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GameMasters Secret's Page

The GameMasters Secrets
Rider Bets

I first got interested in the strategy of rider bets when I was visiting Germany. Over there, almost every city of any size has a casino, but most of them are small and few had more than one or two Blackjack tables. Roulette is the big game in Germany, so typically we'd find only one BJ table in operation and they were frequently full. Much like the casinos in Atlantic City (I think they still allow it there) and other places, the casinos in Germany allowed patrons to bet on a hand of a player seated at the table with the strict understanding that the seated player ( the "caller") makes all the calls and the "rider" has to abide by his or her decision.

This can be a good deal for you even if you're not a card counter, because if the caller has a pair and splits them, the rider (you) is not required to make the second bet. That is also true if the caller doubles, but most of the time you would want to place the second bet unless the caller is totally ignorant of how to play the game. But back to splitting pairs. We all know the rule, "always split 8s", but that is, at least against a dealer's 10 or Ace, a defensive move. If you have a choice, you would not put up the second bet when splitting a pair of 8s against an 8, 9, 10 or Ace. By declining to make the second bet, what you've done is turn a hand of 16 into a hand of 8 with no additional risk! For a pair of 7s, the only time to make the second bet is when the dealer has a 6 showing. Otherwise, just keep one bet out there. What typically happens is that your one bet stays on the right-hand card and it's played as a single hand, so you just turned a 14 into a 7. Pretty nifty, eh? There are quite a few hands like this and a complete strategy for rider bets can be found in Stanford Wong's book, "Basic Blackjack" (Pi Yee Press, 1993) and it's available at www.BJ21.com or at our favorite on-line retailer, Conjelco at www.conjelco.com/.

But wait! There's more! (Ginzu knives, anyone?) The way I played in Germany was to first find someone at the table who has a good grasp on the proper Basic Strategy for the game. I can tell you, it wasn't easy. But once I found a player like that, I began counting the cards and would place bets only when I had an edge (usually at a True Count of 2 or more). By doing that, I was never making a bet when the house had an edge and, combined with the "rider" pair-splitting strategy described above, I had a damn good trip. Sometimes a seat would open up at the table, so I would sit down and play at bit as a "caller" simply to keep from being too obvious as a counter. That didn't really matter in Germany, because they are all but oblivious to counting over there, but I mention it because at your local, friendly casino they probably are more alert to counting and you don't want to give away our little secret. This strategy works very well on those busy Friday nights and, if you're not sure if your favorite "bank" (as I call casinos) allows rider bets, just ask. Every once in a while you'll put a bet on some jerk's hand who "doesn't want to be responsible for somebody else's dough", but for the most part, people don't mind. If you're concerned, just ask.

Okay, one more little trick with rider bets. If you really want to get the most out of this, park a friend at a table and use the "sacrifice" strategy which Mr. Wong also describes in his book. Under this strategy, the caller will be making some pretty dumb plays when it comes to splitting pairs, so you have to agree beforehand on some type of split on the profits. The key is that the rider has to be making bets which are, on average, about 7 times bigger than the caller to make this work. Here again, you, the rider, should be counting the cards and should only bet when you have an edge.

If you think about this type of strategy for a while, I'm sure you can come up with some interesting variations on the theme. Remember, the family that plays Blackjack together stays together, so let's get Grammy out there and turn her into the meanest, coldest caller in the casino.

See you here next time.

 

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