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The GameMaster's Secrets
Making Side Bets for Fun and Profit - Part 1

There are two side bets at Blackjack which can be profitable for the player, one wildly so and the other just barely, but both are fun to play. As you can imagine, the one that can be wildly profitable is very hard to find. In fact, I'm aware of its existence only on the Internet, though it used to be in quite a few brick-and-mortar casinos some years ago. The other side bet, the one where the smart player can get a tiny edge over the house, is, of course, all over the place both in real and cyber casinos. What I'm going to share with you regarding these bets applies to both types of casinos, but since both games are available only on the 'Net, I'll cover them from that perspective.

The two bets are "Over/Under 13" and "Super Sevens" (often called "Lucky 7s") and they are purely optional bets. At some brick-and-mortar casinos, a bet is mandatory at the special "Super Sevens" tables, but that's rare. Most often, the player is not required to make these bets, so it naturally follows that we shouldn't wager on these when the house has an edge, but only when it's to our advantage to do so.

First, let me cover the "Super Sevens" bet which is available at almost every brick-and-mortar casino and a few Internet casinos. The bet, in all cases is $1, no more, no less and the payoff comes if the first card of your Blackjack hand is a 7. If the second card is a 7, the payout is higher and if the third card is a 7, the payout is higher still. Here's how the pay schedule looks at 99% of the casinos that offer this bet:

Hand	Payoff on a $1 bet
One 7	(first card only) 3:1
Two unsuited 7s	50:1
Two suited 7s	100:1
Three unsuited 7s	500:1
Three suited 7s	5000:1

The casino's edge is almost 11% on this bet, so each time it's made, the player is basically "giving" the casino 11 cents. Before I forget, there exists one other pay schedule for this game and it's the one offered by Chartwell Technology-powered Internet casinos. (Chartwell is the software manufacturer for about a dozen online casinos. Chartwell's pay table is, in a word, terrible. It looks like this:

Hand	Payoff on a $1 bet
One 7	3:1
Two unsuited 7s	25:1
Two suited 7s	50:1
Three unsuited 7s	100:1
Three suited 7s	500:1

This pay schedule increases the casino's edge to almost 50% and that's just too big to consider playing. But the "regular" pay schedule actually offers some possibility of return to the astute player. And I'm about to make you astute.

Beating the Lucky 7s Game

There are, to the best of my knowledge, two ways to beat this game. Well, three, if you count luck, but that doesn't carry a lot of weight around here, so let's just discuss the other two. The first is "clumping". Since this game is invariably played with six decks (the more, the merrier on this one), there are times when a 'slug' of sevens may appear. For example, if there are five players at a table, a sequence of 12 or 15 cards may appear where five or six of them are 7s. If you are able to track that 'slug' when the dealer shuffles, and if you can cut the cards in such a way as to preserve that slug, you've just increased your chances on the Super Sevens bet. Sound too unlikely to ever happen? Well, a former Blackjack student had it happen to him. Or, more correctly, he made it happen. Both he and the dealer had noticed a lot of 7s showing up within the space of only a few hands and, since he was alone at the table, he pointed out that he was a big tipper whenever he won the Super Sevens bet. Somehow, that slug was preserved when the dealer shuffled and my friend cut the cards to bring that slug to the top and then hit the 3 unsuited 7s for $500! After a $100 tip "for the dealers", both were convinced that there was something to this clumping business. On a more serious note, was this cheating? Maybe. But it might have happened anyway, so it's definitely something to watch for.

Another way to beat the Super Sevens is by using a counting system. I'll spare you all the details, but if there are two 'extra' 7s in the remaining deck(s), this becomes a break-even bet. No, I'm not suggesting that you or the dealer add some 7s, but the same effect is gained when the cards are dealt and, for one reason or another, 7s don't come out in proportion to the other cards. Let me explain that. Each deck of 52 cards contains four 7s, we all know that. But, at times, 52 cards may be played from a six-deck shoe and only one or two 7s will show. That means that there are now two or three 'extra' 7s in the remaining decks and it's at that point which the Super Sevens bet becomes an even-money bet, or nearly so. Now, an even-money bet means that, in the long run, you'll lose as much as you make, so why bother? Well, it 's the same as playing a 9/6 Jacks or Better Video Poker game. It has a long-term return of 99.54% so if you play it long enough, you'll lose. But, if the casino offers a 0.5% cash-back program, you're about even and there is always the chance that you'll get "ahead of the curve" and stay there for quite a while. Playing even isn't great, but like I always say, I'll take even until something better comes along.

