GameMaster's note: What follows is the work of "Paul", a graduate student at a large midwestern university. This is not a promotion for the casino involved and Paul's opinions are his own. We thank Paul for taking the time to detail his experiences at this casino, but want to stress that his techniques may not be suitable for everyone.

I read the bonus offer for this casino at GameMaster OnLine and decided to make it my first venture into online gambling. From everything that I've read, it appears that this is an honest casino and I like playing blackjack anyway, so it seemed to be a reasonable choice.

Once I downloaded the software, I quickly registered and made a $1200 deposit. Their bonus was 50% of the deposit up to a maximum of $500 but I put a little more in to make sure that I'd have enough chips for my "adventure". The casino requires total bets of four times the deposit before the bonus is added to the account, so I figured it would take me about a week to hit that level.

To make a long story short, at least as far as the bonus is concerned, it took me only one day to qualify and the bonus was in my account the following day. Boy, did that feel good! Not only had I won over $200, but there was now an extra $500 in the account and that gave me a lot of confidence. I wanted to get the bonus business out of the way so I could describe how I played there and give some tips and observations to those who have never gambled on line.

I'm a regular reader of GameMaster and I was intrigued by the great information they published in showing another reader how to get involved with playing blackjack as a business or part time job. Being a relatively poor graduate student, any opportunity to make some extra money is welcome but I obviously can't afford to lose too much. To be honest, had my wife known that I charged $1200 on the Visa, she would have killed me. Of course, it was a lot easier to tell her what I had done after I won and the bonus was in my account.

But back to my preparation. I'm a semi-serious card counter, which means that I play basic strategy correctly but I sometimes lose the count under actual casino conditions. I do okay at the game but I don't have either the time or the money to make blackjack anything more than an interesting form of entertainment from time-to-time. Realizing that, I bought a copy of Card Counter ™ software that the GameMaster described in one of his articles. It is not easy to set up, but once you get used to using it, you won't play without it. The blackjack game at Stanley Acropolis deals into the six decks as you play and it shuffles after two decks have been dealt. That's not great penetration, but with Card Counter, I knew I'd be playing very accurately and figured I could at least play even with them, if not get a small edge.

I didn't do anything fancy like set up a bunch of different counts for different purposes. I have always used the high-low count myself and figured that would be good enough for this game. I did make up a betting schedule where I'd start with a $5 bet and go up to $50 if the count ever got that high and entered that into the software. With the 33% penetration, I knew it would be rare to see a count that high, but I was ready if it ever did. I had installed Card Counter on my laptop and the casino is on my desktop computer, so I'd bet and play the hand with one mouse and enter the cards with another. That takes some getting used to, but once you do, it goes well.

The rules at Stanley Acropolis Casino are pretty good. The dealer stands on soft 17, you can double on any first two cards and double after split. Any pair, including aces can be resplit to three hands, but split aces get only one card. The dealer peeks under tens and aces before you play your hand, so you can't double or split against a dealer's blackjack. Insurance is also available, so according to the GameMaster's Casino Directory the casino's advantage is 0.42%. (GM note: It's actually 0.36%, but I need to change it in the directory). An edge like that is wiped out with a true count of +1, so I set my betting schedule at $5 if the count was below +1, $10 at +1 up to +2, $20 over 2 to +3, $30 over 3 to +4, $40 over 4 to +5 and $50 over +5. I know that for a $1200 bankroll I'm overbetting somewhat, but I felt comfortable with the risk. I will say this right now: I think 200 bets ($1000) is the absolute minimum a player needs at this game. I should also mention that you can play two hands here at your option, but I never did.

As I wrote earlier, I quickly qualified for the bonus because I was having so much fun! Naturally, it's always fun to win, so I just kept going until the sun came up. The next day, I told my wife about what happened and after calming her down, enlisted her help. I knew things would go quicker if she'd enter the data on the laptop and I would do the playing. Later that night we got a chance to play for a while and, naturally, that's when I began to lose.

"They always get a 20", she said at one point. The truth is that the dealer did get a lot of 20s in the series of hands we had just played. But the Card Counter software keeps track of that and the percentages for the dealer's ending hands were within the range of what's expected for my first day's play, so I wasn't concerned (much). A lot of that kind of stuff has to do with your mindset, I think. I was pretty sure this casino was on the level, being owned by a big British company and all, but Linda (my wife) was absolutely convinced they could cheat. She wasn't sure if they actually were cheating, but she felt they could, at any time.

Our first session of play was a lot of back and forth, like:

"They cheat".

"I don't think so".

"You always get a 10 when you're drawing to a 12".

"Not always, Linda".

"More than you should, Paul".

So, that was our first "verification" as we called them. After that, every time I'd get a 12, Linda would record the 'hit' card (assuming that I'd hit the hand.) Since 10s make up 4/13ths of a deck, I should get one about 30% of the time in a situation like that. In approximately 550 hands of play (I won't swear to that number, because we forgot to write it down), there were 21 times that I hit a 12. The card I got was a 10 in eight of them. Okay, about 38% but not always. And when you consider that I played more at decks with a higher-than-normal number of tens in them and the small sample size, it's not an outrageous figure.

