You might be wondering why here at AceHoyle.com we have two black jack strategy pages. The main reason is that our other “Black jack Strategy” page contains black jack strategies – in the form of our blackjack Basic Strategy chart and an introduction to black jack card counting – that can actually help you win at blackjack. This page, in contrast, explains what you could call “fake black jack strategies” – the kinds of black jack strategies online snake-oil salesmen foist on greenhorns, promising to make them richer than an Arabian sultan.

Of course, we can’t say all blackjack betting strategies are bad for you. One, in fact, does help players haul in the big bucks if used in conjunction with black jack card counting. But before we can explain how this facet of blackjack card counting works we’ve got to undo all the damage the Interweb’s many pretenders have caused. And the best place to start doing that is with an explanation of what their so-called “blackjack betting strategies” really are.

Blackjack Betting Strategies: What Are They?

Simply put, blackjack betting strategies are black jack strategies that supposedly help players gain an edge through varying their bets. The easiest way to understand this concept is to first look at how some players try to apply it to other games. In roulette games, for instance, players often set a base bet and continually bet the same amount until they lose; after each loss, they’ll double the amount they previously bet and will continue to do so until they win again, at which point they will return to their base amount.

This strategy is known as a “Martingale.” The theory idea behind it is that, by doubling your original wager for every loss, you can recoup all your losses when you eventually win, plus turn a marginal profit; it assumes that given enough money and time you will inevitably win at least once. The problem is, it seems, there’s never been a gambler since the Martingale was invented who has, in fact, been “given enough money.” Eventually, everyone goes on a bad losing streak, perhaps losing 100 times in a row. And you know what? It’s all 100 percent probable. What’s more, if while playing an even-money wager like red in roulette you started with a base bet of, say, $25 and cumulatively doubled your wagers 100 times, by bet 101 you’d need to wager:

Of course, you’d never get to such a large bet because no casino in 29 galaxies would set a limit greater than 200 times the table minimum. But to put this in perspective the total Gross World Product (or the combined Gross Domestic Products of every country on Earth) for 2007 was only $65 trillion; so, unless you owned a year’s production for something like 244 quadrillion fertile, well-populated planets, you probably wouldn’t be able to make that bet.

But we know what you’re thinking: How, Ace Hoyle wizards, is it even possible, let alone probable, that anyone could lose 100 times in a row?! As for that, it’s simply a mathematical fact that the outcome history for a game is not the same as the probability that an event will occur. The reason for this is that a history is a list of facts, while a probability is a prediction. Game histories are based on records; probabilities on ratios.

Now, it’s true, over a long, long time, it just so happens that the number of times an outcome occurs will reflect what probability predicts. But when we say “a long time” we mean a LOOOOOOOOOONG time. Basically, if you could spin a roulette wheel an infinite number of times, every spin would get you one step closer to the probabilities and histories matching. With 100 spins, 1000 spins, even 1 million spins you’re probably still going to have 100 reds in a row here and 100 blacks in a row there.

Get up to where the number of spins is equal to the amount you’d need to spend on that ridiculous 101st spin from three paragraphs ago, and now you’re getting closer. At that point the number of times each event actually occurs will be extremely close on average to its probability. That’s not to say there won’t be 100 blacks in a row in there somewhere - just that taken on the whole this anomalous streak evens out.

So, yes, Virginia, you could lose roulette 100 times playing a Martingale and have to sell all the shiny rocket ships your slaves on Tralfamadore made this year. Those are the facts, and we suggest you keep them in mind.

Going back to blackjack betting strategies, though, we should probably point out that the main difference between blackjack and roulette is that you play blackjack with cards instead of a wheel. It might seem like we’re stating the obvious here, but think about it: Every time you take a card from a deck, the number of remaining cards changes. Compare this to roulette in which no matter how many times you spin the wheel it will always have the same number of pockets. This difference makes the two games’ probabilities different because with blackjack each preceding event has some impact on the next event’s outcome; with roulette, meanwhile, individual events affect each other about as much as the price of ice on Mars affects you.

Mathematicians call the relationship between outcomes in blackjack “dependent probabilities” because, well, the probability that you’ll draw a given card depends on what cards you’ve already drawn. This has a major impact on black jack strategy as it’s the main reason black jack card counting works; blackjack card counting, after all, is merely when a player keeps track of the cards that have already been dealt so he can make an educated guess as to what cards remain in the deck.

So assuming you understand blackjack card counting forwards and backwards, what you could do is bet more when you know you’re going to receive good cards and less when you know your next hands are going to stink. If, on the other hand, you can’t count and have no clue what cards will be next, varying your bets will not improve your odds of winning one smidge – in fact, it might even hurt you in the long run.

Consider: The Martingale states that when you lose you should increase your bets to make up the difference. So as a black jack strategy it would have you doubling your second bet simply because you received a 20 to the dealer’s 21 on the first hand. In reality the deck has lost none of its trouble cards, such as its 5s, 6s or 7s, but has lost three ten-point cards and an ace – all of which are normally good for players. Why would you want to bet more when your real odds of pulling off a choice hand have decreased so much? Yeah… Ask a Martingale player ‘cause we’re stumped.

