Myths, Mistakes, and Misconceptions about Blackjack

Most people have a general understanding of how blackjack works, but it’s easy to believe common myths about game play if you haven’t fully learned it.

As such, here are common mistakes, myths, and misconceptions surrounding the game of blackjack which you should cast from your mind immediately.

Getting Close to 21 is the Goal

The misconception that the aim of blackjack is to get as close to 21 as possible is the most common of all and leads to many players chasing the elusive 21 and ignoring what’s really going on at the table.

You should always check the dealer’s upcard, remember that the dealer has to stand at either a hard or soft 17 depending on the table’s rules, and look out for favourable opportunities to split your hand.

Blackjack Strategy is Difficult to Master

While blackjack strategy may seem intimidating at first, there is no need for you to learn all the blackjack strategies off by heart.

Start by printing out a strategy chart which can be consulted until you’re more comfortable with the ins-and-outs of the game.

All you’ll have to do then is follow the action provided for each possible combination of the dealer’s upcard and your total.

Due for a Win after Successive Losses

The idea of being ‘due’ for a win after consecutive losses is a common mistake amongst gamblers in general and is known as the ‘Gambler’s Fallacy’.

Just like with horseracing where a loss on one race should guarantee a win in the next owing to the law of averages, this should also be kept in mind when considering horse racing tips NZ.

This is why many blackjack players start to increase their bet sizes after a few losses as they follow the logic of ‘the more you bet the more you will win’.

Unfortunately, every hand is a completely separate event from the last and you can’t bank on winning after a few too many successive losses.

Other Players Influence Your Chances of Winning

The goal of blackjack is to beat the dealer’s hand, but many players seem to think that their fellow table mates are somehow going to hurt their chances of achieving this.

Remember every player at the table is playing against the dealer, not you!

Even if your table mate makes a bad decision, this does not influence your hand and you should think of it as if you’re playing alone at the table.

The Consistently Low House Edge

It’s often stated that blackjack has a house edge of just 0.5% which makes it very appealing to players, but more often than not this is simply not the case.

The rules of the game are dependent on the table – one game may offer 3:2 payouts for blackjack and force the dealer to stand on soft 17, while another may offer 6:5 blackjack payouts and allows the dealer to stand on soft 17.

Insurance is a Worthy Investment

Insurance is an addition bet as to whether the dealer will have blackjack when their upcard shows an ace.

If the dealer does have blackjack and you’ve taken insurance, you will be paid 2:1. It may sound appealing to the uninitiated, but the problem with insurance is that only 16 of the 52 cards in the deck will give the dealer blackjack – a chance of 30.77% – leaving you losing the other 69.23% of the time.

The Benefits of Playing Online Blackjack

While playing blackjack at a land based casino is a far more sociable experience, there are many advantages to playing online blackjack instead.

With a greater variety of blackjack games from low stakes to high, fantastic casino bonuses, and superior pay outs, playing online blackjack is a no brainer! Here are the detailed benefits of playing online blackjack.

Wide Range of Deposit and Withdrawal Options

One of the greatest advantages to playing online blackjack is that online casinos offer a wide range of options for deposits and withdrawals and there is something to suit everybody.

Whether you want to deposit with your credit card or web wallet, you can do so with ease and confidence knowing your transactions are secured by 128-bit SSL encryption software.

Perfect for Beginners

I can assure you, if you pitch up at a land based casino and ask the dealer to explain the game to you while others sit around and wait impatiently for you to get the gist, there are going to be a lot of frustrated people.

Rather play blackjack at an online casino where there is far less intensity and pressure than a live game and there are plenty of practise play options to enjoy while you’re learning.

Ease of Access

Playing blackjack at a land based casino requires paying for fuel to drive to the casino, paying for parking, and inevitably paying for snacks and refreshments while you play. This is just wasteful!

Rather put all that extra cash into your online casino account and play wherever, whenever. As long as you have a device such a smartphone, laptop, computer, or tablet connected to the internet you can play online blackjack and real money pokies to your heart’s content.

Live Dealers

Once you feel confident in your playing ability, you can always head to the live dealer portion of the casino and recreate the land based casino in your living room!

Thanks to high quality video streaming, you will be presented with a gorgeous dealer who chats to players while dealing and you can even ask them questions via the chat option.

Lower House Edge and Better Payouts

Thanks to the fact that online casinos are a dime a dozen and the competition is fierce, they are forced to offer superior payout rates and lower house edges than land based casinos in order to entice players to play with them.

Online casinos also have far less overhead expenses than land based casinos, so they can afford to give more back to the player.

