If you ever play at a blackjack table with the Five Card Charlie option, you’re going to need to know how to properly utilize it. The Five Card Charlie rule is fairly simple: If you have 5 cards in front of you, and you haven’t gone bust, you win. There’s no need to compare the total of your hand to the dealer’s, there’s no push possible. You simply win if you reach the five-card mark!

You’ll mainly be following basic strategy, with a few important exceptions. You’re going to be more aggressive hitting soft hands, and you’re going to be more willing to hit with borderline hands when you’re close to the Five Card Charlie. To be more specific:

• Stand on a hard 17 – 21: No need to get silly. If you have a made hand, you should see if it’s going to work out rather than risk the small odds that you might pull a tiny card for the instant win.

• If you have three or four cards to the Charlie, always hit on your total 4 – 12: Since these combinations are usually safe to hit anyway, and with the added clearly you should.

• If you hold a four-card hard 13, 14, or 15, take a hit and go for the Charlie: These are the hands where you need to go for the instant win. They’re pretty awful and they usually don’t stand up to the dealer’s hand. Odds say you’re better off going for the Charlie!

• If you hold a four-card 16, stand on a dealer 4, 5, or 6 and hit on everything else: The bad dealer hands are worth seeing if he’ll bust. But go for the Charlie every other time.

• Hit every soft hand if you’re holding 4 cards: Even if you have a 4 card soft 21, you can avoid a push by hitting! The instant win is always best!

• Hit a soft 18 against a dealer 2 – 8 if you’re holding 3 cards (stand if you’ve only got 2 cards), and always hit the soft 18 against a dealer 9, T, or A: The 18 is a special case. Following the rules above is optimal.

• Always hit a soft 12 through 17: The Charlie is worth shooting for with these low soft totals, no matter how many cards you have in hand.

• Otherwise, follow basic strategy: If the situation doesn’t fit any of the above rules, just play your basic game.

These guidelines are the optimal way to take advantage of the Five Card Charlie rule. Properly played, it should give you an additional 1.5 percent advantage over the house. However most tables that have this rule compensate for this advantage with some player-unfriendly rule, so be careful!

By Bill Ricardi
- Blackjack Expert

In order to calculate the profits made by a blackjack system or traditional card counting against the house, we have to talk about your gambling wins in terms of advantage and disadvantage.

Your average card counter will play basic strategy, and modify their actions based on the running count.  They spend time researching the best local casino, with weakest dealers that they can find.  They also only play tables with the most favorable blackjack rules that can be expected.  When you add up all of their advantages, blackjack card counters are usually looking for at least a 0.5% advantage over the long term.

Let us use an example of someone who yields a 0.6% advantage over the house, when all advantages are tallied.  If this player has regular 8-hour sessions over the course of a month, and they have a $3000 blackjack bankroll, they should make just about $25 an hour on average, depending on how consistently weak the dealers were that month.  If you want to subtract travel expenses, travel time, and time spent scouting for good table conditions and bad dealers, and profits might go down to $20 an hour.

Now, money spent on expenses might not be totally lost.  If your blackjack play is a significant enough gain to report on your taxes, and you’re treating your blackjack play as a business, you might be able to write off those expenses as a tax deduction.  You’ll want to record the costs, save all your receipts, and present them to your tax person or CPA when tax time comes.

To continue the above example, a steady average gain of $20 yields about $40,000 a year if played as a full time job.  This isn’t bad in certain parts of the world, and is downright great in other parts of the world.  Remember though, that this isn’t free and clear.  You still owe taxes and need to spring for any benefits that a company might normally provide.  That means insurance, retirement fund, and the like.

I suggest that you add at least 10 percent of your winnings to your permanent bankroll, even if you’re living off of the rest of your winnings.  As your bankroll grows, so will the level of play that you can afford.  But be careful not to move up too quickly, as violating your bankroll limits by overextending your count-to-bankroll ratios is a sure way to go bust.  Take your time, track your results, and remember to re-invest some of your winnings into your permanent bankroll.

