 2 decks before reshuffling. You'll never make big money by counting under such poor conditions, but if you have a huge betting spread and you don't mind waiting a bit before actually showing a profit, this might be a workable situation for you.

The other cool thing about the Cryptologic multi-player blackjack games I metnioned above (besides possibly being able to count cards) is that you can chat with the other players, just like you do when you're playing poker. Very cool indeed.

Henry Tamburin published an article titled "The Ten Most Difficult Hands in Blackjack" in Casino Player magazine. I thought it was pretty good, so I'm going to share what I learned from it here, and include some of my own thoughts about each hand.

1- Always taking even money. I guess you can take an even money guarantee when the dealer might have a blackjack, if you have a blackjack. 69% of the time you won't have a tie though, and you'll win 1.5 times your bet, so this isn't the correct play to make.

2- Soft 18. It's a mistake to stand versus a dealer 10 card. This is a negative expectation situation, but correct strategy in a negative expectation situation is to take the option which will lose you less money. In this case, hitting the 18 will lose LESS money than standing./

3- Standing on a 12 when the dealer has a 3. This one's easy to understand why someone would get confused, because the correct play on a 13-16 versus a 3 is to stand, but the 12 has VERY few ways to bust compared to any of those hands.

4- Not splitting aces against a dealer 8, ten or ace. To me, this isn't a really tough situation. When I learned basic strategy, I learned that you ALWAYS split aces and eights, and you NEVER split 4's, 5's, or 10's. I'm not sure how this made the list, but maybe a lot of people screw this one up.

5- Not doubling 11 when the dealer has a 10. Again, it's just another mathematically correct play, although I can see why you'd not want to double against such a potentially strong dealer hand.

6- Doubling on small soft hands. This one's a biggie for me, I'd admit it. I get confused about soft hand play anyway, and doubling, especially when the dealer is holding a 3-6, always trips me up. I'm always tempted to double down in this situation, but it's not always the correct play.

7- Soft hands with 3 cards or more. A lot of players throw their basic strategy out the window once they've got 3 cards, but the rules for playing the hand are still the same. You're always going to hit a soft 17 or lower, no matter how many cards make up your hand.

8- Standing on a 16 if the dealer has a 7. I don't have trouble with this hand, although I guess people who try to imitate casino rules might make this mistake.

9- Playing a 16 against a 10. You should usually hit in this situation unless there's a surrender option, but it's still a sucky hand and situation to be in.

10- Doubling for less. I've never heard of making this mistake and can't imagine doubling down for less than a full bet size. But again, maybe people do it, because it's mentioned in Tamburin's article.

Which hands give you trouble? The only hands I still have trouble remembering are the soft hands. I've got hard hands down cold, and I've pretty much got the strategy for pairs all settled in my mind too.

The closest casinos offering blackjack to where I live are in Oklahoma, and they offer a weird version of blackjack that charges a 50 cent ante per hand. I don't know what the limits are there, or the rules, but I'm pretty sure that even at $100/hand, a 50 cent ante is going to reduce my expectation by 0.5%, and at $10/hand, it's going to reduce my expectation by a whopping 5%. I'd be better off playing roulette with that kind of handicap to deal with.

And from what I read, all of the casinos offering black jack in Oklahoma have a similar rule, with the fee per hand or whatever, even the Winstar Casino, which is the closest place I could play blackjack.

So anyway, since I'm so far from Vegas or Reno or anyplace else where I might find a decent blackjack game with decent rules, I've decided to just try playing a little blackjack online and see how I do. I'll record my experiences here, with wins and losses and stuff like that. I'm a decent basic strategy player, although I sometimes have some trouble with some of the soft hands, especially when the dealer has a 2 through 6 showing. I'm hoping that some practice will help solve that problem though.