Aug 22, 2014

1. Do You Look At Your Cards In Blackjack
2. Can You Look At Your Cards In Blackjack Without
3. Can You Look At Your Bottom Card In Blackjack
4. Can You Look At Your Cards In Blackjack Against
5. Can You Look At Your Cards In Blackjack Game

Do You Look At Your Cards In Blackjack

If the player is dealt one card face up and one down then of course you would look at the face down card, how else would you know how much your hand adds up to? If you mean the dealer's card then. Yes, it's fine to keep your strategy card on the table. I agree with Truman, though, that it's best to memorize the most common scenarios (which you can do quickly and easily) and only consult the strategy card for the pairs and soft hands you don't remember. Checking the card for every hand will really slow down the game.

Card counting is the gold standard when we’re talking about winning at blackjack. But some blackjack experts claim you can win without counting.

Blackjack is a casino game. That means that the house has an inherent mathematical advantage over the player. Theoretically the more the player plays, the more the casino drains from their pockets. But blackjack stands out from other games like slots, baccarat and roulette because the player can use advantage play techniques to turn the tide in their favor.

One can never make a living from roulette, but one can from playing blackjack. The most obvious way to do this is by using a card counting system. There are numerous systems out there but all of them are designed to make the player aware of when the odds are in their favor so they can place a very large wager.

That being said, some prominent voices doubt the necessity of counting cards to win consistently.

Leon Dubey and the no-counting situational approach

In 1980 blackjack expert Leon Dubey published a book called No Need to Count in which he promotes a strategy for winning at blackjack which is much different from most blackjack books, which are almost exclusively about basic strategy or card counting. His approach is the most commonly-cited non-counting system in use.

Essentially he argues that you can end up with the same result as you would by counting without actually counting. Whereas counting takes a mathematical approach, Dubey’s no-counting system takes a holistic approach to making yourself aware of when the odds are in your favor.

This is also referred to as a “situational system” as the player considers the current situation to decide how to play the upcoming hand. It is quantitatively, not qualitatively different for a standard counting system.

Dubey’s approach relies on three “situational” indicators that the next hand will be (or will not be) in the player’s favor

• If the player has won the previous hand it is an indicator that advantageous cards (face cards) were dealt, so the chances of good cards being dealt again are lessened

• If the player lost the previous hand the vice-versa occurs, as being dealt poor-quality cards means it’s more likely one will be dealt high-quality ones upcoming

• If the last hand was a push the chances of a player loss on the upcoming hand are magnified even more, as the previous hand most likely resulted in both the dealer and player being dealt face cards

These rules are extremely simple but Dubey testified that they had been mathematically tested and approved, a claim which was accepted by blackjack legend Arnold Snyder.

Dubey was not the first to show that the outcome of the next hand can be predicted in part by considering the outcome of the previous hand. There are other positive and negative indicators as well. For example, following a non-ace pair split the player’s expectation should rise; following an ace split it should drop. And expectations should rise after any hand – player or dealer – which involves someone taking four or more cards.

The critique of this system

Dubey and followers are 100 percent correct in asserting that analysis of the previous hand can be useful in predicting the outcome of the upcoming hand, and they have the mathematical studies to prove it.

The question is: so what? The correlation between the last hand and the previous hand is quite small. So small that some analysis has found that correctly betting in accordance with these simple indicators lessens the house edge rather than tips the edge into the advantage of the player.

Another thing: non-counting systems are not pit boss-proof. Some believe that situational techniques are not detectable by casino staff. It’s true that one is less likely to be sniffed out using this system than when counting cards directly, but some blackjack players have been given the back-off for situational playing.

In the words of Snyder, “situational play is valid, but not a very good moneymaking system.” If done properly you’ll win more than you would using basic strategy alone, but not enough to significantly increase the size of bankroll.

A situational system is essentially a watered-down counting system. It’s easier to use but much less lucrative. At the end of the day it isn’t worth the trouble.

Why card counting is the best way to win

Non-counting advantage play strategies like Dubey’s can give the player a higher chance of winning but they are simply not as precise as using a card counting system. They amount to a sort of advantage play “cheating,” the desire to tip the house edge in one’s favor without putting the time in to learn a proper counting system.

Then there are cases where a player like the now-famous Don Johnson had a few big nights in Atlantic City casinos and won $15 million using only basic strategy. He’s an excellent blackjack player, but that style of play isn’t sustainable. There’s a reason he isn’t a professional blackjack player.

