MYTHS OF BLACKJACK (2)
MYTH No. 6 You need a bankroll of thousands of dollars in order to win appreciable amounts of money at Blackjack.
All you need is a bankroll of two hundred dollars. With such a small start, you can win thousands of dollars. Admittedly, it will take much longer if you start small because you will only be able to make small bets at first, winning only small amounts of money. But you will win at the same rate as someone betting a thousand dollars per hand.
The more hours you play, the more money you will accumulate. Once you double your bankroll, you can bet twice as much on each hand, and so on. After the first fifty hours of play, you will be making bigger bets and will be well on your way to winnings in four or five figures if you stay with the game. I began with a bankroll of exactly two hundred dollars and have parlayed it up to over eighty thousand dollars. My former students have won much more.
MYTH No. 7 There is no cheating in large Las Fegas
casinos.
It has been my experience that the larger the casino, the more expert the cheating dealers are. I have been cheated out of thousands and thousands of dollars by dealers in the largest casinos in the world. Post Four shows how this can be done.
MYTH No. 8 They only cheat high rollers.
A cheating dealer will cheat anybody he wants to, whether the person is betting fifty cents or five hundred dollars. Cheating dealers do not discriminate unless it is in their best interests because it is easier to deal themselves a good hand (hurting everybody) than it is to deal a particular player a bad hand.
MYTH No. 9 Bad players hurt a good player’s game.
It has been proven mathematically that bad players at the table help a good player as often as they hinder him in actual casino playing. A winning player never blames another player for his losses. Instead, a winner thanks the bad player when the latter helps by playing badly.
MYTH No. 10 The player sitting at third base can have a greater effect on whether the dealer busts or not than any other player at the table.
This only appears to be true because he is the last player to draw and all the other players’ attention is focused on him. Yet he has no more of an effect on the dealer than the players elsewhere at the table who hit, double, split, or stand. Every single play can change the order of the cards the dealer gets. Therefore, it doesn’t matter who goes last. What matters, in terms of effect on the dealer’s hand, is how many and what kinds of cards (large or small) are drawn by all the players together.
MYTH No. 11 Casinos use shills in order to cheat players. Although the casino could cheat a Blackjack player in a number of ways, using a shill is usually not one of them (a shill is an employee of the casino who plays with house money). True, some casinos use shills to attract players to the table, but I have never seen a shall being used to cheat me in all my years of play. It’s easy to spot shills, because they never double down or split. As Myth No. 9 pointed out, how other gamblers at the table play their hands has absolutely no long-term effect on a winning player’s advantage or disadvantage. If a shill at your table makes you feel uncomfortable, you can ask him politely to leave.
It’s not easy to shatter myths. If you have played Blackjack before, then you have probably been told that these myths are the “inside story.” What you might be feeling now is “gambling culture shock.” Culture shock occurs when you learn that what you were originally taught to believe is false. If you haven’t had the playing experience yet, my experiences should prove instructive to you. At least you will be more alert as to what to expect in a casino.
This is the game of Blackjack. If you have read and understood this post, you will find little in the casino that can surprise you. You should now be able to sit down at a game anywhere and, after asking the dealer a few pertinent questions, play like an experienced gambler. You can avoid the costly and embarrassing rookie mistakes in your early play. Above all, you have taken the first positive step on the road to becoming a winning player. You know the game of Blackjack.
