Answers to Your Questions

I am happy to personally answer any questions you may have about Blackjack in general, Blackjack tournaments, my school or gambling on the Internet. But a lot of those questions have been asked and answered before, so you might want to check out this page.

BLACKJACK

The GameMaster's Blackjack School

Created in 1990 and first published on the Web in 1995, this is undoubtedly the most respected and widely-used course of instruction on winning at Blackjack. What you will learn is how to count the cards, which is actually very simple, yet it remains the primary way to gain an edge over the casinos. You do not have to be a graduate of M.I.T. to do this. And it's all free!

Basic Course - Here you will learn the proper playing strategy for every hand, how to count the cards and how to use the count to vary the size of your bet according to your advantage.
Advanced Course - Additional gains are available from varying the play of your hand according to the count. That, and other tricks of the trade are taught here.

Blackjack Tournament Training

Blackjack tournaments can be very profitable ventures, not to mention a lot of fun, be they at your local casino or an online casino. While it takes a certain amount of luck to win one, there is a lot of skill involved as well. Here you can learn the skills needed to do well at the various types of tournaments out there.

With Elimination Hands - Found mostly online, these tournaments inject an additional element of difficulty that gives the skillful player a distinct advantage. Here we show you how to develop the skill that can move you from just online gambling to online winning. Series is in 8 parts.
Without Elimination Hands - This type of tournament is usually offered by local casinos and may be of two types: "table winner" or "winner take all." We discuss the strategies needed to do well at both. Also in 8 parts.

Counting Systems

While we teach the High-Low Count, there are other systems that can be learned. Here we examine all of the major systems available; discuss their pros and cons and compare their weaknesses and strengths.
8 parts, starting here:

Blackjack Teams

In my personal experience, the most money I ever made at Blackjack was through team play. There are a lot of potential problems with teams, but perhaps I can solve most of them before you even start. Here you'll find discussions on how to start and train a team along with team money management.
All this information can be found here.

Playing Multiple Hands

Playing more than one hand at a time requires some crucial money management principles to keep your risk of loss reasonable. While playing more than one hand can be very profitable, you can't just start throwing chips on the table and expect to win in the long run. Read this first.
3 lessons starting here.

Beating the Double Deck Game

In a general sense, the best opportunity for the average card counter to make a profit are Blackjack games that use two decks. Not all of them are beatable, however so you need a good plan of attack. That's what you'll learn in this series.
3 lessons starting here.

Blackjack Sidebets

Some casinos offer the opportunity to make additional bets on your hand, most of which can never be profitable. Here I cover two that offer the skillful player an advantage:

The Super Sevens bet is covered in Part 1 and the Over/Under bet is covered here: Part 2

Single Deck Blackjack

Most single-deck games these days should be avoided because the house edge is too big to overcome due to 6 to 5 payout on a 'blackjack.'. But that's not true in all cases, so when and if you run across a decent game, here's a plan for beating it.
3 articles starting here.

The Blackjack Test

So you think you know the game? Been playing it for years, you say? Perhaps you're a master of online blackjack? Take this test and find out how good you really are. 4 lessons

The Entire Blackjack Archive

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POKER

The Poker School

At its core, a poker game is one of mathematics just like Blackjack. While using math alone won't necessarily make you a winner, not understanding the math will almost certainly make you a loser. There's a lot of opportunity for profit here, be it online or in your local casino.
Limit Hold 'em - Most players new to poker begin here. We have 14 lessons to get you started.
No-limit Hold 'em - Often called the "Cadillac" of poker games, Texas Holdem takes a few minutes to learn and a lifetime to master. We're at 36 lessons and counting.
Here's the latest.

VIDEO POKER

This is another game where skill is needed to win, so do not confuse it with slots. Here you'll find out how to identify VP machines that you can beat, plus how to beat them. Not all of the games we talk about here will be found online or in your local casino, but you never know what might pop up, so give this section a look.

GAMEMASTER'S SECRETS

The GameMaster's Secrets are not game specific; they cover all of gaming from Blackjack to Roulette and everything in-between, for both brick and mortar casinos, as well as online casinos. A few opportunities discussed here are no longer available but that could change tomorrow, so it won't be a waste of your time to visit. Right this way.

If you like blackjack, you might also want to try online bingo games at MeccaBingo.com a joy to behold when it comes to playing bingo on the Internet.

