Blackjack is so much more than just another typical guessing game. And the best bit? Understanding and accepting this key concept is the secret to understanding the game. How about that, then? At the very heart of what makes a player to be a successful Blackjack player is the fact that success is very much within the player’s control. Does it even get any better than that?
This is not to insinuate in any way that games of chance are somehow second grade games. They are, if anything, great games for relaxing, having a good time and simply blowing off the steam of the day. But to those players who enjoy having mastered the art of applying a strategy in such a way that a winning hand becomes a near-sure-fire deal, Blackjack remains a firm favourite.
But – and this is interesting – Blackjack hasn’t always been a guessing game. For hundreds of years there existed no fluid strategy for Blackjack and for a simple, singular reason: the dealer kept both of the initial cards dealt to self-hidden. This meant that the best that players could do was to try and bluff the dealer with their own play.
That was it: no plan, no strategy – just a whole lot of bluffing and hoping. Until American casinos effectively changed the rules of the game, that is. That was the day that everything changed.
But What Exactly Happened?
What American casinos did when they changed the rules of 21 Blackjack in such a way that one of the dealer’s cards was exposed, was to fundamentally change the game from a game not at all within the player’s control to a game based on reliable mathematics when approached from a strategic point of view.
In order to understand how ‘new’ https://onlinecasinogambling.me/online-casino-games/blackjack/ works, it’s important to grasp the concept of odds. Consider, for example, a jar of sweets filled with 100 sweet treats – half of the treats sugary red and the other half sugary green. If one were to bet a $1 wager on a blindfolded draw of either green or red, this would absolutely qualify as a guessing game.
But what if 90 of the sweets in the jar were red and only 10 green? Wouldn’t any savvy person “bet on red”? The presence of the 10 green sweets makes it possible to draw green, for sure, but much less likely so. Even if still some guessing involved, the odds are now in favour of he who draws the sweet as opposed to him who filled the jar.
You Gotta Love The Math
Enter the math. Whether or not a player should hit or stand or split all depend on the laws of probability. What casinos essentially did was to slash the house edge to as little as 0.5% over the player – granted the player understands the value of knowing 50% of the dealer’s starting hand. And how to apply that knowledge.
And it’s exactly this insight that makes Blackjack the most controllable game in the casino, with or without the faculty of counting cards.