Friday, 29 February 2008
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BETTING SPREADS
Casino games have lot of surprises for the gamblers. I’ve been trying my hands in almost every casino games and it proves handy to me. The most important thing that the newbie needs to learn is about betting spreads.
I stated earlier that the simplest betting strategy would be to jump immediately from your minimum bet to the maximum bet on any advantageous count. However, this is unwise for several reasons. One is that such a betting technique attracts undue attention from. The pit and the other is that it would severely strain the limits of your bankroll. In the next chapter, on money management, I will cover optimal betting, but the basic premise is to keep your bets in proportion to your advantage. Otherwise you face the very real possibility of tapping out and heading home broke.
The secret to beating the house at blackjack generally hinges on one fact: you have to bet more when there is a high count-and less when it is negative. How much of an edge you obtain is often a reflection of how wide the spread is between your small bets and your big bets.
You don't need much to heat most single-deck games. A 1 to 2 or 1 to 3 spread is sufficient if the rules are good or if the penetration is very deep. However, if you do want to be a strong favorite over the house, then a spread of 1 to 4 will provide a powerful edge in most situations. For our benchmark bankroll of $10,000, that would be roughly going from $20 to $80. With the Hi-Lo count, you would bet $20 on any TC of + 1 or less, $40 for a TC of +2, $60 for a TC of +3, and $80 for any TC of +4 or higher. Since there are more max-bet opportunities in the handheld games, it sometimes is wiser to reduce the risk by having more than a hundred top bets for single or double deck. (If your personal cash stake is different than $10,000, then just extrapolate the numbers for your betting range.)
One advantage of those numbers ($20-$80) is that they contain a bit of built-in camoufla. Each bet consists of exactly four chips, and every bet is always capped by a red chip. This could confuse the eye in the sky into thinking you are always wagering the same amount. Casinos will carefully watch anyone who tends to change his bets frequently. Most gamblers tend to stick with the same. Amount on each hand and the few players who spread their bets up and down are often suspected of being card counters.
The consequence of this unwanted attention might be preferential shuffling whenever you push out your maximum bet, or you could be asked to leave if the casino perceives you to be a true long-term threat. Fortunately, one advantage of good single-deck games is that you don't have to spread your bets very dramatically to be-come a winning player.
However, shoe games provide a much more arduous mountain to climb, and my betting advice on how to beat multiple-deck games will be met with extreme skepticism by some in the gaming community. That is because I suggest you use a very large spread. A lot of players prefer keeping their betting spreads small so the heat doesn't descend on them at the tables.
I certainly understand their logic, but I've always held a slightly different playing philosophy. My bet sizes are rather 'conservative in relation to my bankroll, but I've always been very aggressive in trying to gain a large edge whenever I play blackjack. I accomplish this by being extremely selective about the games I play and employing large betting spreads.
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