Gambling, Blackjack and Poker NEWS

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Book Preview for January, 2012

Rather than the usual review, let me tell you something about my book, which should be available no later than the 15th anniversary of this site publishing on the Web which will be in June. I intend to call it, The (darn near) Complete Book of Winning at Blackjack, mainly because there are ways other than card counting - like shuffle tracking and "key carding" - that can beat the game but I won't be teaching those. While the format will, to some degree follow my Blackjack School lessons, when the two are compared you'll see the book has expanded much of that information in order to include a lot of simulations performed by software that was not available fifteen years ago when I created the original school. Plus the book pulls together a lot of my articles on specific aspects of the game, like single-deck play, not all of which have appeared here because I used to write for a few print publications as well.

In the last several years I've done a lot of consulting for high-stakes Blackjack players and teams. That led me to examine such games as the Pennsylvania 6-deck, $100 minimum bet game from the point of view of a lone player who wanted to keep the welcome mat out as long as possible. You'll see the betting strategy we came up for her and yes, as of today, she's still winning there.

While in bragging mode (not something I like to do very often), I'm especially proud of the double-deck (DD) portion of the book. As I say in there: "...some of the best opportunities for the average card counter to make a profit are games that use two decks. Not all of them are beatable, however so you need a good plan of attack." Most of my high-stakes consulting has been for those who play the DD game and each consultation has caused me to not only run literally billions of hands in simulations, but also required interpretation and "tweaking" of the results to help my client. Their feedback led to even more sims, the most relavent of which will appear in the DD lesson. I expect this will be as up-to-date as anything out there that covers the double-deck game.

Other lessons will cover all types of Blackjack tournaments but my personal favorite - the one I'm having the most fun writing - is called "Tradecraft of the Pros." For now I'll leave it to your imagination as to exactly what's in there. Whether this will be a "hard-copy" book or an E-book or both has not yet been determined, but one thing is certain: You'll find out about it right here.

In case you missed it, the Digital Mailbag for January, 2012 is waaay down below the video archives in this column of the page and previous Book Reviews I've done are here.

Update for January 30, 2011

A proposed bumpersticker for President Obama's re-election campaign: We may not be great but those other guys are nuts. I just love watching the 'Pubs beating up on each other to see who can get the farthest to the right. It's very likely that Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee, which might cause a lot of the party faithful to just stay home; especially those who simply cannot relate to a person who makes $20 million a year. Can Mitt really understand "Joe Sixpack?" Really?

You heard it here first: The Prez doesn't have to win in November, he just has to not lose. Much like the home team in a baseball game, Obama has an "extra" three outs. He will remain in the White House, especially if his opponent is named Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich.

Intrastate Online Gambling Moving Forward

New Jersey, Iowa, Nevada and a few other states are exploring legislation to set up online casino gambling now that the Feds have basically said it's legal within a state's borders. (See my Special Report for more info on that here.) Nevada is well on the way to finalizing its legislation and they may make it happen by summer. If you are politically active and would like to see Internet gaming and/or poker legalized, it's a good topic to bring up with anyone who is asking for your vote this year.

A note from The GameMaster: We are no longer producing videos, but much of the same information - specifically the Digital Mailbag and Book Reviews - will continue on a regular basis in written form and will be presented in the space above. All of the videos previously produced are archived below.

The text articles will be presented in this rotation on a weekly basis: Thoughts and Comments (I do not lack for an opinion on many topics, as you'll see); the Digital Mailbag where I answer readers' questions (I try to pick one for this article that has broad appeal, but I'm happy to answer your questions directly via email, so don't hesitate to message me), then a Book Review.

I'll typically move the previous week's article down below the Video Archives in this column and will ultimately move the book reviews to this page. But for the most part, these will not be saved beyond that, so if you want the "latest scoop", check back here every Monday sometime after 5 P.M. Central U.S. time.

VIDEO ARCHIVE

Digital Mailbag for January, 2012

Question: If I am playing the last spot ("third base") and I have a running count of 8 with 5 decks left in shoe, that is a True Count of just over 1. But by the time the dealer gets to me and is about to deal my first card, the count has dropped to a running count of 2, does that mean that my spot has lost the edge?

Answer: Not really, because there will also be times when the running count goes to 10 or 12, which offsets the times it drops. Long term, it is meaningless, at least from a betting point of view. Compute your bet based upon the count from the previous hand and it all works out. Of course if you're varying the play of your hand by the count (what we call Basic Strategy variations) you must use the updated running count of 2 for your decision.