Tag Archives: Blackjack card counting

Keep Your Emotions in Check When Playing Blackjack

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Is blackjack a game of luck or skill? The answer is: it’s both. That’s why it’s one of the most popular card games in land-based and online casinos. You need to be lucky, but you also need to apply the appropriate strategy to maximize your success. However, even if you have the best possible approach, there’s one thing that many players overlook when playing blackjack — their emotions.

So, how can emotions affect your gameplay? Imagine being on a losing streak and getting frustrated by all of this. Your bankroll still has funds for several more rounds, but being so angry, you decide to bet all your funds and try to recoup your losses. Then, you lose once again, and you’re suddenly out of money which could have been put to better use.

This is a typical emotional reaction that’s common not only in blackjack but also in many other casino games. Professional poker players use inexperienced ones who cannot control their emotions and profit from them.

Therefore, whenever we review blackjack games, we make sure to mention that one needs to be very careful, and that means not letting emotions meddle with their actions.

Don’t get it wrong — feeling emotions when playing is a completely natural thing. Even the best blackjack players will feel exhilarated when they win or depressed when they lose. What makes them stand out from the crowd is that they can remain cool-headed even when they’re burning inside.

There are several ways that they manage to do that. However, it all starts by recognizing and addressing your emotional reaction. Many players who make impulsive moves find out too little too late that they didn’t make the best choice. Therefore, it’s important to recognize an emotion right away and not let it affect your gameplay. Think of it this way: you’ll win if you play by blackjack rules and not tilt at any moment.

Sure, this is easier said than done, but you can start with that — thinking about your emotional responses when playing games. Once you start exploring emotional intelligence, you’ll be able to improve your blackjack games.

Some players will go as far as to tell you to meditate on a daily basis if you want to be calm when playing the game and keep your emotions in check. This is a great approach if you’re a professional player and want to make a living out of this game. However, if you’re a casual player, understanding your emotions and how they affect your gameplay is enough for starters.

Is Blackjack a Game of Luck or Skill?

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Blackjack is probably the most popular card game in land-based and online casinos. One of the reasons why it’s so popular is that you can learn how to play it and apply a certain strategy to increase your chances of winning. Does this make blackjack a game of skill or a game of luck?

When we review blackjack strategies, we always rely on the fact that you need the skill to beat blackjack. However, that’s not entirely true. Although you can increase your chances by learning the right approach, luck still plays an essential role. If blackjack were only a game of skill, it wouldn’t be available in casinos.

In other words, casinos would just lose money, as people would master the game and win every time. Therefore, it’s safe to say that the element of luck is still pretty big.

It’s safe to conclude that blackjack requires both skill and luck. Moreover, it’s a perfect combination of the two. How come?

If you play online video slots, the only thing you can do is to click on the Spin button and hope for the best possible result. That’s a game that’s only luck-based.

On the other hand, we have poker. It requires some social skills and a lot of learning. If you become a poker master, you’ll be able to play this game against the majority of players and win in most cases. That’s why the element of skill is more dominant in poker.

But we cannot say that either skill or luck is dominant in blackjack, as we can say that for slots or poker. It’s a perfect combo, and that’s one of the main reasons why people love it. In other words, you get to learn the game and increase your chances of winning, yet you still have that thrill of uncertainty that adds a special flavor to blackjack.

Therefore, when starting your blackjack session, don’t rely on the element of luck alone. Instead, try learning more about popular strategies that can help you improve.

We made a blackjack strategy chart, so feel free to check it out and start learning about the game by examining it. The chart tells you the best possible thing to do for every card combination that you can get in a round of blackjack. It’s up to you to apply that knowledge while playing the popular card game and see how it works in reality. It will definitely help you increase your chances of winning, but you should never take the element of chance out of the equation.

What is Card Counting and Can it be Done Playing Blackjack Online?

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Many people have often toyed with the idea of trying card counting when playing blackjack and with the growth of online casinos and blackjack sites, trying your skills at home while playing online seems like a good idea.

This begs the question, is it possible to count cards playing online blackjack? Sadly, the answer is no.

For those that don’t know what card counting is, it is a legal technique that is thought to have been “created” in the 1950s, though it wasn’t until mathematician Dr Edward O Thorp, the godfather of card counting, published his 1962 book “Beat the Dealer” that it really came to prominence. Card counting involves keeping track of the high and low cards that have been dealt because a deck with an above average number of high cards creates conditions favorable to the player.

The key principle which makes card counting possible and blackjack, unlike all other casino games, beatable, is that what has gone before has an impact on what is to come. In roulette, 50 reds in a row – though unlikely – does not alter the probability of a red next. However, in blackjack, if a large number of low cards come out in the early hands, leaving the remaining deck stacked with high cards, we know that DOES influence what happens next.

However, almost all online blackjack sites and casinos that feature blackjack use continuous shuffling, such that after every hand all cards are automatically returned to the deck and shuffled before the next hand. This is done electronically, of course, using Random Number Generator software, but the impact on the potential for card counting is the same – it is fatal. Each deal starts with a full complement of cards and so the deck never changes in composition, thus rendering card counting impossible.

However, the position is slightly different with live dealer casinos, which replicate, to a large degree, the conditions of a normal land casino. Here, card counting is possible, especially if you happen to find a live dealer casino that only reshuffles the cards when the whole deck is almost played. To combat the threat of card counting most such casinos shuffle the cards when only about half the deck has been played and this limits the accuracy of card counting, though it may still be worthwhile.

Overall, card counting doesn’t sit well with playing online blackjack and, as ever, our main tip is to use good bonuses and freebies with basic strategy in order to maximize your chances of making a profit playing online blackjack.