Blackjack Trends
Two Major Trends Mean More Money for the Casinos
With more and more players employing the Basic Strategy and/or card counting, the casinos have taken the offensive to restore their advantage over players. They have discovered even more ways to discourage, harass, annoy, hassle, irk, infuriate and undermine card counters. So if you're thinking about taxing your brain with card counting while you play and you haven't learned how to count cards yet, it may no longer be worth your time. The casinos have finally broken the last barrier; they are raising minimums to boost profits.
The second major trend is game variations. Each new variation injects a little more confusion into the equation. Some players continue to use old versions of the Basic Strategy, not understanding how the variations affect the strategy.
World Series of Poker Move over and Make Room for World Series of Blackjack
World Series of Blackjack, in its second season, continues through the end of April with finals scheduled for April 22. Catch the action on Friday nights on GSN TV, the Network for Games on DirecTV. The show premieres at 10 PM EDT with encore presentations on Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday. Check your local cable listings to find out which channel carries GSN. DirecTV channel 309 and Dish Network channel 116 carry GSN.
6:5 Blackjack Cropping Up In Las Vegas
Single deck 6:5 Blackjack is making the rounds in Las Vegas. Instead of the usual 3:2 payout for a natural 21, casinos are adding single deck 6:5 tables to their stable. The single deck part of the deal is luring in players, but if you?re a Basic Strategy player, you want to avoid the 6:5 payout. Here's why: your odds are three times worse playing 6:5 Blackjack. The house edge against an accomplished Basic Strategy player is only .4-.5%, but when that same player plays 6:5 Blackjack, the house picks up an additional 1.39% edge over the players, for a total of almost 2%. That's not much better than a recreational player's odds.
Native American Gambling Comes of Age
If you haven't visited a Native American casino since the early days of prefab buildings filled with slot machines, you are in for a big surprise. Name hotels are moving onto the reservations, and they provide all the amenities available in Las Vegas and other casino towns.
Cool Your Heels While the Dealer Finishes the Deck
As a card-counting deterrent, some establishments are no longer allowing mid-deck entry into Blackjack. Instead, players must wait until the current deck reaches penetration and the deck is shuffled.
The Never-ending Deck
Some casinos have installed automated shufflers that continuously shuffle the cards. The net effect is that card counting is impossible at tables with automated shuffling. And for those casinos that have not installed these technological wonders, multi-deck tables are taking over.