Finally, I suggest dedicating at least a small amount of your winnings towards further education.  New blackjack books, regular gaming industry magazines, and the like are all good investments that will keep you abreast of developments in your chosen field.

Bill Ricardi
– Blackjack Expert

There are currently 12 members of Blackjack’s Hall of Fame. Each of them has something to teach us, and they’ve all had a huge impact on our community. Today, I would like to introduce them to you:

Al Francesco: Al introduced an important, some might say the most important, aspect to the concept of blackjack teams. He created the “Big Player” concept, and thus the ability to combine a team’s counting efforts for maximum profit, and minimum chance of getting caught. He also taught the legendary Ken Uston how to count cards.

Stanford Wong: ‘Stanford’ (aka John Ferguson), a former finance teacher, wrote the book “Professional Blackjack”. With the help of his amazing analytical math skills, and excellent game theory, he became a pioneer of electronic blackjack hand modeling. His computer program “Blackjack Analyzer” was one of the first commercial blackjack programs on the market.

Peter Griffin: Peter was a Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at California State University, Sacramento. He was known for using mathematical shortcuts that were developed by statisticians to compare card counting systems in blackjack. He was also the author of “Theory of Blackjack”, a book that is considered the bible of blackjack mathematics.

Ken Uston: Ken (aka Kenneth Senzo Usui) was a high stakes professional blackjack player. His toolbox was huge. He was able to proficiently count cards, detect and destroy weak dealers, play with the biggest teams, and utilize technology to his advantage. He wrote “The Big Player”, sharing his winning secrets as they applied to team play. Later he authored “Million Dollar Blackjack”, revealing his non-team play secrets.

Edward O. Thorp: A math professor who wrote one of the greatest blackjack books of all time: “Beat the Dealer”. He used an IBM computer while developing his blackjack game theory, based on the Kelly criterion. Oddly, though he made a fortune in both the stock market and gambling, he considered the whole experiment an academic exercise!

Tommy Hyland: Tommy has been running the most successful blackjack teams in the world for over 25 years now. It was the judge of his court case in Ontario, Canada, with the help of expert testimony from Arnold Snyder, which first ruled that advantage play was not cheating, but merely the use of intelligent strategy.

Arnold Snyder: An amazing author, Arnold wrote “The Blackjack Formula”, “Blackbelt in Blackjack”, and “The Blackjack Shuffle Tracker’s Cookbook” and more, covering damn near every aspect of professional blackjack play. He has been the editor of Blackjack Forum, a quarterly trade journal for professional gamblers, for over 25 years.

Keith Taft: Keith built some of the first high-tech blackjack counting and analysis devices. He also created some amazing miniature hole card cameras and audio-visual devices to aid blackjack teams in their quest to beat the house.

Max Rubin: In 1994, Max’s book “Comp City: A Guide to Free Gambling Vacations” introduced the world to the wonder of casino comps. The book shows gamblers how to maximize casino perks while doing very little actual wagering. Max has also appeared as a gambling analyst for various television programs.

Julian Braun: Julian was the father of the Hi-Lo Count system, a more accurate and much simpler version of Thorp’s first counting systems. He also refined basic blackjack strategy to a razor’s edge. His book, “How to Play Winning Blackjack”, is a must read.

Lawrence Revere: Lew (aka Griffith K. Owens, Leonard “Specs” Parsons, and Paul Mann) wrote “Playing Blackjack as a Business”, and developed the Revere counting methods, some of the most intricate and accurate systems to ever be published.

James Grosjean: James wrote “Beyond Counting : Exploiting Casino Games from Blackjack to Video Poker”. He is also known for winning lawsuits against casinos on the grounds of civil rights violations, and bankrupting the (some might say ‘evil’) Griffin Detective Agency.

By Bill Ricardi
- Blackjack Expert

If you have a new blackjack system that you need to try out, there’s a right way and a wrong way to test it. An incorrect testing method can have a disastrous impact on your blackjack bankroll. A badly tested betting system, counting method, or strategy table can, instead of leading to more winning,  have long term negative effects ranging from bad habits to bankroll ruination.

