Alright I thought I would start my Basic Strategy lessons with the basic strategy that I am using when I play online. I currently play at GoldenCasino.com and I am playing the Vegas Strip Blackjack Game. GoldenCasino.com has a few variants of Blackjack available including Perfect Pairs, European Rules, and a Progressive Blackjack game. I decided to play the Vegas Strip Blackjack as it has similar rules to what I might find in Las Vegas.

Vegas Strip Blackjack has the dealer standing on all 17’s, doubling is allowed on all values and after splits, there is no surrender option and the dealer does peak to check for Blackjack. Now that we know the rules for the game we can select the right Blackjack Basic Strategy and being play.

Basic Strategy for Vegas Strip Blackjack.

Well I need to find a Blackjack strategy or something to help me play. I started playing on Saturday and quickly lost my bankroll. Loss after loss after loss.

I think I made every bad decision that could have been made while playing Blackjack. I held when I should have hit, and hit when I should have held. It seems that the only time I won was when I was dealt a Blackjack.

I had planned on playing Blackjack all weekend but my first game was such a horrid experience that I spent the reset of the weekend looking up blackjack strategies that could help me improve my game. I found two strategies that seem like they might hold the answer to my poor Blackjack skills. These blackjack strategies are Basic Blackjack Strategy and Card Counting. Everything I read said that I should start with Basic Strategy as some card counting strategies rely on Basic Strategy.

I’ll be writing about Basic Strategy shortly and how it affects my play.

Well I just finished my first game of Blackjack and man was it a lot of fun!
I think I did pretty well. I played with $1 wagers and went on a streak right from the start until I was up about $20 and then I bounced around for a while until I left being up $3. I was able to play for about 45 mins. I never went higher than $20 in winnings and spent most of my time bouncing around $15 until I slowly started to loose. I figured I would walk away from my first game with some winnings.

I won’t bore you with a play by play of the game but I think I did pretty well considering. I’ve figured out a few things as I was playing. It seems like a safe bet to assume that the dealers hole card is a ten. More often than not I stood on a 17, or 18 with the dealer showing a 8 or 9 assuming that they would need to hit and then bust. This rarely happened. In most cases the hole card was a 10 and they won the hand. When I started assuming that the dealer’s hole card was a 10 I didn’t lose as often. Sure I busted more but I think I won more of these hands than I did before.

Don’t take insurance. Insurance is a huge waste of money that I only won a few times. Clearly the casino knows it is a looser for the player or they wouldn’t offer it.

I’m going to be playing some more Blackjack this weekend and we’ll see what happens.

Welcome to my Blackjack Blog. I know there are a large number of Blackjack related blogs to read. Blogs that offer strategies, others that offer tips and some that give hand by hand details of their latest game or tournament. I hope to offer something a little different. You see I’ve never actually played Blackjack other than at a friends house to kill some time.

I’ve always been interested in Blackjack but I’ve never taken the time to learn about the game other than the basic rules and I’ve never taken the plunge and actually played Blackjack at a casino whether it be a land based casino or an Online casino. Since I live in an area where there are no local casino’s I’ll be playing mostly online Blackjack. I’m hoping to get to Vegas soon and I am really interested in playing some Blackjack in Vegas.

Since I know very little about Blackjack I’ll be recording my thoughts and experiences as I play and learn about this game. Of course I’ve heard stories about the MIT team that went to Vegas and won millions of dollars by counting cards. Now I’m no math genius and I don’t think I could keep track of that many cards to win anything. There is no way I could tell you how many Aces, Kings and Queens had been played after about 15 cards so I think I will avoid card counting.

So It’s off to my online casino of choice (which is GoldenCasino.com) for my first real game of Blackjack.

Wish me Luck
-Bob