January 24, 2008 at 9:20 am

Jack, the barkeep, has just set me up with a boilermaker and I’m sitting here with this digital recording device. When this young guy sold me on the idea of this writing job, I told him straight that I’m no writer. He tells me not to worry. All I have to do is talk into this here machine and he has people that’ll write it all down for me. Tidy it up a bit, maybe. But, it’ll be just like me talking to you.

So, last time, I was telling you that there’s a Basic Strategy for blackjack. Now this may sound like common sense and not worth the time to read on, but we’ve put those capital letters in there for a reason. Now’s the time to get to that reason.

Folks’ll tell you that there’s strategies for every game. And I can’t say they’re wrong in that. So, when you sit down to play poker, you can have all kinds of ideas about how to play each hand. You look at your own cards and think back over the pattern of bidding for the last few hands. You watch your opponents for signs they might have a good hand or be bluffing. You may also want to run a bluff or two yourself to mix up the style, be a little less predictable.

But there’s a whole world of difference between strategies plural, and a Basic Strategy. Whenever you play against someone else, you’re playing that person as well as the cards. You’re making all kinds of judgements about how good a player he is, what kind of temperament he has — risk taker or conservative — whether he’s up or down in the game. If he’s ahead, that might make him more conservative so he can sit on his winnings. It’s all about you using psychology and your experience as a player to “guess” what the hidden cards are around the table. Make the right decisions, and you’re a winner. Get fooled and you’re learning more about your opponent. How did he bet that hand? Why did you get caught? How can you avoid stepping into that kind of trap in the future?

But that’s not blackjack. In blackjack, you’re not playing against another person who makes choices. The House has a set of rules about how the Dealer must play. Stand or hit? There’s no choice to be made. Those rules are printed on the felting of the table, both real world and online, and enforced just as surely as if carved in stone.

So, the Dealer shows you one card and does you a big favor. Now there’s only one hidden card round the table. You look at that upcard. You’ve done your homework. You know the single strategy on how to play your hand based on that upcard and your running count of the cards. It’s just a question of the math. None of the psychology of poker comes into it. You’re either right or you’re wrong (assuming it’s an honest game, of course).

And, for our purposes, let’s just assume it’s an honest game. You’re playing blackjack online. It’s a machine not a dealer that might palm a card or fix a deal. Sure, the folks behind the online casino could fix the program to cheat, but anyone with any experience would spot that pretty quick and, with all the bad word-of-mouth, that online casino would be dead in a week or two. It’s not worth the risk. There’s more than enough players around who don’t know the Basic Strategy, so those online folks can make their dollar of profit without having to cheat.

Hopefully, I’ve got your attention now. There’s a lot of clever people been working on getting this Basic Strategy right. And all that work was finished years ago. There’s no fine tuning required. I’ll lay it out for you. If you wanna be a winner, you just learn the strategy as it is and apply it on every hand. Never changing, never improvising.

Ironic, isn’t it? Here’s me telling you how to beat the Dealer and the answer’s a set of rules that’ll turn you into a machine just like the one you’re playing at the online casino.

So, there’s two empty glass in front of me and Jack’s bringing replacements. Time for me to find the stop button on this machine and get back to the serious business of consuming more alcohol. See you next time.

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