Astro Blackjack

• Blackjack Counting

  The future of blackjack has been revealed and it’s ugly. As legalized gambling continues to blossom, with a record 73 million Americans expected to visit a casino before the end of this year, the industry’s managers are scrambling to stack the odds on the simple card game of 21 ever more in their favor. The motivation is transparent: Blackjack is the only game in the casino where a player’s skill can radically increase his or her chances of winning, maybe even shifting the edge away from the house. Now, gambling-machine maker Bally's is marketing a player tracking system that crushes whatever tiny advantage can be had, and that threatens to turn your average 21 table into one more thinly disguised vacuum cleaner. “After you’ve played a series of hands, this table and its computer will evaluate your play, keep track of whether you are an advantage player or not, keep track of what you hit, when you hit it and how you hit when the deck was positive or negative,” said Bally's sales exec Dave Lucchese as he showed me the company’s MindPlay blackjack table during an industry trade show this past spring in the now-hurricane-ravaged Gulf gambling resort. “This is the holy grail for us. You can’t do this with a slot machine.”

  Skilled blackjack players win money by at least counting the high and low cards that have been played as the game progresses, and by betting accordingly. The more low cards played, the more “positive” the deck is. With so many high cards still lurking in the deck, the greater the chance that the dealer — who has to hit through 16 — will break. As a deck turns more positive, a good blackjack player will increase the bet and, likewise, scale it back when it goes negative. This is called the advantage. For almost a half century, casinos have been trying to limit this advantage. In the 1960s, after the first beat-the-dealers books were published, the big Las Vegas casinos moved from a hand-dealt single deck of cards to a show-dealt game of six decks, making card counting that much more difficult. Other casinos are now introducing single-deck games, usually called something saccharine like “Super Fun 21.” Using only 52 cards, they restore the player’s ability to better track the cards. One catch, however. These mongrelized games radically re-order the payoff rules (reducing a blackjack from 3-to-2 down to 6-to-5, and barring players from doubling their bets on certain combos), thereby handing the advantage firmly back to the house.

Compare casino by bonus

Latest Reviews