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to one of my older tips.
Currently the archived
tips are:
Insurance
Bankroll
Drinking and Playing
March 5, 2007: I have been so busy putting new pages onto the site, I
haven't had time for any new tips. Soon I'll get some.
Blackjack Tip of the Day:
August 16, 2006
Steve Tenhouse wrote me and said, "I learned a lot from your website and had a
lot of fun out in Vegas last week. I doubled my $400 stake in two sessions of
Blackjack. However, I turned around and dropped $150 of it on my third session.
I guess the odds caught up with me.
My question centers around when to bail out of a table and call it a night, or come
back later. Do you try to keep an eye on your chips and not let yourself slip below
a certain percentage of chips that you start with, or get up on?
I responded:
Hello Steve,
Thanks for writing. From the way you described it, you still faired pretty well. You
are going to have some losing sessions. The best players have them. I use a
betting progression which has served me well, but still lose about one of five
sessions. The way to avoid a disaster is first to set a loss limit. If you had a
session bankroll of $400 and lost $150, you actually did well. Some authors
suggest you quit a session after 40 to 50% of the session bankroll is lost. Your
loss fell close to that.
Another technique is to set milestones. For instance, if you start a session with
$400, and your winning streak starts. Soon you are up $100. At this point, set a
$50 loss limit of the $100 won. In other words, take a break if you fall back to
being up $50. This guarantees you a winning session. Suppose the winning
continues and you are up $200. You can set the fall-back milestone at $50, or
increase it to $75. Again, you walk if you lost back $75, but you would have $125
profit. As long as you continue to win, stay at the table. Just keep setting the
milestone up as you win.
Blackjack is a cyclical game. If you are winning on the up cycle, and sense a down
cycle starting you want to limit how far down you go. One more tip before I go.
Keep your chips in small stacks, and continuously know your status. If you are
using $25 chips, stack them in $100 stacks. If using $5 chips, make them stacks of
five. This makes it easy to look down and total your bankroll. As you win, and
start playing with your winnings, separate your original session bankroll from the
winnings. Once you are comfortably ahead, consider coloring up the session
bankroll to blacks and put them in your pocket. They become untouchable for this
session. Play with your winnings, set your milestones, stay sober, and you will be
a winner.
Research
Currently I am writing my second book on Blackjack which will include card
counting. I have come up with a new counting system which looks promising. I
have a trip planned to Vegas in early September and will try it out at some single
deck tables. Most card counting systems work on single and double deck games,
but are almost worthless when playing a shoe game. There you are better off
using a betting progression.
