Blackjack professionalism

With a reasonable amount of time and effort you can get to become a skilled card counter at blackjack. However, if you get caught as a counter you will get your picture taken and barred from playing in the casino.

At many casinos the dealers are trained to look for card counters. Here are a few tips to help prevent getting thrown out of the game.

1. Dress like the tourists around you. Do the short pants and carry sunglasses in your shirt. You want to fit in, you don’t want to stand out of the crowd.

2. You choose your dealer; don’t let the casino do it for you. The younger the dealer, the better. New one on the job.
- (1) Female (young <30yo) inexperienced
- (2) Male (young <30yo) inexperienced
- (3) Female (older 30yo>) experienced
- (4) Male (older 30yo>) experienced
- (5) Male & female (older 45yo>) very experienced *

• This survey was done by Lance Humble, author of The World’s Greatest Blackjack Book. Dealer ranked best for the player (#1), worst (#5).

3. At the start of a new deal or shoe, don’t always bet the table minimum. That can be an alert to management.

4. Don’t play for more than one hour in any one casino.

5. Try not to be the biggest bettor at the table.

6. Don’t vary the size of your wager when a pit boss is nearby and watching.

7. Play with a male/female companion but teach him/her basic strategy first.

8. Don’t be stubborn and refuse to leave a table a loser.

Remember, each casino is really three casinos; day, swing, grave. If it’s not working on days, wait and play on swings or grave shift.


BET YOU DIDN'T KNOW

• Do you like buffets? Las Vegas has over 50 to choose from.

• Besides the U.S., there are at least 41 other countries that offer legal poker rooms.

• Atlantic City’s first casino, Resorts, opened on Memorial Day 1978. Within 9 months it had paid back its entire $77 million capital investment.

• The random number generator (RNG) in a slot machine is always running even when the machine is not being played. A new sequence of numbers is being selected every millisecond.

• A typical 25-cent slot machine on the Las Vegas strip will generate an income of $25,000 a year for the casino.

• Francois Blanc, who created the famous casino at Monte Carlo, established the principle that is still the soul of the casino business. “The house must either (1) have more capital than any individual gambler or (2) establish a limit so that superior capital can never be brought into play against it.”

• During WWII, a disgruntled gambler posted a sign on a Nevada slot machine that read “In case of air raid stand by this machine. Nobody has hit it yet.”

• In 1334 an English Law was passed forbidding men to go masked to other people’s houses on Christmas to play dice.

• When the MGM Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, discovered Chinese players wouldn’t enter their facility because it required walking through its lion’s mouth, which was considered bad luck, the front entrance was completely redesigned at the cost of millions of dollars.

• The Duke of Wellington not only defeated Napoleon, but also was a member of the English Crockford Gambling Club. He never had a losing session while at the club. He only came for the food and drink, he never gambled.

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.