Kerry Nathanson | June 18, 2021 | Updated on: April 17th, 2024
If you want to win real money when you’re playing blackjack, you need a blackjack advantage play technique. Australian casino sites always have an advantage over players in any game.
So, we will give you a few more tips that the best blackjack advantage player has in his arsenal. Plus, we have suggested some of the best blackjack casinos that you can play online.
Blackjack advantage play is the term that is used to refer to all the techniques that online blackjack professionals use to gain an edge over the casino.
These techniques include counting cards, shuffle tracking, hole carding and edge sorting. In addition, some people include cheating as part of the advantage play techniques in blackjack, but that is not allowed at legal blackjack casinos.
Best Blackjack Advantage Play Technique
Mathematical Blackjack Advantage
Mathematical blackjack advantage needs you to understand how probability works. For example, a coin toss. Let’s suppose you’re playing a casino game based on a coin toss.
In this game, you would have to guess whether the toss will result in a head or a tail. Since there are two sides to a coin, we can assume a 50% chance of you getting each side.
Suppose you place a $2 bet on either head or tail. And the casino states that you can only get back $1 every time you win because of the casino’s embed advantage. Of course, no one will take that deal.
What’s more, suppose you wager $100 on 100 tosses on a single coin and guess right 50% of the time. That means you will get back $50.
But you can also guess wrong 50% of the time, and you’ll lose $100 on all those wrong guesses. So, the casino will have a $50 net profit on all the wrong guesses.
The coin toss example shows how the casino gets an advantage over the player. But that is not a great example because no one would ever take that bet, but it’s meant to illustrate how probability works.
For example, the casino will probably create a scenario where you will have to bet $1.10 to win $1 back.
Ace Sequencing
Ace sequencing can be compared to shuffle tracking, except it’s more of a memory technique than a tracking technique. With this technique, your goal is to remember the key cards that the dealer picks up from the dealt hands and places on top of the aces. However, you need to assume or at least hope that the Ace and a very important card will end up together after the shuffle.
When you see a key (important) card, you can try to make a very big wager. First, however, you need to hope that the Ace card is not far behind. An experienced sequencer can memorize a dozen or even more important cards in a sequence.
Edge Sorting
In edge-sorting, a player needs to exploit the irregularities on the back of the playing cards. For example, a player that’s good at edge sorting can distinguish the asymmetrical edges at the back that identify the card values.
For example, a player will ask the dealer to turn the face-up card one way and maybe the 5, 6 and 7 cards another way. However, when you use shuffling machines, they don’t change how the cards are oriented. So, this technique will only work if you are playing live online blackjack.
Counting Cards
Counting cards is one of the best blackjack advantage play techniques that you can use. Surprisingly, not a lot of people know how to count cards in blackjack. However, this technique is simple because you don’t have to learn the complicated mathematical formula.
When you are counting cards, you don’t have to track which cards have been played already. All you have to do is calculate the ratio of high to low cards in the deck.
In blackjack, a natural will pay off 3 to 2. This is because if the deck didn’t have any aces, you wouldn’t get a natural, which would mean that the casino would have more of an advantage.
So, when you can estimate that there are more high cards to low cards in a deck, then the chances of you getting a natural increase.
So, when you can see that the odds are in your favour, you can increase the wager. Plus, the house edge in blackjack is low, so that the payout will be massive. But, on the other hand, when you don’t have a good chance of winning, you should bet less.
Hole Carding
Hole carding involves you seeing a card that you weren’t supposed to see. For example, in blackjack, this is the hole card that the dealer has. So, knowing what hole card the dealer has would give you an advantage over the casino.
At land-based casinos, hole carding can be considered illegal. However, other casinos have allowed it as long as you’re seated in an appropriate place. Plus, you shouldn’t use a device to get a glimpse of the hole card.
Unfortunately, spotting the hole card at online blackjack casinos is impossible since everything is automated. You won’t even be able to do it at live blackjack games.
Shuffle Tracking
Many players believe that when the deck is shuffled, some cards tend to stay together. These cards are called zones, and if you can track where these zones are, you can gain an advantage in the game.
Shuffle tracking is something that players use in tandem with card counting. As you can see, this may not be an exact science. But some blackjack players swear that this technique works.
Can You Cheat in Online Blackjack?
Cheating at online blackjack casinos is very difficult because every game runs on random number generators. So, if you are going to cheat, you will need tech-savvy people. But that is a crime, and you may end up in jail.
However, when you play at land-based casinos, you can probably get away with some cheating techniques. But that too is difficult because many casinos are aware of all the cheating techniques that players use, and they have ways of stopping them. So, it’s a good idea to avoid cheating.