With that in mind, I’ve compiled a few tips that should help you test new blackjack systems in an accurate way, with minimal risk, and hopefully maximized winning.

• Test Player-VS-House Systems at Micro Limits: There is no functional difference between nickel limits and hundred dollar limits when you’re talking about Player-VS-House blackjack. So why test at high limits when you can test at low limits for a fraction of the cost? As you can imagine, a system that ends up costing you 35 percent or more of your testing bankroll isn’t unrealistic. Risk the pennies in blackjack, not the dollars.

• Duplicate Realistic Conditions: Don’t make rules or conditions assumptions that are wildly in the favor of the blackjack player. Instead, assume that the actual field implementation of your new system will be under normal, average conditions and seek a test environment that emulates the norm. A lot of casinos are willing to run small stakes blackjack tables with much more favorable player odds, in order to get people in the door. Don’t use these for testing, because the results will be skewed, no matter how much you are winning!

• Test Long Term: Never field test over the course of a couple of days of blackjack play and accept those results as gospel. You need to test new blackjack systems over the course of weeks or months before you collect enough data to make rough conclusions. Relying on short term data is one of the biggest mistakes that people make in the world of gaming, and can lead to not only ruination of the bankroll, but can also lead to dangerous, incorrect assumptions about the way odds work in general. Short term winning streaks do not make a perfect system.

• Record Your Results: This should go without saying, but people who ‘memorize’ or ‘estimate’ their online blackjack system results constantly amaze me. This horrible practice often turns good data into useless garbage. Record everything! Write down the time of the session, the number of hands played, bankroll before and after, and any interesting notes that you may have.

• Compare Your Results to Other Experiments: When you’ve compiled a large body of data for your online blackjack system, figure out if the initial results are better or worse than other systems. If they seem wildly out of line, you may need more extensive testing. Either way, if another online blackjack system yields better results, then you may need to consider adopting aspects of that system, or revising your thinking all together.

It’s only through dedicated experimentation that we learn what is viable under real world conditions. Simulators are all well and good for basic statistical data, but if you can’t realistically perform to the systems specifications, what good is automated data? Happy testing!

By Bill Ricardi
- Poker Expert

There is a tendency to rush everything when you’re playing online.  Because there’s instant dealing, instant betting, and instant results, some players will make snap decision instead of thinking abut the move that they should actually be making.  That sort of reaction can be costly.

Don’t be afraid of taking a moment to consider borderline decisions.  If you’re confused or you forget your betting and play strategies, don’t guess.  Work it out.  Remember that one error an hour can be the difference between a winning session and a losing session.  Two errors per hour will almost ensure a losing session.  So don’t blitz out your actions when you aren’t sure what you should really be doing.

The play clock is a resource. You’re allowed to use your time in a reasonable manner.  Don’t let any other player tell you otherwise.  You shouldn’t ever be pressured, cajoled, or scolded into making a bad bet or action.  Keep your pace calm and steady.  Don’t go on tilt just because some loudmouth tells you that you have to hurry up.  On the other hand, don’t run out of time, or your hand will be handled automatically, depending on the protocols of the blackjack site.

You should also remember that you have plenty of time to contemplate and calculate during other peoples’ turns.  This is the perfect time to glance at your basic strategy table, track your betting, and do any kind of accounting that you need to do.  If you’ve had enough time to make a reasonable decision, some sites allow you to pre-select the next action that you wish to take.  That can be a great time saver.  For example, if you have a 20, you know that you’re going to stand.  Pre-select that action, and use that time to do your research or accounting.

Now, a word on live play: Though there’s no clock as such, your pace is expected to be reasonable.  They need to deal a certain number of hands per hour, and anyone who holds up the process is frowned upon.  However, let the dealer or floor-person tell you to increase your pace, not some drunken and impatient tourist.  Take the amount of time that you find reasonable to take your action.  However you won’t have your basic strategy table or card counting book in front of you, so make sure that you’ve memorized everything that you need to know.  You can ask the dealer for basic strategy advice… but never mention card counting, for obvious reasons.  After a short time, it’ll be second nature.