Financial Rewards

Ah, sign up bonuses! What a wonderful way to rewarded for doing almost nothing! All you have to do to receive your online casino sign up bonus is create an account, deposit the advertised minimum, and reap the rewards!

Not only do online casino players get sign up bonuses, but regular promotions and loyalty rewards will keep you coming back for more online blackjack.

Utmost Privacy

Online casinos are perfect for those wanting to protect their privacy as no one will know you’re playing unless you tell them!

Enjoy your favourite games in the comfort of your own home without having to worry about running into anyone you know and if you’ve got a fairly public profile, online casinos provide you with the anonymity you require.

Happy playing!

The Main Differences Between Blackjack and Poker

As we have often said, Blackjack is a very popular online and table game, with many people enjoying this game across the globe.

People often consider Poker the more popular or cooler game, due to the influence of movies, media and well advertised Poker Tournaments with celebrity players.

But Blackjack and Poker often get confused in the mainstream media and in the public eye, so here we discuss the differences between these two games.

There may not seem like there are any obvious differences but there are. Read more “The Main Differences Between Blackjack and Poker”

Noteworthy Blackjack Movies

Blackjack has played such an influential role on popular culture that it should be no surprise that there are many films that touch on or deal with Blackjack.

It is a near impossible task to compile a comprehensive list of Blackjack film highlights so let’s look at a few personal favourites of ours. These are all must see films for any Blackjack fan.

21

With an all star cast that features Kevin Spacey, Lawrence Fishburne and Kate Bosworth, 21 is an intriguing film.

Its story is based loosely on a true story of a group of MIT students that make use of mathematical formulas to improve their blackjack playing.

They eventually test their skills out in real casinos that are not too happy about it when they find out. It’s a shame they didn’t know about the best betting app in Australia where you can have much more fun.

Croupier

Starting off as a tale of a writer trying to find his feet, this film quickly switches to a noir styled direction as the lead character played by Clive Owen attempts to make sense of the world around him as he starts dealing at a blackjack table to make ends meet.

While this film has an average score of 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, it was not a massive hit at the box office, but it did help make Clive Owen an almost household name in America.

Swingers

Swingers is one of those classic cult films that just manages to make all the right moves. Not only is Swingers well written and paced, it features some exciting Blackjack action.

This film helped launch the careers of Vince Vaughan, Jon Faverau and Heather Graham. It not only won critical approval but also an MTV movie award for best film.

The Cooler

Just like Swingers, The Cooler is a relatively small film that packs a punch. It stars William H Macy who is the cooler referred to in the title, and rather than referring to a strong Blackjack hand that gets beaten by an even stronger hand, it refers to Macy’s ability to “Cool” the luck of other players.

He works for a casino boss who through a series of events decided to start making our character’s live a bit harder. Also featuring Alec Baldwin, The Cooler is a sleeper hit well worth a watch.

Licence To Kill

While not strictly a gambling film, the 16th James Bond film starring Timothy Dalton does features some fantastic Blackjack.

There is a scene where Timothy Dalton wins $250 000 in a match and takes it in stride, just as cool as you would expect Bond to be.

Soon after the release of Licensed to Kill, legal problems arose over licensing and it would be another 6 years before a new bond film would see the light of day, by which time Timothy Dalton had unfortunately moved on.

Honourable Mentions

Rain Man and One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest both deserve a mention even though they aren’t focused on Blackjack.

In these two films we see Blackjack bring strangers together in a way that conversation alone simply cannot. Let’s hope the world keeps remembering that unique power of Blackjack.

What Makes Blackjack So Popular?

What Makes Blackjack So Popular?

Anyone who has ever even dipped their toes into the world of online gaming knows about the game blackjack.

Blackjack is one of those card games which leaped into the limelight and firmly stayed there.

Today one can find it in almost any online and brick and mortar casino. Blackjack is so popular in fact, that it is often played recreationally by people of all ages at their homes or other gathering places purely as a form of entertainment. Read more “What Makes Blackjack So Popular?”

Blackjack on the Big Screen

Blackjack on the Big Screen

Blackjack is endlessly fascinating, so it’s no real surprise that it has featured in so many blockbuster films over the years.

Some of the movies feature important revelations made against the background of a Blackjack game, and some make it one of the major themes running through the storyline.

With the fascination that the whole world seems to have with Blackjack growing stronger all the time, there will no doubt be many more movies featuring the game of 21.

These movies are a selection of the best examples of Blackjack in film right now.

21

Loosely based on Ben Mezrich’s book Bringing Down the House, and the real-life escapades of a Blackjack team made up of MIT students.