Our other "verification" was the frequency of an ace as the dealer's up card. Linda had learned that "always" doesn't work at this, but "a lot" did.

"Paul, don't you think the dealer gets an ace 'up' a lot"?

It was difficult to argue with her, because that did seem to be the case. So, we began recording the hands where the dealer had an ace as the up card. This time we kept track of the total number of hands played in order to see what percentage were aces. Wouldn't you just know it: on the next two hands, the dealer had an ace up in both. Linda was kind and only gave me that "arched-eyebrow" look as she recorded the information.

We kept track of this information over the next several playing sessions and out of 2266 hands, the dealer's up card was an ace 187 times. Since an ace should show 1/13th of the time, we had expected to see 174 aces. The casino was a little high on that number, but again, considering that this is a relatively rare event (7.69%), the numbers are reasonable.

These two "verifications" did a lot to boost my confidence that I was playing an honest game and Linda, a very smart woman in her own right, could see the evidence also. Believing that the game is honest takes a lot of the human "element" out of blackjack and I'm convinced that you have to overcome that hurdle in order to be successful. You cannot allow emotion to be a part of this "exercise in mathematics", as the GameMaster calls it.

I'm beginning to ramble on, so let me give you some observations and ideas:

1. If you think a casino is cheating you, do not play there.

It's the only choice you have. If you play when you think you're being cheated, you'll fail to split when needed or not double when appropriate or not bet as much as you should.

2. Try to be as unemotional as possible.

I know we're all human, but as I went along, I eventually figured that I had an edge of about 1% and my average bet was about $7 per hand. So, each and every hand was worth 7 cents to me, whether I won or lost. By thinking this way and by thinking that the game is honest, the $20 blackjacks that were pushed by the dealer's blackjack and the 20s that lost to the dealer's five-card 21 stopped bothering me. When playing on my own, without my wife there to enter the data into the Card Counter software, I became as dispassionate about winning and losing as a bean-counter at General Motors. That really got my speed up.

3. Play each hand properly.

If the Card Counter software said to hit, I'd hit. If it said to double, I'd double, even if I had lost the previous five hands in a row. If it said to bet $30, I'd bet $30. You cannot be successful at this if you start guessing, especially if the previous hand influences your guess.

4. Understand that the edge you have is small.

A one-percent overall advantage isn't much, so don't think you're going to make hundreds of dollars in an hour. You might get lucky and do that, but more likely it'll be up and down; up and down. I play at a rate of 200 hands an hour, so that's ultimately worth $14 to me. Many times, I'd be ahead by $100 or so in the first 10 minutes, then it would all evaporate and I might be at a loss ten minutes later. But I'd keep plugging away and after two or three hours, I'd be up $50. Well, that's about in line with expectation, so don't let the swings bother you. My biggest loss after a day's play (4 or 5 hours) was $250 and my biggest gain was $400+. But most of the time, I'd make $50 or $60. Nobody is going to get rich at $14 an hour.

5. Practice before you commit any money to this.

If you play at Stanley Acropolis Casino and use the Card Counter software, you need to get used to pushing all the right buttons quickly. Once you've finished with your hand and the dealer plays its hand, the cards are automatically swept away, so you've got to be fast. Also, if the dealer's hand uses more than five cards, the card on the far left (the dealer's "hole" card) disappears to make room for the others and you'll get confused when that happens. Practice will get you used to it.

6. Go to the Lobby when the count drops to -1.

The Card Counter software automatically calculates the true count and I would "wong" out when it got to -1. Just click on the "Lobby" button, go back to the blackjack table and it will start over with a shuffled shoe. Be sure to hit "shuffle" on the Card Counter software when you do this.

7. Keep an eye on the number of cards played.

Generally you'll be making larger bets near the end of the shoe and you don't want to be surprised by the shuffle. The software at Stanley Acropolis will deal another hand if the number of cards used is at 101 or lower, but if it's at 102 or higher, it will shuffle. The Card Counter software also tracks this. The game does complete the hand before a shuffle, however so if you're at 101 or lower, go ahead and make whatever bet is called for.

Some Statistic and Final Thoughts

For what must be nearly 10,000 hands of play, here are the percentages of the dealer's final hand as compared to what's expected. Card Counter keeps track of this automatically, but I didn't keep track of the total number of hands played when I first began. The software does not record the dealer's final hand if the player busts, so those aren't figured in.

I have requested checks from Stanley Acropolis two times and in both instances, the checks arrived from England in about a week. My first "cash out" was for the amount of my deposit and that was credited back to my Visa within two days. I am very impressed by the service here.

Naturally, you all want to know how I'm doing at this, so I'm pleased to tell you that I'm ahead by over $600, not counting the $500 bonus I received. That works out to about $12 an hour from blackjack alone. I have lost about $75 at their less-than-great 8/5 Jacks or Better video poker, but that's just the gambler in me.

Next stop: Global-Player Casino. If I didn't bore you too much with this, I'll do a report on them as well. Should you like to contact me with any questions, please post on the GameMaster's message board, since I'm always lurking there.

Good luck to you and thanks to the GameMaster for all the advice and help.