Archive for the ‘Blackjack Guide’ Category

 

Ten and a half

February 10th, 2009

Ten and a half is a card game with rules very similar to blackjack. The game is popular in China and is usually used for gambling.
Rules
The rules are very similar to blackjack, with the following exceptions:

A, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 are worth their face points. J, Q and [...]

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Spanish 21

February 1st, 2009

Spanish 21 is an increasingly popular variant of blackjack owned by Masque Publishing, Inc. “Unlicensed” (but equivalent) versions may be called Spanish blackjack.Spanish 21 uses the following rules:

The game is played with six or eight decks dealt from a shoe. Each deck is a standard poker deck with the tens (but not [...]

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Seven twenty-seven

January 24th, 2009

Seven Twenty-Seven is a vying game similar in some respects to poker, and often played as a “dealer’s choice” variant at home poker games. It uses the same equipment and betting system, but the value of hands does not use traditional poker hand rankings, either high or low. Rather, only the sum [...]

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MindPlay

January 14th, 2009

MindPlay is a technology designed to monitor blackjack players’ actions while playing in a casino.Monitoring a person’s play traditionally is done visually, by the dealer, floorperson, pitboss, and the eye in the sky (video surveillance). If one of these observers notices something unusual in a person’s play, they will do what they [...]

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Kelly Criterion

November 15th, 2008

The Kelly Criterion or as it is sometimes referred to as the Kelly formula is a formula used to maximize the long-term growth rate of repeated plays of a given gamble that has positive expected value. The formula specifies the percentage of the current bankroll to be bet at each iteration of [...]

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Double Exposure Blackjack

November 2nd, 2008

Double Exposure Blackjack is a variant of blackjack in which both the dealer’s cards are revealed to players at the start of the hand. Knowing the dealer’s hand provides significant information, and without rules modifications would be advantageous to the player.The main rules changes to provide the casino with the advantage are [...]

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Double Attack Blackjack

October 20th, 2008

Double Attack Blackjack has very liberal blackjack rules and the option of increasing one’s wager after seeing the dealer’s up card. This game is dealt from a Spanish shoe, and blackjacks pay only even money.

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Chinese Blackjack

October 4th, 2008

Chinese Blackjack is also known as 21-point, ban-nag (Cantonese) or ban-luck (Hokkien). It is a gambling game played in South East Asia which bears similarity to conventional Blackjack.The game uses one or two 52-card deck(s), playable by any number of players. One of them is to be a dealer, or they may [...]

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Countermeasures against blackjack card-counters

September 18th, 2008

Counting cards in blackjack has become substantially more difficult as a result of casino countermeasures. The most common is the use of more decks, which decreases the player’s advantage, but even in the few remaining single- and double-deck games, dealers will often shuffle prematurely or unusually frequently to defeat a suspected [...]

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History of blackjack card counting

September 3rd, 2008

American mathematician Dr. Edward O. Thorp is considered the father of card counting. His 1962 book Beat the Dealer (ISBN 0394703103) outlined various betting and playing strategies for optimal blackjack play. Although mathematically sound, some of the techniques described no longer apply as casinos took counter-measures (such as no longer dealing [...]

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