Practice, Grasshopper, Practice

Practice, Grasshopper, Practice

Mastering the skills of a winning Blackjack player takes time, patience and discipline. Look at it this way: If counting was easy, everyone would be doing it and there would be no Blackjack games available in your local, friendly casino. When I learned how to play winning Blackjack over 20 years ago, all my training was of the 'kitchen table' type where I used flash cards and sheets of paper with training exercise on them, decks of cards and lots of self-dealt games. Today, there are a lot of amazingly versatile software packages available to help you learn and practice the skills of a winning player, but most are relatively expensive. I recently found a program which you can try for free in a 15-day trial and registration is only $19 should you decide to keep it. Called "Super Blackjack Version 4.0", it's authored by Robert Frenette who states that his goal is to make SuperBlackjack "the best Blackjack training tool anywhere." This program is supported by a web site (www.superblackjack21.com) which has e-mail address for bugs, suggestions and other feedback. That's good, because this isn't the best blackjack training tool yet, but the author is definitely heading in the right direction. As for the e-mail feedback, I wrote Mr. Frenette advising him that I was doing a review and asked a few questions but as of this date, he hasn't answered.

Anyway, let's start at the beginning so I can explain why I think this program will help you. The game for which you practice can be configured by the program with virtually all the options found in the 'real' world; only early surrender is notably lacking. Otherwise, the program supports 1-8 deck play, all doubling options, resplitting options, etc. as well as a few arcane options like dealer wins pushes, a player's 'natural' is an automatic winner and only 'like' face cards may be split. (Time out here. Splitting 10s is considered by many blackjack players as the stupidest play a human being can make, but actually they're wrong. It can be, when combined with card-counting, a very, very smart move, from a strategy point of view, but I seldom do it personally since it attracts so much attention. In many casinos, a hand of Jack, King is just a hand of 10,10 and the two may be split. At other casinos, only a hand of J,J or K,K - that is, 'like' cards - may be split. Super Blackjack gives you the choice of either.) A six-card automatic win is allowed, but not the 5-card ("Five-Card Charlie") version and none of the bonus hands like 6,7,8 suited pays double and others like that are included, but most of them have very little impact on the game, anyway. All-in-all, about 98% of all the games found in casinos today can be configured on SuperBlackjack. There is also a small data bank of games ('play sets') listed by casino name if you're not sure what the rules are at a particular facility. The problem here is that these rules can change and the info. might become dated. A good idea for the author would be to provide updates on his web site, particularly if he could cut a deal with one of the table conditions reporting sites like The Blackjack page (www.bj21.com) or Blackjack Forum (www.rge21.com). Yes, I know I'm adding to the price here, but "the best" will have such a feature. If you do know the rules of the game for which you want to practice, a link exists in the Help menu that will take you to the Basic Strategy Engine web site so that you can get the proper strategy of hitting, standing, splitting, etc. It's then just a matter of entering those rules into the program and they may be used for all your training and playing sessions.

A few side bets are also allowed, namely Over/Under and Super 7s. While the Super 7s bet is basically a waste of money (though some minor gains may be realized from utilizing a side count of 7s), the Over/Under option can be very profitable should you be able to find it at a casino. That's the problem with O/U; it's not very profitable for the casinos and so it's hard to find. But, by using a special count, there are some $$$ to be made at it. An excellent discussion of O/U and the special counting system to use in attacking it can be found in Stanford Wong's book "Professional Blackjack".

The practice modes of SuperBlackjack are good. The strategy drill tests your knowledge of Basic Strategy in either an 'ordered' or random style. In the ordered style, you practice playing hands in sequence, i.e. 2,2 against all upcards, then 3,3, etc. In the random style, hands come up much like they would at a casino. The ordered style is good while you're learning Basic Strategy, but you'll want to move to the random style quickly. All errors, as measured against the Basic Strategy you've entered, are first pointed out to you and a log of your accuracy is kept. Believe me when I tell you that you MUST consistently hit 100% before you can even think about playing in the casino. To practice counting, you must first set up the counting method you wish to learn by entering the 'point' value of each card. The Hi/Lo system is the default, but multi-level systems are supported; you may place a point value from 0 to 99 for each card. Side counts, or 'multi-parameter' counts are not supported, so you cannot, for example, have the software keep a side count of Aces. Once that's done, you can move to the 'flashcards' portion where you flip one to four cards at a time and practice your counting skills. If you follow my lessons, you'll start with one card at a time and just recite its point value ( a 5 is one, a 7 is zero, etc.) and then count down a single deck one card at a time. Then move up to counting by pairs and keep increasing the number of decks. You won't need to learn to count 3 or 4 cards at a time.

Once you've set up your game and counting method, the program has a nice playing mode which offers you to opportunity to practice at a 'table'. The flaw here is that only one player is supported and you'll really need practice counting at a table with other players. Multi-player options would be a good feature for the author to add. Anyway, the Basic Strategy you've input may be chosen for your play, or you may choose another, if you'd like. Should you attempt to make the wrong play, the "Wizard" won't let you. This is a problem if you're using the advanced-play technique of Basic Strategy variations, but you can override the wizard by holding the "Shift" button as you click on your play choice. An excellent improvement in this program would be if you could add in the playing "indexes" for your strategy, then the wizard would prompt you only when you were making a play that isn't consistent with the index. For example, the most common Basic Strategy variation is standing with a 16 against the dealer's 10, if the running count is 1 or more. You can still make the play in SuperBlackjack, but you have to hold down the shift key to do so. The program keeps track of your bankroll, win/loss percentage and lots of other statistics. Since you 'name' a player, all the stats are kept for that person, consequently, you don't have to save individual sessions. So, if you primarily play 6-deck games, but want to try your hand at single-deck, for instance, just set that up as another player and you can keep track of how you do in that game, separately.

There is a lot more I could tell you about this program, but I think you get the idea that I like it a lot. Go get a copy of the trial version and, if you agree with me, do what I did; buy a copy of it.

See you here next time.

Practice, Grasshopper, Practice

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