Blackjack Betting Strategies
In blackjack, it is not how many hands you win or lose, it is how much you have bet when you win or lose that matters. There is no avoiding the fact that the game is designed to where the house, or casino will beat you more hands than you beat them. The key to the game is to know when to bet big and when to bet small. Hopefully, you will find yourself betting big on winning hands and small on losing hands, but that is not as easy as it sounds.
A lot of players believe that if they learn how to count cards while playing blackjack, that they will then know when to bet big and when to bet small. They think that if they count the cards already dealt, keeping track of how many small cards versus ten valued cards have been played, they will be able to come up with a number that is to determine the amount of big cards versus small cards are coming and to bet when the ratio is in favor of ten valued cards coming. The problem with this theory is, just because ten valued cards are coming, more so than the non ten valued cards, does not mean that only the player stands to receive those ten valued cards, the blackjack dealer him or herself could just as easily be getting those kings and queens.
You will find that if you “flat bet” by never fluctuating your bet amount, that you can and will lose over a hundred dollars an hour, easily at a five dollar minimum bet table. Fluctuating your bet is the only way you have a chance of winning any money that you can take home with you. Some people bet solely based on gut feelings or hunches. Some players bet on a progressive style basis, which means to raise your bet by one unit or one chip after each win. Some players like to “parlay” their bets, meaning if you win a five dollar hand, to raise your bet to ten dollars and on to twenty dollars if that hand wins. The problem with parlaying your bet, is that you will always lose your biggest bet.
An other style of betting is called, “Negative Progression”. Negative progression is to double your bet every time you lose a hand. If you start off with a five dollar bet and win, you bet five dollars again, if you bet five dollars and lose, you bet ten dollars, lose that and wager twenty dollars the next hand, once you finally win a hand, you drop back down to minimum bet of five dollars, only winning back what you lost and making five dollars. This strategy is rarely played in casinos, and for good reasons. The problem with this strategy is, once you lose a few hands in a row, you have reached maximum bet and can no longer double your losing bet. Even if you found that blackjack table with no table limit, you still could end up in a jam, really fast. What if you lost a few hands in a row, $160 bet after losing only a handful of hands, what if you double down on that hand and lose, now you have to bet $640, just to try to recover your recent losses. What if on that six hundred and forty dollar bet, you get a pair of eights and split, only to get an other eight and have re-split, then you get some twos for your eights and want to double down, only to find the dealer flip over a six card twenty one and now you have to get a calculator to figure out how much you have to wager on your next hand, just to break even and make five dollars.
These are just a couple betting strategies I have witnessed blackjack players use when playing blackjack. These blackjack betting strategies work at online blackjack as well as casino blackjack. Some of the betting systems will work some of the time, but rarely do any of them work all of the time. Negative progression is the only betting strategy that makes the most mathematical sense, but with table limits in place at most blackjack tables, it has the least likeliness of working in the long term.