The youngsters were mentored by Professor Micky Rosa, played by Kevin Spacey, who taught them to card count and use team tactics to win at Blackjack.

For a time they were wildly successful, but the law eventually caught up with them.

The movie 21 is an in-depth look at how the strategy of card counting works and how it can successfully be applied with dual teams.

The MIT students were divided into a team of spotters and a team of big players. The spotters would play minimum bets while counting the decks at the Blackjack tables in their targeted casino, and then signal to the big players when the count would be favourably taken advantage of.

The story is fascinating, and expertly told with fine acting.

Croupier

Croupier is a darkly psychological film that uses Blackjack as a vehicle for sadism; Clive Owen plays a detached card dealer named Jack, who takes pleasure in watching punters lose.

A lot of the technical ins and outs of land-based Blackjack games are shown too, such as casino regulations and the skills that a croupier needs to have.

The Gambler

The Gambler shows the dark side of Blackjack in all its gory glory, and may make some people want to stick to mobile pokies for the rest of their gambling careers!

The game of Blackjack is portrayed almost as a villain, which together with Roulette is the monkey on the back of protagonist Jim Bennet, played by Mark Wahlberg.

The 2014 remake of the 1976 film follows Bennet as he spirals out of control, asking his mother to help him cover his debts and then enlisting some of the students in a class that he teaches.

The climax of the film is when Bennet gets his students to help him with a point-shaving and betting scam, pays off his debts and then risks everything on a single Roulette wheel to settle the rest of what he owes.

Rain Man

Once again, Blackjack is used to make some very important points in this classic and beautifully-acted film. Dustin Hoffman plays an autistic man whose brother, played by Tom Cruise, only learns about him when their father dies.

Through a course of complicated events, Cruise’s character ends up kidnapping his brother, but when he finds out he is $80,000 in debt the brotherly bonding session is over.

Until, that is, the genius-level mathematical splinter skills of Hoffman’s character are discovered and the pair heads to Vegas to (successfully!) count cards.

The Hangover

Blackjack on the Big Screen

To end off on a light-hearted note, consider The Hangover, a movie about how just how debaucherous a bachelor’s party can be.

When everyone wakes up to mayhem in their Las Vegas hotel suite the morning after, they have to face more than a physical hangover; it seems a friend is missing and they think he is being held hostage by a gangster.

Card-counting skills are once again called in to save the day, as the pals scramble to raise the ransom money.

Martingale System And Blackjack

What is the Martingale System in Blackjack?

Blackjack is one of the most popular table casino games in the world. Using a simple, graspable system, yet remaining an extremely difficult game to master, it is one of few casino games that are both simple, yet deeply advanced.

It is also one of very few casino games were a truly skilled player can win consistently, to such an extent that a living could be made off of playing a casino game.

The Martingale betting system is a simple, yet logical betting system that can be applied to casino games. There are a number of betting systems that can be used, often extremely complicated and difficult to apply correctly.

The Martingale system, however, is as simple as a betting system can get, yet often gives incredibly good results. In the game of roulette the Martingale system can be used along with a simple strategy, granting curiously consistent results, given how simple the system itself is.

But can the Martingale system be used when playing online blackjack in Canada or anywhere else for that matter, and still give acceptable results? Let’s take a closer look.

How Martingale Works

The Martingale system is negative progression, which simply means that a player ups their bet upon losing, in an effort to recoup the losses, while still making a profit. To put it more simply, the player may start with 1 unit of bet currency. If a lose is suffered, the bet is raised to 2 units. This will cover the lost, and make profit, assuming the round is a win. If it is a lost, the next bet will be 4 units, and so on. It’s a simple system that is easy to understand, and easy to apply to a game.

The problem with the system is that a losing streak can quickly but the betting amount astronomically high. If winning, the system grants a slow, but steady stream of small winnings.

If losing more than about 5 times in a row, however, the player is quickly having to bet huge amounts in an effort to cover losses. In other words, the system can quickly collapse in the face of a losing streak.

Combined With Blackjack

Using the Martingale system with blackjack is as simple as one would assume. The bet need only be doubled after a loss, and reduced back down to 1 after a win.

On the surface, the system works reasonably well, and can be adequate for some time. But, once again, will fall apart if enough losses in a row are incurred. For this reason many professional gamblers suggest not using the Martingale system.

For beginner players, however, the Martingale system is a great teacher on how more advanced betting systems work.

Using the Martingale system, even for a short while, will help a learning player get into a mindset of how betting systems can function, and so for this reason is a good starting point.

It need simply be kept in mind that only low stakes tables should be tackled with this betting system, lest the situation get out of control fast.

Other betting strategies are also available online, for free.