A one deck game with standard Vegas rules is an even game. What this means is, a person playing Blackjack using Basic Strategy is not expected to lose or win the game. If the player sits there and plays against the EV (expected vale) of 0.00% and plays $10,000,000 over a period of time, s/he will lose $0.00 and win $0.00. Standard deviation will see that you will actually fall somewhere close to zero, but not that far from it. The player could quit playing once they are up money, and never play again. There has to be a better way to play single deck Blackjack.
The online game deals out the cards, allows you to hit split, double and stand, and take Insurance. When the hand is finished, the cards are shuffled. The counter can't change their bet based on the last hands information because the whole deck is back together. The counter CAN use the count of the cards seen to help make playing decisions. This means the player is no longer using Basic Strategy! The player will have a small advantage over the game at this point.
On our first hand we are dealt 6,6 vs dealer 10 up. We take a hit and get a 4. Now we have 16. Basic Strategy tells us to hit until we have 17 or better. Knowing the count tells us we should STAND when the count is greater than zero.
On our next hand we are dealt 5,6 vs A and we have a chance to take Insurance. Basic Strategy tells us not to take Insurance. Knowing the count tells us to take Insurance because there is a greater posibility the dealer has a 10 in the hole. If s/he doesn't have the 10, there is something else there, and we double-down our 11 as in Basic Strategy knowing there are four non-10's on the table.
When you get to split a hand you will see more cards than normal. This will give you added information to make decisions to your advantage. We get 2,2 vs a 3 up. We split and get a 5, then a 4, then a 7 and stand. We take a hit on our second two and get a 10. Basic Strategy says hit, but we don't because the count is too high and the probabilty of a 10 is too great. We hope the dealer has a 10 in the hole and pulls another 10 to bust.
How large an advantage do we have? What ever it is, it is very small. If we have a .1% advantage we would have to bet $10,000 to make $10! It's not really worth risking your money due to the swings of the game. Is there any other way to use this game to make money? Sure there is!
Progressions change the distributions of your wins. Overall, the house edge or player edge is the fulcrum that standard deviation swings from, but in between the long run and the bet we just placed we can change how we win our money, AND get away with it.
Let's bet $1 on each hand for 25 hands. We win some and lose some, likely lose more than win. At the end we have $20 left. We want to win our money back and play on, as many people would do in a real casino. We go up and down, and hopefully, playing better than Basic Strategy, leave with $27 today. Could we have done better? Sure. Worse? For sure! Let's look at a progression we could try betting, 1-2-4-8-16-32.
We see that the hands went like this: L W L L W Ww L L L W Ll L W W L L W L L W W L W. Ww is winning a double-down or split. Ll is losing a double-down or split. We ended up losing $3 betting flat $1. Then we played the progression and made $11 - L W=1 L L W=1 Ww=2 L L L W=1 Ll L W=1 W=1 L L W=1 L L W=1 W=1 L W=1. We never bet above 4 units and have made as much as we would expect to make betting $10,000 over hundreds of hands. This progression is dangerous unless you are betting within your bankroll. In other words, if 1% of your bankroll is $32 ($3,200), then you can bet to $32 and no more. There is another progression that is less dangerous, and it is the one I use on this game.
Known as Oskar's Grind, you flat bet until you win, then up your bet by one unit until you are up a unit, then start over. Let me explain. I play a hand and win $1. Next sequence. Play a hand and win another $1. Next sequence. Then I lose a hand, another hand, and then a third hand. I'm down a buck over all, down $3 from the last sequence. The next hand I lose again, down $2, $4 from the last sequence. Then I win one. Next hand I bet $2 and win again. I'm up by $1, but need to win another $2 to be up by $3 to complete the third sequence. I bet $2 again and win, third sequence finished. If I had lost I would drop by one until I won, then back up again, never betting more than it took to complete the sequence. Oskar is the mildest "up as you win" progressive method around.
The unfortunate part of playing on the net is you don't get any comps. I wouldn't bet more than $10 on any hand on the net playing this way. Playing a one deck game in Vegas this way with nickles or quarters can make you a reasonable amount of money and get you a decent comp. In a real game we will also get to see the cards and get to know when to up your bets with the count with these progressions, as well as when to take it easy and flat bet the chips you have won when the count is less than zero. Click here to play Single Deck Blackjack online.