Plus, if you're a card-counter, betting the Super Sevens at times can be good camouflage, because most of the 'pit critters' know it's a sucker bet and card counters aren't known to make sucker bets. It's not easy to track the 7s while you're also counting the cards, so I just use my chips to track them for me. As each 7 comes out, I move one chip to a separate pile and use my True Count observations (which I'm making anyway) to compute when to take the Sevens bet. If my pile has only two chips on it and there's been at least one deck played, I make the Sevens bet. If four decks have been played, my pile has to be 14 chips or less to make the bet worthwhile. (You with me on this? Four full decks have sixteen 7s in them, so if only 14 have been played, there are two 'extras' in the remaining two decks.) You may only bet $1, so it really doesn't make any difference in how many extra 7s there are, but those who want an absolute edge on this bet can wait until there are 3 extra 7s, though you won't be making the bet very often.

But I found a really cool way to exploit this bet on the Internet and it worked very well. Of course, for this to work, the casino must deal into the decks somewhat and they claim they deal 50% of the cards. In testing their games in the play-money mode, I never saw a shuffle but I took them at their word (easy to do when the $$$ aren't real), so when I reached to 50% level, I'd exit the game and then start all over again. Anyway, they have the "full-pay" version of Super Sevens, so I was tracking them as described above through the software program I use called "Card Counter". (A review of this is archived below). Then it occurred to me that a simple counting system could be set up to tell me just when to make the $1 bet.

The Card Counter software allows you to enter four different counting systems and you may assign any value you want to the cards. So, I just made all 7s a minus 13 and all the other cards a plus1 and dubbed it "The 7s Count". You can see that as cards are played, if more 'other' cards come out, the count will go up. For example, if 15 'others' (+1) and zero 7s come out in the beginning of a new shoe, the 'running' count will be +15. In a six-deck game, which the Blackjack.com game is, the count per remaining decks (or 'True Count') would be 15 divided by the remaining decks which is about 5.7 or just under 3. But we have only one 'extra' 7 in the decks, because we've played only about a quarter of a deck. So, we don't want to make the bet yet. But, let's say 30 cards have been played and still no 7s have shown. There are about 5.5 decks remaining and the running count is +30, so the True Count is 30 divided by 5.5 = 5.46. Now, it's worth making the Sevens bet.

Okay, okay. I hear you: "Hey, GM! That's an awful lot of figuring for a lousy $1 bet!"

You're right. But Card Counter does all the figuring for you, so all you have do is look at the calculation for the 7s bet and whenever it's over 5, you put the $1 out there. Since they deal only 50% of the cards (or so they say), this count is plenty accurate for our purposes. However, if they dealt more cards, it would have you making the bet at the wrong time, so don't use this in a game with deeper penetration. For example, at the 5 decks-played level, with only 18 of 20 "expected" 7s out, the running count would be 242 - 234 = 8, divided by 1 equals a True Count of 8, so a bet at a T.C. of 5 would be incorrect.

But, does it work? I can report that I played 400 hands at Blackjack.com in the 'play-money' mode while trying this method and I bet the 7s fifteen times, hit a single 7 three times and a pair of unsuited 7s twice for a net profit of $91. Expectation is to get a pair of unsuited 7s about once every 225 hands, so my results were in line with expectation. On another hand, I got surprised because I got 7,7 against a dealer's 6 and naturally split the pair. When I did that, I wasn't paid for two 7s, but only got $3 for one 7!! That's not how this works in most brick-and-mortar casinos, but it does at Blackjack.com, so be forewarned. Unless you're a big bettor, you'll generally be better off by not only standing, but also by hitting it to go for the $500 bonus. The $50 is already won, so why not?

Hitting 7,7 vs. 6 has an expectation of -.331, whereas splitting has an expectation of +. 209 (they allow double after splitting) so you're giving up .540 of your bet in an effort to first make $50 against $3 and then maybe catching a third 7 for $500. The expectation of that is worth about $35 (roughly one in 13 trials, you'll get it), so it works out like this with a $50 bet out: Hitting 7,7 vs. 6 loses 54% of the bet or $27, but it makes a guaranteed $50 and an 'extra' $35 for a total of $85 from the Sevens which is a net of $85 minus $27 = $58. Split 7,7 vs. 6 gets $3 for one 7 and .209 of $50 for a net of about $13.50. Want to know what I'd do?

Just a footnote: I'm sure there's a better count for figuring this, so if you have any ideas, please e-mail me and I'll include it in the next installment.

Next time, I'll show you how to win at the Over/Under 13 bet.

See you then.