Back to The Blackjack Page

The Blackjack Page Archive
Beating Tough Games: Part 4

Beating Tough Games - Part 1
Beating Tough Games - Part 2
Beating Tough Games - Part 3

A reader who happens to live in our area of the country (St. Louis, MO) wrote me recently to request some help with the Blackjack game dealt on the Casino Queen in East St. Louis, Illinois. If you go only by the player options that are allowed, this is a terrific game: six decks, but the dealer stands on A-6, you may double on any first two cards, double after split, resplit Aces and insurance is available. The casino's edge is about 0.36% over the player who uses perfect Basic Strategy.

The catch here is that the casino shuffles at the 50% penetration level and, while that doesn't affect the non-counter, the problem for a counter is that s/he will seldom see True Counts over +6. What this basically means is that the player who uses a counting "system" will seldom have an advantage over the house of more than 2.5%. Naturally, any of us would be happy to have an advantage of "only" 2.5%, but you need to remember that those high counts are needed to offset the much more frequent low counts where the casino has an edge. What makes all this counting stuff work is the average edge of the player and it goes without saying that if the highest count is still relatively low, the average will also be low.

If one were to approach this game in a "traditional" way, that is, to sit there and play at all counts - positive or negative - the average edge with a 1-8 bet spread would be only about 0.17%. Sure, you could win in the "long run", but it wouldn't be worth your time, nor the risk of the big bankroll fluctuations that might occur. So, what can this player do to increase his edge over the casino? The first thing that comes to mind is, of course, to not play when the casino has the edge. We call this "backcounting" or "wonging" (the technique was first espoused by Stanford Wong in his book "Professional Blackjack") and it can be very effective if, and only if, the player has a lot of discipline and isn't tossed out by the casino, since they are also aware of how effective it is.

Not only was this technique the first to come to mind, it's practically the ONLY technique to come to mind for beating this game. Certainly, a 1-200 bet spread would work, but it's not likely that the "pit critters" (PCs) would let that go unnoticed for very long. But, since the "Queen" has offered only 50% penetration for most of its existence, the PCs have been somewhat lulled into thinking that counters avoid their games like the plague, so the resourceful among us can get away with a few tricks of the trade.

The Queen is often very busy, so backcounting can work from a theoretical point of view, but in practice, the number of hands one gets to play are small. I have backcounted at the Queen before and have attracted very little attention when doing so, but it really requires steel discipline to keep moving. I should mention that, while I tend to use the terms wonging and backcounting interchangeably, there actually is something of a difference, at least in my own mind. To "wong", the player bets the same amount on every hand, so the PCs never see you raising and lowering your bets. In wonging, the player's average edge over the game is calculated and from that, the one bet size that is used can be determined. For example, if the average edge is 1.5% and the player has a $10,000 bankroll, the bet might be $100. So the "wonging" player would enter the game only when s/he has an edge (a True Count of 1 or more), would always bet $100 and would leave the table when the count drops to the point where the casino has an edge.

I'll show you some numbers in a minute, but for the game on the Queen, the average edge for a player who wants to "wong" the game is about 0.63%. The reader who wrote me has a $6000 bankroll, so he would make a flat bet of $30, should he choose to use this technique. The reality is that he'll actually play about 29 hands per hour, so that's $870 in actual bets and, at an average edge of 0.63%, he can expect to make just about $5.50 per 100 hands observed (about an hour in good conditions). To be perfectly frank, he'd be better off playing some All American Video Poker at the local Harrah's, even though the hourly bet total is a little lower ($750 at a rate of 600 hands per hour) but the overall edge is a little higher (about 0.70%) and he could also get some slot club cash back. The plus to it all is that he would need only a $4000 bankroll for the same amount of risk of "ruin" (losing the entire amount).

Okay, plan B.

An alternative is to backcount and enter the game at a True Count of 1, bet $20 and then scale up the bets to $100 at 5 or more. This is based upon the following "frequencies" of the count:

Just to explain this a bit, you can see that this game will produce a TC of 3 about 3 times in every 100 hands observed. If the player bets $40 at that count, the total amount bet is 3 x $40 = $120 and, since the player's edge on those bets is 1.2%, a net profit of $1.44 will result over a long period of time. This chart shows what will happen at each TC level and the grand total is $8.79 for the 29 hands that would be played out of each 100 observed. The disadvantage to this technique is that the risk of ruin is higher, so "you pays yer money and you takes yer choice."

Whether or not this player actually does this, at least he knows what he's up against. I think it's fair to say that "tough" games can be beaten, but the payoff may not be worth the time and effort. I have spared you the math of "variance" and "standard deviation", but you need to know that it's not a pretty picture. This player could easily go on a losing streak that might take months of play to recoup and all of it for the sake of $8.79 an hour at best. It just goes to show you how important deep penetration is in the game of Blackjack, even if great rules are available. My advice to this player is to just cross the mighty Mississippi and play at the President Casino on the Admiral where the rules are similar (0.40% casino edge) and the penetration is 75+%. I hope he does it.

But I do want to leave you with a teaser and I may, someday, reveal it in my "Secrets" column. The game on the Queen can produce some serious $$$, in spite of all the pitfalls I've described. I know, because I've done it.

See you here next time.