Lawrence Revere - Blackjack Hall of Fame

Lawrence Revere - Blackjack Hall of Fame

Lawrence Revere was both a serious player and talented author. He died in 1977. His only book, Playing Blackjack as a Business, initially published in 1969, is still in print. If you look at the “true count” methods that was employed pre-Revere, you will see why Revere’s name was placed into the hall of fame. The earlier methods were cumbersome and mentally fatiguing to use. In the second edition of Beat the Dealer, in which Thorp first proposed the Hi-Lo Count, he mentioned a simple method of using the count, though he failed to develop it as a full system. Revere had a leap of brilliance that led him to come to the conclusion that the simplified method of obtaining a “true count” that Thorp had mentioned could be fully developed and employed with the most powerful of point count systems. Revere’s method was so simple compared to the alternatives, it has been employed by virtually every serious balanced point count system developer since, including Stanford Wong, Ken Uston, Lance Humble, Bryce Carlson, Arnold Snyder, and others. As a serious player, Revere’s knowledge of blackjack included such esoteric techniques as shuffle tracking and hole card play.

Tommy Hyland

Tommy Hyland  - Blackjack Hall of Fame

Tommy started playing blackjack professionally in 1978 while still in college. That was also the year he started his first informal “team.” He’s never looked back. For more than twenty-five years, he has been running the longest-lasting and most successful blackjack team in the history of the game. He and his teammates have played in casinos all over the U.S., Canada, and the world. He has used big player techniques, concealed computers (when they were legal), and had one of the most successful “ace location” teams ever. He has personally been barred, back-roomed, hand-cuffed, arrested, and even threatened with murder at gun-point by a casino owner he had beaten at the tables. Every year, the Hyland team players take millions of dollars out of the casinos. And even though Tommy has had his name and photo published in the notorious Griffin books more times than any other player in history, he continues to play and beat the games wherever legal blackjack games are offered. He has also fought for players’ rights by battling the casinos in the courts.

Despite his fearsome reputation, Tommy is polite, soft-spoken, and always a gentleman. He is as loved by players as he is feared by the casinos. In an interview conducted by Richard Munchkin in 2001, Tommy said, “If someone told me I could make $10 million a year working for a casino, I wouldn’t even consider it. It wouldn’t take me five minutes to turn it down … I don’t like casinos. I don’t like how they ruin people’s lives. I don’t think the employment they provide is a worthwhile thing for those people. They’re taking people that could be contributing to society and making them do a job that has no redeeming social value.”

Reasons to Play Poker

Social rewards. This is a major reason behind the traditional home game. Many friends like to hang out and play cards, and many people become friends over the card table. If this is one of the major reasons you wish to play, stick with low stakes, where the games are more fun and friendly.

Entertainment. Poker is a competitive game. To win, one needs the skills and the bit of luck the game necessitates. Many find this enjoyable and compare poker to playing a sport. Make sure you don’t get swept up in the ‘entertainment’ nature of poker, because it is possible to lose a lot of money at the game.

Education. The skills necessary to become a good poker player apply well to other aspects of life. Poker will help you to improve your judgment skills (reading people) and sharpen your logical and strategic skills (how to play your hand).

To make money. Most people play poker for fun, but some make considerable money at it. Of course, these people are few and far between. Not everyone can make a lot of money from poker.You an make a lot of money playing pokerturniere and boni. Nevertheless, the desire to win more is definitely a reason to improve your poker skills. Beste Pokerraum - Bwin pokerboni.

Couple of Common Mistakes in Blackjack

The most wide spread mistake beginners make is to stand too often on their stiff hands (12,13,14,15, and 16). Players are naturally afraid to hit these hands because every one of them could bust (make a total of 22 or more) with a single hit. But when the dealer has a high card (7, 8, 9,10, or ace) showing, your best odds of winning come from hitting and giving yourself a chance of making a better total.

Some beginners think the best way to play is to play the same way the dealer plays: Hit all sixteens and stand on all seventeens. This is not true. The object of the game is not to make a hand as close to 21 as possible, but to beat the dealer. Often the best way to do this is to stand with a low total, sometimes as low as 12.

Here’s how many players think: If I hit this 14, I risk busting my hand right here and now. But maybe the dealer has a 6 in the hole. If I don’t take a hit, my hand still has a chance. Maybe the dealer’s hand will bust.

