Why Is Precision Blackjack Better?

First, let's look at just three of the reasons:

1) PRECISION BLACKJACK is better because it addresses the real situation at hand, not some fantasy game that exists only in Blackjack books, computer programs and in the minds of some "experts"

2) PRECISION BLACKJACK uses plain common sense. It's the thinking man's approach to Blackjack. Once you have had some training and practice, you will find that your mind is far more agile and reliable than some  rigid unthinking chart. Think about this. The entire OLD BLACKJACK approach can be reduced to a single piece of paper. If that was all it took, there would be no Blackjack.

3) The casinos handed us a powerful edge on a silver platter; non-random cards. How can that help us? Because high cards follow high cards and low cards follow low cards more than they randomly should. Therefore, whenever we bet that they won't repeat, it is a bad bet. So, we bet that they will repeat. We are right far more often than we are wrong. How's that for poetic justice.

HOW DOES PRECISION BLACKJACK WORK?

The approach can be divided into two parts: CARD PLAY and BETTING. Let's take them one at a time. CARD PLAY: Let's forget about soft hands , double downs, and splits for the moment. Once we have done this, card play decisions can be reduced to hands of 12 through 16 only. This is because there is nothing to be decided for a hand less than 12; we automatically hit. Likewise, there is nothing to be decided for hands greater than 16; we stand. OBJ utilizes the basic strategy chart to make the 12 to 16 card play decisions.

The chart looks at only one piece of information to make this all important decision - the dealer's up card. Once they assume that the cards are random, which they aren't, the up card is all that they have to go on. Recognize that the up card alone is nearly useless for accurately assessing the dealer's hand. This is because, with random cards, the chance that the dealer's hole card is high is exactly the same as the chance that it is low. Never-the-less, basic strategy assumes that the dealer has a ten in the hole. This means that they are right only 30.8 % of the time, or once in 3.25 hands, because that is the ratio of tens in a deck of cards. We will learn later that they are actually right far less than that. When we take the time to really contemplate it, we can't help but come to the conclusion that basic strategy is too strict to form the basis of a reliable winning approach to effective card play. Statistics verify this conclusion. While basic strategy may fare well in random, single deck games, it only wins about 40-42% of the hands in the modern shoe game. This is totally inadequate for winning play. By contrast, we appreciates the fact that the cards are not random and assess separate pieces of information to make the 12 - 16 card play decision far more accurately.

We achieve a hands won ratio in the 52-58% range, depending on the difficulty of the game and the experience of the player. These figures have been verified by many players over many thousands of hands. We invite you to verify them yourself by your own play records, if you so desire. PRECISION BLACKJACK also looks at the dealer's up card, but recognizes it's impotence without additional information. Through a process called card reading, afforded by the non-random condition of the cards, PRECISION BLACKJACK achieves a highly accurate perception of the dealer's hole card as well as the player's and dealer's hit cards. PRECISION BLACKJACK then combines these four pieces of evidence with the tens ratio of the hand being played as well as the historical dealer break ratio in the game being played. These sources of information are assessed to make a highly enlightened play decision. The same information is then used, very effectively, to identify high percentage double down, split, and insurance opportunities.

BETTING:

PBJ utilizes card counting for the betting side of their game. We contend that card counting is not only beyond the ability of most players, it is worse than useless in today's shoe game because it directs the player to place high bets on more dealer favorable hands than player favorable hands. PRECISION BLACKJACK utilizes the far more effective tens ratio monitoring method, which tells the player if the next round is favorable or not. It also tells the player what game type he is in and the most effective betting strategy for that game type.

Is today's game winnable?

Look the dealer wins more than half the hands by simply hitting to 17. (We call that "dealer strategy"). We can play our cards any way we want! If the dealer can win by playing mindless dealer strategy, think about what we can do by using our intelligence to play optimum strategy! Think about what we can do by playing the edge that the casinos unwittingly gave us. And that's not the half of it. Add to that the best table selection strategy, the best insurance strategy, the best double down strategy, the best money and time management strategies and the most enlightened betting strategy the game has ever seen. Add hit and hole card anticipation. And there is more. So, is today's game winnable? YOU BET IT IS!

'If the cards were random, all games would be the same.'

DOES CLUMPING EXIST?

