Casino Blackjack Secrets

What I always find staggering now about land based casinos especially in England is in how they treat blackjack. For years people have been drawn to the game because it is a game of skill where the player can actually get an edge. The reality was that very few players who played that game actually knew enough to be able to get an edge but that didn’t stop them from trying all the same.

In all my time in gaming, I only knew of a handful of blackjack players who were actually good enough to beat the game. Even then, most of them failed either through poor game selection or by being spotted and thus prevented from playing. But it is now blatantly impossible to get an edge by card counting or any other “strategy” when the game is being dealt from an automatic shuffling machine.

I can understand the gaming industry wanting to speed the action up and automatic shufflers do away with human shuffling. But how much of this is offset by players who no longer play the game because they know that they cannot beat the shufflers? But do you know what, the land based casinos are far more concerned with keeping a very close eye on roulette than they are blackjack.

They try to attract system players by placing scorecards at the side of the table and they know that millions of players are still ignorant of the fact that no betting system exists that can gain an edge at roulette. However roulette does have weaknesses and it has nothing to do with any betting system either.

Casino blackjack betting systems cannot overcome the house edge but yet it is the very same pay offs of 35/1 on the number that make the game vulnerable when attacked from angles other than betting systems. One successful strike on blackjack only gets an even money pay off, it would take thirty five bets on blackjack to equal one successful strike on roulette.

So what do I mean when I say that the casinos keep a very close eye on roulette? What actually makes it so vulnerable? Well it is many things, all of the casinos where I worked had very poor maintenance procedures when it came to roulette wheels. When a wheel is poorly maintained then bias appears. Luckily for the casinos, I would imagine that maybe one person in a thousand would actually spot it.

In fact if the bias was small enough then it may take sophisticated software to spot it. This is possible now and the latest John Huxley wheels can come with bias detection systems built in.
But these are expensive and casinos who cut corners in other areas are not likely to have equipment like this installed and especially small casinos with very low turnovers. They get to know their clientele and if these people do not pose any threat to them then why should they spend thousands upon thousands of pounds renewing old wheels or installing sophisticated bias detection systems?

Even the shape of a roulette table is geared for many cheating moves and when the wheel is moving slowly then the ball can find predictable drop off patterns that can be exploited by alert punters. How do I know this? Well after working for nine years in the gaming industry then I really ought to know. But I have also done extensive analysis as well since leaving the gaming industry so this is knowledge that isnt common even amongst most croupiers.

This article was produced by Carl “The Dean” Sampson