Every player is afraid that he will be responsible for his own loss. But that 14 you are holding is already in dire jeopardy when the dealer shows a 10 up. You must fight for the hand’s survival by taking the hit, giving it a chance of becoming a stronger hand against that 10. With a 14 against a 10, you must fight to the death.

On the other hand, if the dealer’s upcard is 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6, and you are holding a stiff hand, you should stand. Since the dealer must hit his stiff hands, and chance busting even when you are stiff, hitting your weak hands is not advantageous against these weak upcards.

Some beginners think the best way to play is to play the same way the dealer plays: Hit all sixteens and stand on all seventeens. This is not true. The object of the game is not to make a hand as close to 21 as possible, but to beat the dealer. Often the best way to do this is to stand with a low total, sometimes as low as 12.

This is the basic logic of casino blackjack. But if you just consider this logic when studying the basic strategy charts, the pattern will become clear to you and it should not be too difficult to memorize.

Wrap-play, Front-loading and Spooking in Blackjack

To the public at large, one of the most incomprehensible things about professional blackjack strategies is hole-card play. Hole-card play is not a single strategy, but a whole range of strategies. The one feature that can be found in all of these strategies is that the player either knows the dealer’s hole card, or has valuable information about that hole card, whether it’s a paint or not. To most casual blackjack players, this seems absolutely incredible and impossible, unless there is some sort of cheating going on. But it’s not impossible, and in fact, most hole-card strategies are perfectly legal.

In the Spring 2003 Blackjack Forum, Richard W. Munchkin, author of Gambling Wizards, interviewed “RC,” one of the most successful hole-carders of modem times. In introducing us to RC, Munchkin writes, “For every one hour spent on the table playing, the hole-card player may spend ten hours scouting… Most players, even if shown a dealer who is flashing, would not be able to spot the hole card anyway. Holecarders spend hundreds of hours training their eyes to see something that flashes by in a fraction of a second, often cast in shadow.”

James Grosjean’s Beyond Counting (now out of print, though a second edition has been announced) is widely regarded as the hole-carder’s bible. A meticulous mathematician, Grosjean was the first person to accurately figure out the hole-carder’s edge at blackjack with perfect reads and perfect play (just over 13 percent), and in addition to his work on blackjack, he provided some of the first detailed hole-card analyses of games like Three-Card Poker, Let It Ride, and Caribbean Stud Poker.

Hole-card players speak their own language and have their own heroes. Most consider blackjack card counting too weak to be worth the trouble. Many quickly attain notoriety in the casinos and a degree of fame among other pros that appreciate the rare skills they have developed. But let’s look at some of the forerunners of today’s players, describe some of the most common hole-card strategies, and get a historical overview of this type of legal strategy.

What is warp play? In the old days, dealers used to manually peek under their tens and aces to see if they had a blackjack before satisfying the players’ hands. This constant bending up of the corners on the tens and aces tended to put a warp into these cards if the casino did not change its decks frequently. An observant player could see the arc in a dealer’s hole card created by hours of bending the corners of the tens and aces. Warp play was simply using this information to make strategy decisions.

Then, Ken Uston’s Million Dollar Blackjack was published by SRS Publishing in 1981. In addition to everything Uston wrote about card counting and team play, Uston went into more detail about two of the hole-card techniques Wong had revealed the year before in Winning lnthout Counting: “spooking” and “front-loading.” Uston, in fact, had become quite adept as a hole-card player after his first book, The Big Player, was published in 1977.

What is front-loading? A front loader is simply a sloppy dealer who flashes his hole card as he is placing it beneath his upcard. It’s actually a pretty descriptive term, since one common way that such a dealer inadvertently flashes the hole card is by tipping the face of the card up toward the “front” of the table as he is “loading” it. A player who sits in a seat that provides him a view of this card is said to be “front-loading.”

Spooking is something else again. It used to be standard procedure for dealers to manually peek under any 10 or ace to see if they had a blackjack, in which case they would immediately turn up the card and collect all bets without playing the hands. Some dealers, in peeking, angled the card in such a way that a person standing behind them, or sitting at another table on the other side of the same pit, could glimpse the card also. It wasn’t long before players started working in teams to take advantage of such dealers. The guy behind the dealer was called the spook. He would signal his buddies playing at the table with whatever information he could get on the hole card. Dealers don’t peek this way anymore, and this is one of the reasons why.