The truth is in blackjack there are no shortcuts to prolonged success. Advanced blackjack smart strategies require countless hours of hard work to learn. That’s exactly why aspiring players are looking for non-counting strategies, but there are simply no alternatives to counting.

To answer the question in the title to this article, yes, it is possible to win at blackjack without using a card counting system. But that doesn’t mean that one should attempt to do it.

Tags: Arnold Snyder, card counting system, Don Johnson, Leon Dubey, No Need to Count, non-counting advantage play blackjack systems, Situational Blackjack, smart strategies, winning at blackjack

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Do you look at your hole cards immediately when they’re dealt to you, or only when the action is on you? Whichever it is, it’s WRONG!

Or at least that’s what one is led to believe by any number of poker writers and professional players. They are split into two camps on this question, and each seems to think that the other is plumb crazy.

Let’s think through their arguments, starting with the “wait” side.

Steve Zolotow wrote this in his column for Card Player magazine (June 13, 2012): “I hope everyone avoids looking at their cards until it is their turn to act. There are two reasons for this. First, you can't reveal anything about your hand because you don't know it yet. Second, you can focus on your opponents and not on your cards.”

I have heard this same basic argument made by many different people over the years since I first started paying attention to poker. I think I first heard it from Phil Gordon during his commentary on the old Celebrity Poker Showdown program. (Gratuitous and irrelevant opinion: I thought that show was a lot of fun. I’d watch it again if they brought it back.)

In fact, those I’ve heard endorsing this practice tend to elevate it from mere advice or opinion to fact, as if it had been engraved by the fiery finger of God on Moses’s stone tablets.

Something that Zolotow doesn’t mention is objectivity. If you’re watching your opponents with a preconceived idea of what you want to do because you’ve already looked at your own cards, you may unconsciously interpret what you see through the biased filter of what you want to do.

For example, if you’ve been card-dead for a long time, and then find a hand like -offsuit — a truly marginal, problematic starting hand — you may have an urge to raise with it, and thus dismiss or misinterpret signs of real strength that a player to your right is giving off. This can get you into deep trouble.

This all certainly sounds like an iron-clad argument for the “wait and see” approach, doesn’t it? So, is the case closed? Not quite.

Consider the point about giving away information about the strength of your hand by your reaction. That’s going to be a problem whether it occurs as soon as you have your cards, or when it’s your turn to act. To quote Phil Ivey, “If you have tells, work on them.” In fact, such tells are arguably a bigger problem if you display them when everybody is looking at you, waiting for you to act, than if they slip out when everybody is busy looking at their own cards.

As for Zolotow’s point about missing out on your opponents’ tells as they look at their cards, you don’t need to miss them. You can glance at your cards with literally less than one second taken from looking at the other players.

Are there advantages to looking at your cards right away? Yes.

Can You Look At Your Cards In Blackjack Without

First, it keeps the game moving more quickly if there isn’t a delay while every player looks at his or her cards and decides what to do.

Second, you may give off timing tells if all of your decision-making is done when everybody is waiting for you to act. If instead that time passes while others are acting, it is disguised. This works out nicely, in that you have more options available from later position, so it will tend to take you longer to evaluate them and settle on a course of action — but that is also when you will have the most time to decide, if you have looked at your cards immediately.

Can You Look At Your Bottom Card In Blackjack

I don’t think there is just one right way to approach this. Ultimately, I think it comes down to a matter of preference. Do you like to have your cards in your mind as you interpret the actions and tells of the player to your right? Or do you like to evaluate those pieces of information in isolation, then apply them to what you see when you peel the corners of your down cards?

My personal preference is to look at my cards right away. But there are enough good reasons for waiting that I’m not dogmatic about it. If you have tried it both ways and decided that waiting to look works better for you, I’m not going to say that you’re making a mistake to do so.

Can You Look At Your Cards In Blackjack Against

My girlfriend adopts a kind of middle ground that I have seen only a few people use. She looks at her cards when the action is about two seats to her right. This lets her watch a few players act first (depending on her position, of course), but also give her enough time to process her decision that she isn’t delaying the game when it gets to her. This incorporates some of the advantages of both of the two more common approaches. It’s worth considering.

Can You Look At Your Cards In Blackjack Game

Like all strategic decisions in poker, there’s a lot to think about. As long as you do what you do for well-thought-out reasons and it works for you, don’t let anybody — not even me — tell you that you’re doing it wrong.

Robert Woolley lives in Asheville, NC. He spent several years in Las Vegas and chronicled his life in poker on the “Poker Grump” blog.

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