Blackjack Strategy

The most legendary team of blackjack players, which beat the casinos for millions of dollars, was the MIT team. Several books (Bringing Down the House, Busting Las Vegas, The House Advantage: Playing the Odds to Win Big in Business), movies (21 and The Last Casino), and numerous magazine stories and television shows have been written about their accomplishments. What follows is a summary of how the MIT team originated, and who were some of the more famous members of this team.

• Spanish 21 is a variant of blackjack in which all the ten-spot cards have been removed, resulting in a 48-card deck.
• The game is offered in land-based and online casinos.
• To compensate for the removal of the tens, and resulting higher house edge, the game has some very liberal playing rules and bonus hands.
• The basic playing strategy is different from a traditional game. 
• Depending on the mix of playing rules and number of decks of cards, the house edge can be as low as 0.37% using the Spanish 21 b

• Blackjack side bets are additional bets that you can make while playing a traditional blackjack game either in a land-based or online casino.
• These side bets usually require a rather small wager and they generally have payoffs that are greater than the customary even-money blackjack payoffs.
• The majority of side bets do not involve any skill, which is one of the reasons for their popularity.
• The most player-friendly side bets have a relatively modest house edge (less than 5%).

The one aspect of the game of blackjack that has garnered the most publicity is card counting. Countless number of books have been written about it; a host of internet websites and “chat rooms” discuss it; and card counting has even been featured in several popular Hollywood movies (e.g., Rain Man and 21). Nevertheless, most casino players really don’t understand what card counting is all about, which is why I developed this short true/false quiz.

Have you ever wondered why blackjack has been the most popular table game in casinos for the past 50 or so years? Its popularity arises for these four reasons.

In Part 1, I summarized the differences in playing rules between playing blackjack in U.S. vs. abroad, specifically focusing on the no-hole-card rule. In this article, I will discuss the surrender rule.

Blackjack is blackjack: your goal is to beat the dealer whether you play in land-based or online casinos in the U.S., Europe, Asia, Caribbean, or any other part of the world. However, playing blackjack abroad in a land-based casino has some differences compared to playing in the U.S.  The following table summarizes the differences. 

Basic strategy players and card counters have asked me that question umpteen times over the course of nearly 50 years of playing, teaching, and writing about blackjack. This is what I told them.