For any of your blackjack tournament players, there will often be an action clock.  It will either be mandatory on each action, or it can be called on a slow player by anyone else at the table.  Beware: If you violate the clock, your hand will be folded.

By Bill Ricardi
- Blackjack Expert

A lot of online blackjack players worry that a computer can’t shuffle as well as an experienced dealer.  They claim that computers follow shuffle patterns, and patterns can be predicted.  These poor folks are constantly looking for some way to predict the next card that is going to come off the top of the deck online.  They’re probably wasting their time though.

The reason that most online computerized shufflers are better than any manual shuffle on the planet is simple: a Random Number Generator (RNG) fuels it.  In the early days of computing, the Random Number Generator (hereafter referred to as ‘RNG’) was a primitive thing. It was often based on John von Neumann’s ‘middle-square method’ from the 1940’s.  It had a bad reputation, and for good reasons. It took a number, squared it, and took the middle numbers of the result as the ‘random number’.  Of course, if you knew where in a RNG sequence the middle square method was, you could emulate all future results! If modern online blackjack sites were using something like this, you would be justified in worrying about how random the card shuffling was.

Happily, the RNG’s of today are much more, well, random. Some use pure RNG randomization. Some use an emulated construction of order, like the Knuth shuffle or Fisher-Yates shuffle methods. Either of these involve moving through the pack from top to bottom to shuffle, swapping every card with another card from a random position within the pack that has not yet been passed through. The Knuth RNG needs to be done perfectly to prevent biases, so more people are moving towards the Fisher-Yates RNG.

A lot of RNG’s these days use random physical events in the universe to generate the ‘seed’ or base numbers of their randomness. They might use hardware to measure some sort of radioactive decay that throws off random particles. That’s how serious the RNG business has gotten in recent years.

The result that you get online is better than any hand shuffle on the planet. Shuffling by hand can result in cards clumping together, and not being fully randomized. The only way to approach the randomness of a modern Internet casino’s RNG card shuffle, within a brick and mortar casino, is to use automatic shufflers that also incorporate an RNG somehow!  This is done with ‘random ejection shufflers’, which use little hammers to randomly knock cards out of order, before shuffling.

Most online casinos these days have their shuffle RNG audited by an independent commission. They run extensive tests to make sure the operations are truly random, and they often are given power to spot check systems and investigate any online issues that get reported. Industry watchdogs are very important to your safety online, because they keep casinos from getting complacent.  If there are improvements in the industry that warrant the raising of shuffle standards, these are the folks who are going to press for that change.

I hope that this primer has set a few minds at ease. It’s very important to be aware of the conditions that you are gambling under, so use this information to perform your due diligence and research any nagging details about your particular online and offline gaming environments.

By Bill Ricardi
- Blackjack Expert

Too many players don’t understand that there is a correct time and place to use the Late Surrender option in blackjack.  It isn’t often, I’ll grant you.  But using the hundreds or thousands of dollars that you can save by adding this to your optimal blackjack strategy, you can thank me properly for pointing this out!

Most online blackjack rooms are using four or more decks, so no need to memorize multiple Late Surrender tables.  Instead, you should focus on remembering the following:

1. Strategy for when you hold a 14 and lower, or 18 and higher: Never surrender.  Use basic strategy.  In 1 and 2 deck blackjack games, this changes.  But you will never see 1 and 2 decks online, and almost never in a brick and mortar casino.
2. Strategy for when you hold a 15: Always surrender to a dealer ten. Whether or not you surrender to a dealer Ace depends on whether the rules of the table say that the dealer hits or stands on a soft 17.  Surrender to the ace if the dealer hits on a soft 17.  Play basic strategy if the dealer stays on the soft 17.
3. Strategy for when you hold a 16: This one is easy.  Surrender to a dealer 9, ten, or ace. You have an awful hand, thank your lucky stars that the table allows late surrender!
4. Strategy for when you hold a 17: There is only one case where you want to surrender here.  Surrender to a dealer ace if the dealer hits on a soft 17.

