By now, you will have gained a good idea of playing Blackjack and developed a strategy, but let's take this a step further.

First of all, let's just go over some of the basics in a little more detail:

House Advantage (aka House Edge)

As you know, the dealer must hit on 16 or below, and stand on 17 or above. However, if the dealer goes above 21, he busts.

If your total is the same as the dealer, you don't win or lose, so that's a 'Stand Off'.  If your total is higher, you win, but if it's lower, you lose.

The casino has a 'House Advantage' in order to generate a profit. This takes the form of the player playing their hand before the dealer. In real terms, this means that if you both go bust (over 21), the dealer still collects your money.

The chance of the dealer going bust is 28%. If you follow the dealer's rules of play, your chance of going bust is also 28%.  So the chance of you both going bust on the same hand is 7.84% (28% x 28%).  This 7.84% is the House Advantage.

However, for a natural Blackjack, you get paid 3-2 and the dealer receives even money. In this case, the House Advantage drops to 5.9%.  So, if you gambled £100, you would expect to lose £5.90

Basic Strategy

You could take another card to reduce the chance of going bust to zero. There are many times the dealer's cards are likely to total 17-21.  By taking another card in this case increases your winning chances.

The Basic Strategy is designed to reduce the chances of you going bust. Using the basic strategy for each card the dealer has and each total in your hand, you will know what the best option is to take, be it Hit (H), Stand (S), Double (D) or Split (Sp).

By using the rules of Basic Strategy, the House Advantage reduces to 0.5%, so gambling £100, you would expect to lose £0.50.

Below is a Basic Strategy chart:

Key to Chart:

H=Hit, S=Stand, Sp=Split, Dh=Double (hit if not possible),

Ds=Double (stand if not possible), Su=Surrender (hit if not possible), Ss=Surrender (stand if not possible) 

Casino Bonuses

Most online casinos will offer you a sign-up bonus.  This will vary per casino, with some doubling your initial deposit to others that will give a set-amount for any deposit level.

Is this a casino plan to get you to join and to take your money?

Yes, of course it is.

And competition between online casinos to take-on more players on is hotting up, so the bonuses are getting higher and higher, and more tempting.  But, this is where the casinos have shot themselves in the foot.

Each individual casino expects you to play in just their online casino, and are expecting your loyalty in return for their 'gracious' bonus.  You then gamble your bonus and start digging into your own money to play.  That's why it's best to understand the casino 'wager requirements'.

Let's say you sign-up and make a deposit of £100.  Most casinos will double your deposit with a bonus, so you will receive a bonus of £100. But before you can withdraw your winnings, you need to meet the wager requirements, so in this case, you will need to wager EIGHT times the deposit and bonus (£1600). 

The casino counts on hoping that you have a long run of bad luck, wagered the full £1600, and lost both the bonus and your money.  They win.

Let's go back to the house advantage being 0.5%.  With this knowledge, we are able to calculate the probability of losing the entire bonus before gambling the minimum wagering requirement. 

The more you gamble each hand, the less bets you need to make in order to meet the requirement. But, there is also a greater chance of losing the lot.  This is illustraed in the table below:

Using this method is widely used for making money from online casinos, but playing 1600 hands at £1 for a win of only £100 can become very boring.  So, let's swiftly move onto the...

Blackjack Winners Secrets

Some casinos will offer a bonus at 200% for the maximum deposit amount of £200 and only a 4X wager requirement instead of the usual 8X.  Sounds good, but, as usual, there is a catch.  You don't get to keep the bonus.

So, if you were to make a deposit of £100, you will gain a bonus of £200 bringing your total playing balance to £300.

The wager requirement is 4 x £300 (£1200) worth of bets.  If your balance goes down to £200, you can't withdraw this, as the casino will take it back as their bonus, leaving you with nothing.  What is the method of making any money out of the bonus?  It's by betting big.

Let's say you make a bet of £300 on your first hand, you can win £300, but you can only lose £100, as £200 of the total was not your money in the first place.

Most casinos will have a table limit of £500, so that is the maximum you can bet on one hand. And that is how much you need to bet on your second hand.  In just two hands, by risking only £100, you could end up with £1100 in your balance.  Take your deposit of £100 and the bonus of £200 away from this balance, and you are left with £800 profit.

Now that you have gambled £800, this leaves only £400 to gamble to meet the requirements.  You could potentially gamble £400 in one hand to maximise your expected return, but the chances of winning 3 hands in a row are quite low. 

So it's time to go back to small bets of around £10 a hand until you've met the total £1200 requirement.  You will need to follow the basic strategy (shown above) and statistically you should not lose much or any of your £800 profit by playing small bets.

By using the house advantage (0.5%) as a guide and then being a little more conservative, let's say that the chances of winning a hand is 0.48.  The chances of winning two hands in a row is 48% x 48% = 23.04%, and your chance of not winning the two hands is 100% - 23.04% = 76.96%

Your expected return is then (£800 x 23.04%) - (£100 x 76.96%) = £107.36

The chances of winning at any individual casino is a low 23.04%, so this strategy will only work if you sign-up with a number of different casinos.  The more casinos you sign up with and use this strategy, the higher the chances are that you stand to win.

It should also be noted that Blackjack isn't a game of just winning or losing, as there are also stand-offs, which are fine as they add towards your wagering requirements.  So, as a possibility, you could have three stand-offs in a row, then win on the 4th hand, giving you £300, which you will be able to withdraw.

I have recommended some casinos to play in, however you may not wish to deposit £100 in each one, which is fully understandable.  You may even consider £100 in just one casino a high risk.  If that is the case, you can also use the strategy on smaller amounts. You may want to deposit only £20. This will give you a bonus of £40, making your balance a total of £60 to play with.

Here, you will need to bet £60 on your first hand, then £120 on your second.

The strategy also works well on casinos with bonus offers of less than 200%, and at the time of writing this, the casinos I recommend all offer 200%, but this changes on a regular basis.  The bonus as you are reading this could now be more, or it could be less than 200%.  So it's also best to check with the casino terms and conditions for any details on wagering requirements.

I hope this strategy helps you, but always keep in mind that gambling is still gambling.  There is not (and never will be) any sure-fire strategy or system for beating the casino 100% each time you play. 

Using the strategy outlined on this page, together with your diligence, will ensure you play an enjoyable game of Blackjack every time.

All the best

Ryan

If Roulette is more your game, click here for our sister site