Blackjack Myths and Legends

Within a day, a myth can grow. A legend can sprout up out of nothing and morph into something larger than life. Soon, the myth is so big that it can come back to where it started. This is how the myths of blackjack started. Somewhere, in the past, there must have been a winner who won so much, so quickly. Since then, players from all over are ready to win the big bucks right away. This is possible, but does not happen as often as most gamblers believe.

While counting cards and playing often can definitely increase your chances of winning the money that legends are made of, you must always be aware of the reality that odds are in the favor of the house. It is slightly more in your favor when you are playing online blackjack. The truth is you have better odds the more you play. The story that made the myth grow may very well be true. The reality of that myth may also be that it was dumb luck. The best way to play up your chances is to play often and with a good sense of reality and entertainment.

Blackjack online is a great way to gain the practice and skills that you need in order to do well in the traditional, livelier, some would say, more advanced blackjack game. The truth is, blackjack online may offer you some advantages, one being the odds are slightly even more in your favor. While this may be enticing to some, you have to be prepared in knowing that while the odds are more in your favor, you have no idea how many other players are out there playing along with you. This is something that can only strengthen your online casino game skills. This way, when you do take a trip to a traditional casino, you are ready to play right along with the best blackjack players.

The myths and legends that surround blackjack also get more word of mouth or attention because it does deal with traditional blackjack games. Those who see the big win in the casino like waitresses, house managers, other players, and dealers, all see the win and are able to spread the word, building a legend as they speak. Online blackjack, on the other hand, only deals with you alone on your PC. When you win, the only person who you can brag to on the spot is your bank. This is definitely not the worse thing! This is very good for you if you don’t crave some sort of attention for your win. If you only want money and not a legend, your best bet is to play online blackjack.

When you are ready to play online blackjack, you can sign up to an online casino and get the information you need to play right. Learn how to play online blackjack safely and have fun. When you are ready, you can enjoy creating your own blackjack legend!

Combinations

It’s not the number of combinations that matters, It’s the rules by which the machine plays that matter.
That’s why it’s so important to read your machine before you start playing it. You’d be surprised how many rip-off machines get played all the time, despite the fact that they display, in clear, easy-to-read type, just how they’re going to rip you off.

My favourite

Play a 6-spot

Say you wish to play a 6-spot as your main number selection. Pick your six numbers on Card A. Then, on Card B, pick the same six numbers, but add one more, for a 7-spot. On Card C, you can add, say, two more numbers for a 9-spot, and on Card D you can add one more number for a 10-spot. So now you are playing one 6-spot, one 7-spot, one 9-spot, and one 10-spot on all the four cards, with the original six-spot combination being common to all four cards. If you hit any of those original six numbers, these also count on all the other cards, thereby multiplying your wins. Once you try this you will get the hang of it very quickly. You can experiment by yourself, and you will find that picking 9- and 10-spot combinations is usually the best, with at least six numbers of each group being common to the others. The bad news is that the payoff program on some of these machines is not nearly as liberal as on regular slots or video keno games, so you will need to keep in mind that you are facing a very large house edge on these games. However, on the Four Card Keno game this can be somewhat offset by the fact that you can get paid several times for a hit. It’s fun, and I’ve had some nice hits on this game.

Important information about slots (Part II)

As with all of these items concerning selection, they are intertwined at many levels. "Game detail selection" refers to the small nuances in the game, the often hard-to-see differences in pays or in the way the games play. Among reel slots, this is not nearly as important as it is among the new-est video slots. A reel slot game tends to be much simpler and have very few details concerning it`s play and pays. While it is true that some of the reel slots can look very imposing and complicated, upon closer investigation you will soon discover that the basic game is usually very simple. It is the various bonuses, or the additions of other events (as in hybrid reel slots) that cause confusion. Also the preponderance of various symbols. The game detail selection for reel slots applies to your ability to identify and understand the pay and play structure of the game. Remember that the simpler it is, the better it is from the perspective of providing you with the best chance to win money. The more complex reel slots, or those offering a wider variety of symbols and various bonuses, may be more entertaining to play, but they will only rarely be as profitable as the much simpler classic slots which you can still find in most casinos.

learn how many coins are required to achieve the maximum win potential. Not all machines will pay the same for minimum-coin play, as opposed to maximum-coin play. Some will pay the second, third, and fourth bonuses only if maximum coins are played. Increase your fun and winning potential by increasing your knowledge of the game you are going to play. It’s not hard, because all this information is usually available either on the machine’s outside fagade or, more likely, in the information which is stored within the slot machine (accessible by touching either the “help” icon or the “information” icon on the screen).