Other Black Jack Strategies That Don’t Work

Another fishy black jack strategy is the “D’Alembert.” Like the Martingale it seems to increase your likelihood of winning by having you vary your bets. This time, however, instead of starting with a small bet and doubling up after each loss, you start with a medium-size bet, decrease it incrementally towards a tiny bet when you win and increase it incrementally towards a huge bet when you lose. Mathematically speaking, this is ineffective for the same reasons the Martingale is: It would not only have you decreasing your bets right when you want to increase them, but would also have you increasing them when you’re about to lose!

Similarly, with the “Paroli” online blackjack strategy you bet twice the table minimum, then double your bet after every win and halve your bet after every loss; and with the “Parlay” you wager your previous bet plus your winnings after a win and return to your original bet after a loss. Then, there’s the “1-3-2-6” in which you wager one unit on the first bet, three on the second if you win the first, two on the third if you win the second and six on the fourth if you win the third – only to start back at one unit if you lose or finish off the cycle.

Again, the major problem is that no online blackjack strategy besides Basic Strategy and card counting takes into account what’s left in the shoe. This is truly ridiculous because with blackjack you actually can determine such things. And it makes about as much sense as a snowsuit in summer to use an ineffective strategy when you could just as easily use an effective one.

Betting Strategies for Card Counting

As promised, the final section of our “Blackjack Betting Strategies” page contains all the info you need to start counting cards successfully. But before we can get into any of the betting aspects, you’ll first have to check out the following black jack chart, which contains the “tags,” or running-count values, for several card counting systems:

Card Strategy	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	J	Q	K	A
Wizard Ace/Five	0	0	0	+1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	−1
KO	+1	+1	+1	+1	+1	+1	0	0	−1	−1	−1	−1	−1
Hi-Lo	+1	+1	+1	+1	+1	0	0	0	−1	−1	−1	−1	−1
Hi-Opt I	0	+1	+1	+1	+1	0	0	0	−1	−1	−1	−1	0
Hi-Opt II	+1	+1	+2	+2	+1	+1	0	0	−2	−2	−2	−2	0
Zen Count	+1	+1	+2	+2	+2	+1	0	0	−2	−2	−2	−2	−1
Omega II	+1	+1	+2	+2	+2	+1	0	−1	−2	−2	−2	−2	0

The tags we’d most like you to pay attention to are those for the KO, or “Knock Out,” system. The KO is not only the most common example of a “single-level” system, but is also the easiest form of card counting for beginners to grasp. The other forms, “multi-level” systems, are far more complicated because they require you divide your running count by the number of decks left in the shoe. In contrast, all you have to do with the KO is gradually begin increasing your bets when your running count exceeds your “key count.”

As for key counts, they are counts you have to reach before you can be sure a shoe is in your favor. They can differ depending on how many decks a shoe contains, so we suggest that, rather than memorizing all the KO system’s key counts, you case a casino to find out how many decks it runs in a typical shoe. Also, when we say “casino” we mean “land-based” casino; as we mention on our other “Blackjack Strategy” page, counting cards is 100 percent ineffective in online blackjack because it’s impossible to tell how many decks are in a simulated shoe – if, in fact, the software doesn’t use a random-number generator, thus making card counting completely impossible.

In the black jack chart below the second number is the key count and the first is the “starting count.” A starting count is the number of points you begin with at the start of a shoe and normally is either zero or a negative number. This is to say that you’ll miss some ideal situations using the KO. But the fact that the system streamlines at-table calculations and does away with guess-timating the number of decks left in a shoe ultimately makes losing these opportunities worth it.

No. of Decks	1	2	6	8
Start/Key	0/+2	-4/+1	-20/-4	-28/-6

Again, the best part about the KO system is how simple it is. In fact, as blackjack charts go, its black jack charts are far simpler to memorize than any blackjack Basic Strategy chart going. Once you know the information above by rote, then, the only thing left to do is learn the KO betting schedule – which, naturally, we’ve included below:

No. of Decks	Running Count
	≤-6*	≤-4	-3	-2	0	≤1	≤2	3	4	6	8
1	5†	5	5	5	5	5	5	10	10	25	25‡
2	5	5	5	5	5	5	10	10	25	25	25
6	5	5	10	25	25	25	50	50	75	Max	Max
8	5	10	25	25	25	50	50	75	Max	Max	Max

*For the black jack chart above, all less-than-or-equal-to symbols (≤) denote that the following figure is a key count (See: Key and Starting Count Chart above for corresponding shoe size).

†All schedules are noted in whole units or chips, not currency.

‡ If a schedule above does not exceed 25 units, assume the schedule for subsequent counts to be two 50s, one 75, then “Max bet” for higher counts.

The reason the above betting schedule works so well is that it is extremely conservative. It only has you betting above the table minimum after your running count has surpassed the key count, and then only has you increasing your bet size by small increments. The key to counting cards, after all, is to bet big when you know you’re going to win and to lay low the rest of the time.

Finally, because most casinos won’t let you enter a game mid-shoe, you’ll have to lose a little before the count is in your favor. So make sure you bring enough cash to back your bets until it does. Otherwise, you might find yourself forced to walk away before you’ve had a chance to turn a profit.

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