Blackjack practice drills

How do you get good at casino blackjack? It’s simple, you practice and practice and then practice some more.

There are no shortcuts to becoming a skilled blackjack player or a top-notch anything. You have to study, practice and in the case of blackjack, you have to play and play a lot.

To get started on that road you need to set up a series of drills that you can use to do different things. For example, there are drills to obtain a specific skill like recognizing the difference between high cards and low ones. Others are for improving proficiency, like being able to go through a single deck in less than 30 seconds.

Some drills should be used as a type of warm-up just before playing. You might feel that you know all the skills already and doing drills is a waste of time. Take a look a professional ball players, or pro golfers. They have arrived at the top of their game, but before playing an event, they all take time to do drills to help them get ready. The same can be said about playing blackjack.

Here are some drills to help with proficiency:

Basic Strategy I

Put down one card for the dealers up card, start with the 2. Deal two cards for your hand, face up. Play out the hand by hitting, standing, splitting and double. Next, deal a new against the 2 and continue until you finish the entire deck. Continue the drill by putting up the next dealer’s card, the 3. Play out you hand and continue playing hands until you go through the entire deck. Go on to the 4, 5 and son on until you have seen every possible dealer’s up card.

Basic Strategy 2

Put down two cards for your hand, for example, two sixes. Turn over a card from the deck and call that one the dealer’s up card. Make a decision to split or not. Turn up the next card from the deck for a different dealer’s card. Continue through the entire deck until it is gone. You will get 50 dealers hands using a single 52-card deck. Later you can select any two-hand combination you feel you need work on, like soft hands.

Basic Strategy 3

Act as the dealer and deal out three hands, face up. Play each hand normally using basic strategy. Play out the dealer’s hand, hitting 16 and standing on 17. This specific exercise is most like playing in the casino. This drill can also be used for proficiency at card counting.

A note here: If you are not sure of what action to take, don’t guess. Stop and review your basic strategy sheet. That is the best way to learn.


BET YOU DIDN'T KNOW

• A study in 1986 by statisticians from University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University found it took seven riffles to make a new deck of cards completely random.

• In 1850 New York City was one of the primary gambling centers in the country, with no fewer than 6,000 gaming establishments.

• Washington State authorized commercial public card rooms in 1976. Initially, the games were basically player-banked games – poker and blackjack in which the deal rotated among players. In 1997, the legislature approved house-banked card games.

• It was in the 1980s that slot machines surpassed table games like craps and blackjack as the most profitable game in the casino.

• The gadget used to push cash into the money box at the various table games, like craps, blackjack and roulette, is called a “paddle.”

• The movie "21" was the story about MIT students who became blackjack card counters and beat many casinos out of a lot of money. MIT wouldn’t allow filming on its campus, so the movie was actually filmed at Boston University.

This article is provided by the Frank Scoblete Network. Melissa A. Kaplan is the network's managing editor. If you would like to use this article on your website, please contact Casino City Press, the exclusive web syndication outlet for the Frank Scoblete Network. To contact Frank, please e-mail him at fscobe@optonline.net.