These may seem like rather specific, hard-line blackjack rules.  Well they are, this is the simplified version.  The more complex version takes into account specific blackjack card combinations that make up you 15 or 16.  However you need to know some very exact conditions to make use of this sort of strategy, so it is often of more use in a brick and mortar situation.

For those of you interested in the 4 to 6 deck advanced system, surrender when you hold 15 against a dealer ten only if your hand contains a 9 or a ten. And when you hold 16, surrender against a dealer 9, ten, or (soft-hit-17) Ace only if your hand contains a 9 or ten. Otherwise, play basic blackjack.  When you’re playing with 8 decks, always surrender when you hold 15 to dealer ten, and play the 16 as above.

If you stick to these blackjack surrender guidelines, you can save some nickels and dimes. Use them consistently, and the money you save can add up to a whole lot of money in your blackjack bankroll!

By Bill Ricardi
- Blackjack Expert

Scouting in a brick and mortar environment is key to finding tables that give the house the minimum possible advantage. You may visit many casinos before finding one that has reasonable rules. Scouting is also important when depending on advantage play. Unlike scouting in player-VS-player games, you are looking for weak dealers rather than weak players in blackjack.

First, let’s cover table rules scouting. There is a table-points system that you can use in order to make sure that you’re getting a fair or favorable game. Given a basic Atlantic City rules table of 8 decks, double after splitting, dealer stands on soft 17, split to 4 hands, double on any first two cards. Tables with these rules start with a value of 0, considered a fair game (0.4% house advantage). Then assess the following bonuses and penalties:

NEVER PLAY WITH THESE RULES: Player loses ties of (any combination of) 18, 19, 20, 21. Bust on 22 is a push.

Tables rated as a ‘0′ have typical odds. A positive rating gives the player better than typical odds (though you’ll never see a score of 4 or better, unless the house enjoys losing money). Stay away from tables with a negative rating.

Now, scouting dealers is a bit different. You’re looking for bad habits that can work in your favor. Are they not using their mirror properly? A re they lifting their cards too high and for too long when they peek? Do they look new? Can you pick up a tell when they peek? Do they misinterpret the rules in the payers’ favor?

If the answer to any of these questions is ‘yes’, then you want to take advantage of the dealer’s potential weakness. Remember that the peek is the most pivotal dealer interaction at the blackjack table. If the dealer does anything on the peek that can increase your odds, that’s the table that you want to be sitting at.

Paying attention is your most profitable skill. It will help you survive, thrive, and eventually achieve your goals!

By Bill Ricardi
- Blackjack Expert

When playing against the house, without a blackjack team, there are two seats that I prefer to take: The very first or the very last (1st and 3rd base). It doesn’t matter to me how many other people are at that table, I’ll look for those positions every time, given a choice.

When picking a seat, the only thing that matters to me is how confident and competent the dealer is on a particular night. I can count from any position, and 3rd base only gives me a tiny extra bit of penetration and information. Clearly that isn’t why I like to play at the blackjack table’s edge.

1st and 3rd base are the two positions that sloppy dealers give away their gold. I call them the ‘peek’ positions, because there’s no better place to take advantage of cards that are accidentally shown to you.

You see, when a dealer has an up card with a value of 10, he will announce: ‘Checking for Blackjack’. Then the dealer will raise his down card enough to have a look and see if there’s an ace under there. Similarly, if the dealer has an ace showing, he’ll need to peek at his down card after insurance is offered, in order to see if there’s a 10 under there.

Now even in the age of paranoid security and peek mirrors, some dealers are just plain weak. They’ll lift their card sky high, adjust their glasses, and have a good long look. When you find a weak dealer like this, you want to be in a position where you can get a clear look at the hole card. And that means first or third base.

You also need to become very, very tired in the presence of such a dealer. Tired enough to slouch or rest your head on your hands. Of course, if you’re somewhat height-disadvantaged, you just have to pay attention. Either way, you want the right combination of dealer weakness, seating position, available light, and slouch to give you a clear look at the dealer’s card when he peeks at it.

