Blackjack Articles
How Useful
is Common Sense in a Casino?
by Andrew W Scott
December 2004
You've been playing BlackJack in the casino for
five hours and thirty three minutes, and today, you're
having one of those magical days that happen, oh so
rarely.
You walked in with 50 crisp hundred dollar notes
in your pocket, but as things have transpired, you've
only had to cash three of them in - the other 47 remain
untouched in your jacket's breast pocket. So far you've
turned those three hundred dollar notes into 17 purple
$500 chips, making you up precisely $8,200 for the
session. It's one of your best days ever, and although
you're slightly tired, you don't want it to end. You've
won almost half of today's winnings on the very shoe
you're playing now, and it seems you can do no wrong.
An appreciative and eager gallery of spectators has
formed behind your table like your own personal fan
club.
Your card counting system tells you that the next
bet is another quite favourable one for you, so you
confidently thrust out yet another $1,000 bet. You
receive an Ace and a 2 against the dealer's 3 upcard,
and yes, you are in a casino that allows soft doubling.
Last hand, you doubled and won a cool $2,000 in profits.
The gallery behind you are telling you to double,
they want to see action! They want to see you get
away with another fancy $2,000 winner. They're almost
pleading with you - double, DOUBLE! What do you do?
DOUBLE or just HIT? Your system tells you that given
the current card composition of the shoe that it's
a very close decision, but the system tells you just
to HIT. But you know, you just know, that if you DOUBLE
you are going to win…
1. Using your common sense
The exact situation described above happened to a
student of mine who started playing high stakes BlackJack
before he was ready. He doubled the soft 13. Whether
he won or lost is irrelevant (in fact I can't remember
what happened) but he made a mistake. His mistake
cost him some expectation. What was his explanation
to me? "But it just made common sense! I was winning
every hand!"
2. Cause and effect - it's just common sense!
The problem with using your "common sense" is that
using our normal human perceptions and feelings is
a disastrous strategy in a casino. The human brain
always wants to link things together - to find cause
and effect. When something happens, we think to ourselves
"why did that happen, what is the cause, what is the
explanation?" You can see this in everyday life all
around you. When something goes wrong…we try to find
out the cause and correct it for next time. When someone
gets murdered, we find the murderer and put him in
jail. When a bridge falls down, we have an inquiry
to discover who is to blame. Similarly, when something
goes right, someone always is ready to grab the credit,
often when no credit is due to anyone! As humans,
we absolutely love this cause and effect relationship.
We love it so much, that when there is no cause and
effect relationship, we invent one! This often happens
in casinos. Since gaming trials are governed by random
numbers, there often is no specific cause for an observed
effect. So we make one up anyway. For example "hey,
I was cleaning up until that idiot sat down next to
me, now I can't win a hand! It's his fault for being
such a bad player!" Or "hey I can't lose a hand here;
I can go ahead and double this soft 13 even though
my system tells me the situation isn't quite strong
enough to do it." This is why players often keep betting
big during a "winning run" or bet small during a "losing
run" - the "common sense" human being imputes that
the run will continue, when in fact there is absolutely
no mathematical basis to this logic. This kind of
logic is the same as saying that "now that I have
tossed 3 heads in a row, the chance of my next toss
being heads is more than 50%".
3. My first computer program
Blackjack is a mathematically astonishing game. When
I first started analysing it on computer in the late
1980s, I was quite amazed at some of the results I
came up with. The first computer program I wrote was
to calculate the probability of the seven dealer outcomes
(bust, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 and BJ) from each of the
ten possible dealer upcards (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,
9, 10 and Ace). An amazing result I discovered was
the upcard the dealer was most likely to have if he
ended up with an outcome of 21 was in fact a 2! This
was most certainly not a common sense result but is
in fact mathematically correct. As my computer analyses
of BlackJack continued, I discovered many such results
that were opposite to the "common sense" one. For
example, under normal circumstances it's not correct
to take even money when you have a BlackJack against
a dealer's Ace upcard. These discoveries caused me
to check and re-check my work over and over as they
seemed so weird to me at the time, but I now know
them to be mathematically correct.
4. Discipline, discipline, discipline!
In this column, I'm assuming that Smartgambler readers
know that BlackJack can be beaten. If you're not sure
about this, please read my previous article on Smartgambler,
'Can You Really Win Playing Casino BlackJack?' We
all know that casinos make a lot of money from the
game of BlackJack, but since the game can be beaten,
it is correct to say that every dollar lost at casino
BlackJack at the end of the day is caused by player
error, or if you like, a lack of player education.
Professional BlackJack training is very similar
to professional sport or martial arts coaching in
the sense that much of it involves the creation and
maintenance of strong discipline within the student.
At the end of the day learning the correct strategies
to beat the game is relatively simple, but having
the discipline to implement those strategies robotically
without question using real money is quite a separate
issue. If you start to over-think, to accept your
feelings, to become emotional, or worst of all, to
want to use your so-called "common sense" then you'll
lose that discipline and start to compromise your
play. Pros call this "cracking", much like Jana Novotna
did in that famous Wimbledon women's final all those
years ago.
So next time you go to a casino, have your game plan
prepared before you go to the casino. Know how much
money you're prepared to lose if you have a bad day.
Give yourself a time limit of how long you are prepared
to play. Know what strategy you're going to use for
sizing your bets and playing your hands. Then, stick
to all these things without wavering. And please,
don't let your well-intentioned but misguided "common
sense" get in your way! Until next time…if it's worth
doing, it's worth mastering!
Andrew W Scott
Over the coming months I'll be writing more columns
for Smartgambler.
To whet your appetite, here are the titles of a few
of my upcoming columns, in no particular order:
How much do other Players on the Table Effect
your BJ game?
How BlackJack Conditions are like Cricket Conditions
Good Runs and Bad Runs
The All-Important Edge
Curse of the Dreaded Civilian!
If you have any specific BlackJack or casino questions,
please email them to management_at_ozmium_dot_com_dot_au
I don't promise to answer them all, but I'll certainly
use some of them for inspiration for upcoming columns.
Until next time…if it's worth doing, it's worth mastering!
Andrew W Scott
Andrew W Scott is founder and CEO of blackJack-mAsters.com
Professional BlackJack School, a school established
in 1993 to further the education of players of casino
BlackJack in Australia. You can visit the school at
www.blackjack-masters.com
© Andrew W Scott December 2004
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