Enlightened players in real casinos already know the answer, however, many calls and letters still pose this question. Not surprising. Most casino personnel and many BJ 'experts- still deny the existence of non-random cards. This is like denying the existence of blue Fords. For the purpose of instruction, clumping and non-random are the same thing. Clumping merely describes the way in which the cards are non-random. Clumping means that low cards follow low cards and high cards follow high cards more often than random math allows. Since the card play and betting strategies of PRECISION BLACKJACK are largely based on clumping, let's put this question to bed once and for all. How familiar is this? You get dealt a two card 20 only to watch all the other players also get dealt a 20, including the dealer. Everyone pushes. We call this phenomenon a 'solid ten push' They are all too familiar to real players, aren't they? They occur with regularity anywhere the 4, 6, or 8 deck shoe game is dealt.  Anyone, expert or not, who denies their existence, does not play in real casinos. In the Atlantic City summer games, they are so common that no one bothers to question them anymore. Sometimes they occur more than once in the same shoe! I once counted 24 tens in a row in a 4 deck game in the high stakes room at the Claridge. The random odds against this occurrence, with only 4 decks, are 69.5 trillion to 1. I am sure you have all had similar experiences. Of course, if you raise an eyebrow at the pit boss you will get: 'Oh well, you can expect that with random cards.'

MATHEMATICAL PROOF:

Let's walk through the math together and then you tell me if clumping exists or not. Let's look at an ordinary six deck game with the cut off card placed a quarter of the way up. How many cards will be dealt? 52 cards X 6 decks X .75 - 1 burn card 233 Now, as the cards are dealt, how often should tens fall on a random basis? There are 4 tens in every 13 cards. Therefore tens will fall, on average, 4 times every 13 cards, or 13 / 4, or once for every 3.25 cards dealt. How often will two tens fall in a row? Easy. 3.25 X 3.25 or once every 10.56 cards. Three tens in a row is 3.25 X 3.25 X 3.25 or once every 34.3 cards. Four in a row works out to once every 111 cards dealt. Five tens in a row will randomly occur once in every 363 cards dealt. Let's stop there for a minute. The math purists are going to note that as consecutive tens fall, the normal tens ratio (1 in 3.25) will change slightly for each 10 dealt. They are right. The corrected random occurrence of 5 tens in a row is actually once in every 390 cards dealt. All I did here is subtract one card and one ten for each 10 dealt and divide to obtain the corrected tens ratio. The corrected math looks like this. 3.25 x 3.274 x 3.298 x 3.322 x 3.348 = 390. The point here is that 390 cards is a lot more than the 233 cards dealt in a six deck shoe. Therefore, we should only see 5 tens in a row once every 1.67 shoes. Then why do we actually see them far more often than that? Why indeed, if the cards are really random? Not convinced?

Let's go further. Let's put six players in our 6 deck game since that is the most common game in Las Vegas and The Bahamas and is also very common in Atlantic City. Now let's see what the real odds are of achieving that all too common solid ten push, if the cards were really random. To achieve our solid ten push all around, we will need a minimum of 14 tens in a row (six players plus the dealer X two cards = 14). We merely continue our math progression as before, adjusting the tens ratio as we go, until we have multiplied the corrected random tens expectancy 14 times. If you take five minutes to do this on an ordinary calculator, it works out that 14 tens in a row will randomly occur once in every 29,531,367 cards dealt. So, you see, the casinos are right: "Oh well can expect that with random cards". What they don't tell you is that you should expect it only once in every 30 million cards dealt!!! So, exactly how often is that? Well, if we divide the 29,531,367 cards needed by the number of cards dealt in a six deck shoe (233), we find we can readily expect a solid ten push once in every 126,744 shoes. At six shoes per hour, we can count on seeing one every 21,124 hours of play. If you were a full time pro and spent 40 hours a week in the casinos, 50 weeks a year, and you spent a quarter of your time at the tables, you would get to see a six player, solid ten push every 42.2 years. That's what would happen IF THE CARDS WERE RANDOM. Yet, we see them all the time. I don't know how many I have seen, but it's more than a thousand. So, how are the casinos going to explain this away? They will probably tell me I must be 42,000 years old. Come on guys! No clumping? Let me tell you about the three hole in ones I had yesterday. There are a couple of flaws in our math.

The math purist will note that the dealer usually deals through the cutoff card. However, a 14 card solid ten clump must begin at least 14 cards in from the last card dealt. So, 233 cards dealt is about right. Our math determining the odds of 14 tens in a row is correct. But, 14 tens in a row certainly does not guarantee a solid ten push. Recognize that we would only get a solid ten push when the first of the 14 tens happens to fall as the first player's first card. This will occur only about one time in twenty. Therefore, the odds of achieving a solid ten push from 14 tens in a row are more than one in thirty million. They are much closer to one in six hundred million! But, the point remains the same. We should never see solid ten pushes with random cards. But, we do see them! Therefore, how can the cards be random?

MORE TELLTALE SIGNS OF CLUMPING:

Most letters and email tell me that is completely credible because they've seen it all before. Maybe you have noticed some of these phenomenon DEALER TWENTY ONES You don't suppose this has anything to do with low card clumps, do you? Maybe the dealers are just getting luckier.