Once you have this information, you can modify your basic strategy, or basic plus counting, based on the exact foreknowledge of the dealer’s total. Knowing you need to hit on a 17 (because the dealer has a 9 in the hole) or stay on a 13 (6 in the hole) is a huge advantage. Use your imagination.

There are other kinds of peeks that are available in a hand dealt game if the dealer only knows how to deal from a shoe. Those are the floated hole card and the thumbed ‘on deck’ card. However: A) Hand dealt games are rare enough and B) Finding a dealer who is bad enough to display these weaknesses is even more rare. Rather than going into these at length, let’s just say that you should always be on the look out for dealer errors, and be in the best position to take advantage of them.

So how long do you want to take advantage of this sort of situation? That depends. I f this is a place that you go to on a regular basis, don’t kill the golden goose. Keep your sessions a reasonable length, and keep your winnings modest and quiet. If you go to this casino once a year, milk the situation for as long as you can. What you’re doing is perfectly legal in most countries, since dealer weakness isn’t considered cheating. Getting ‘caught’ will usually just get the dealer cautioned and replaced, and you might get a stern talking to (which you should look very confused about, but tell the boss that if you ever see bad dealing again, you’ll tell him right away… honest)

By Bill Ricardi
- Blackjack Expert

One of the most common mistakes that I see beginners make in blackjack is when it comes to splitting their paired starting cards. Some, knowing very little about the rules, never split at all. Others, knowing a little too much for their own good, always split a pair and take their chances.

The correct play is somewhere in between. You need to know when to split in order to maximize your profits. More importantly, you need to know when NOT to split, avoiding greed in order to keep your profits. Today, we’ll cover these two subjects.

There are certain hard and fast rules when you consider splitting cards:

1. Never Split Tens or Face Cards: A made 20 is a near-perfect hand. There might be a temptation to split against a weak dealer card (like a 4, 5, or 6), but believe me, this is a long term losing strategy. Keep your made hand, and collect your chips.
2. Never Split 5′s: Two 5′s is a ten, right? So play it like a ten! You’ll want to double down with these boys, unless the dealer is showing an ace or a 10, in which case, hit it like a standard hand.
3. Always Split 8′s: 16 is a bad hand. So bad, that ANY other hand is preferable. There’s nothing sweeter than turning your awful 8,8 into two 18′s, and watching the dealer get a 17 or push!
4. Always Split Aces: Without a doubt, the strongest split you can make. It’s so strong, that many casinos will not let you hit on your split aces; you take what you get and stand. Even then, splitting aces is the right move.
5. Split Any Other Pair Against a Dealer 5 or 6: You certainly want to get money on the table when the dealer is VERY weak. This is your chance. Even lowly 2′s, 3′s, and 4′s have a good shot against these dealer hands.

Now some general guidelines rooted in basic blackjack strategy. When you have any pair that isn’t covered above, you’ll tend to split against their weaker up cards (2 through 6), and just hit against their strong hands (8 through A). The only special situations are with 4′s and 9′s, or when facing a dealer 7.

When you could easily make an 18, it’s often worth going for the 18. So hit those 4′s unless you see a dealer 5 or 6 up. This is going to sound crazy, but you actually want to split your 9′s unless the dealer is showing a 7, ten, or ace. Why? Because you’ll probably beat the 7, you don’t want to mess with the premium dealer hands when you have an 18, and math shows us that the rest of the splits are the best move in the average game.

A dealer 7 is the toughest hand to play against. Follow the guidelines above, hit with 4′s and 6′s, and split anything else. Again, this is a tough split, right on the borderline. But long-term play shows the split to be optimal against the dealer 7 for 2′s, 3′s, 7′s, and 8′s.

Now that you know the basic rules of splitting, see if you can remember them without constantly looking at a basic strategy chart or flash cards. But don’t be afraid to look back at your basic strategy table if you forget!

Bill Ricardi
- Blackjack Expert