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Hi playbig, Ellis here. You know me. I admire your ability to count down a deck in 15 seconds and I know first hand the practice that it takes. I, myself can do 13 seconds and I've never met anyone faster. I also admire your tip about backcounting. Personally I still use the 13 second count as a personal condition check before play and also as a neat parlor trick but I no longer use it in the shoe game. Both Kenny Uston and I gave it more than a fair chance in AC 8 deck. We both lost our shirt. Kenny quit playing altogether and I went back to NBJ. Yes, back counting does work. But NBJ first base no rent works a whole lot better when playing over someone's shoulder as many counters have found out. Counting teaches you some good things but it also teaches you a host of bad things like: It doesn't matter where you play It doesn't matter when you play It doesn't matter where you sit The stakes don't matter How the other players play doesn't matter. It doesn't matter whether you win or lose as long as you make the "correct" play. Also, counters tend to lose the half of all shoes where the highs come right out at the top of the shoe. NBJ players love those shoes. I could go on for pages. All of these things matter a great deal to great players I would like to invite you, in your case, free of charge, to come join us at NBJ. You can learn a whole lot but you can also teach a whole lot. For instance, the player you are replying to above happens to be up $175,000 for the year. How many counters can do that? This tiny sampling of questions and answers exerpted from our private NBJ forum might give you a tiny clue as to what we teach: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > is there anything you have learned or noticed that > only you learned or noticed from real play or home > practice that you never mentioned because maybee you > only noticed it one time? Well one thing I've mentioned before but not for a long time is dealer body language. This works best in casinos that don't rotate their dealers frequently and the more experience the dealer has the better this works. I picked up on it when I was playing full time. I always attempt and usually succeed in getting the dealer on my side. The experienced dealer gets very used to the cards at her table. She gets a great feel for what's happening with her cards. When she agrees with your play you know it, but when she doesn't, you also know it. On close calls, I have often changed my play based on dealer body language. She was right a lot more often than she was wrong. For whatever reason this seems to occur more frequently with female dealers but there is the occasional male... I also remember many occasions where this worked in reverse. Some dealers make better dealers than players. And some dealers make better players than dealers. Hey, we are there to win! Every little bit helps! > tell me if this is good or > is there a better way. When I have no read on the hole > card and the last 5 cards before my decision has 3 > tens in those last 5 and I am stiff, I'll stand. So would I based on the general rule that when tens are running, favor standing and when lows are running favor hitting. > If > the dealer has a low up and I read a low in the hole, > so she is strong or potentially, and I am stiff and > the last 5 cards before my decision has 3 tens, then I > will stand. I would only hit a stiff when the last 5 > cards has 3 tens when I read the dealer strong with 2 > highs and not 2 lows. So, 3 tens in last 5, I stand if > she is strong with 2 lows. I hit if she is strong with > 2 highs. I stand in last 5 cards with 3 tens when hole > is unknown wether a low or a high up. What do you > think? Hmmm that's a tough call even for me. You are talking about conflicting evidence. Here, you're best off to go by the game you are in. You always get a feel for the cards in the game you are in. That educates your gut. Then go by your gut feel in that game. The reason its tough for me is because you have taken your question out of context when you isolate it from a specific game. The great player thinks with his gut in conflicting evidence situations. The lessons from the game you are in takes presidence over everything. > Another one is when I am stiff and the dealer has a > high up card and I read a low in the hole, I read her > weak, and lows ran in and out of the hole card, then > before my hit decision one high or a ten falls, I > should stand but, I still hit. in this situation, I > only stand when after all those lows 2 high cards or 2 > tens fall, then I will stand and anticipate a dealer > break. Right, that is why we monitor lone tens in a shoe or at a table. If lone tens are common at the table then a single ten would not prompt us to hit. However, particularly in 8 deck we can get games with "clean" clumps when lone tens are rare or non existent. Then we react to a single ten as the beginning of a high clump. See, this is why I tell NBJ players not to count. Counting distracts you from gleaning the really important information out of a table. What's happening at your table is far more important and far more useful than the count.

If home practice doesn't precisely duplicate the casino conditions you will face, it actually may well do you more harm than good. Because of the card pick up procedures used in all casinos and several other factors, the condition of the cards continuously changes with play. They present a moving target - an ever changing complexion. This change factor it carefully designed in the casino card presentation methods. Have you ever noticed that whatever your brand of basic strategy, it may work very well at a given table in the morning, then become less effective at the same table in the afternoon, and then stop working altogether at the same table at night. You are seeing the effectiveness of the casinos strategy. Have you ever noticed that the game is much tougher on Saturday night than it was on weekdays. It is not your imagination! The cards got more play on Saturday. The more play they get the more they clump. The more they clump, the less the dealer breaks. The less the dealer breaks the less basic strategy works. If you count dealer breaks on a weekday morning, you are very likely to find the dealer breaking at her random card norm of 28%. A little more than one dealer break every 4 hands. You usually see this from table to table. That is what Basic Strategy is designed for, a 28% dealer break rate. Every one of the 500 Basic Strategy plays relies on this 28% dealer break rate. But, if you count dealer breaks on Sat night you will soon see that the dealer is breaking far less. Instead of one out of four, she may well be breaking only one out of ten. If you watch long enough, you'll see a shoe where the dealer never breaks. Yet all the players are still playing Basic Strategy. They are betting the dealer will break 28%. He won't. Not even close. They lose. Let's look at another critical factor. Dealer first card tens. There are 13 different cards. 4 of them are tens. Therefore the dealer SHOULD average 4 first card tens every 13 hands. And she will on a weekday morning. But count dealer first card tens on Sat. night. In 6 deck he will average about 6. And in 8 deck he will average about 8 every 13 hands. We've all had that horible experience where it seems every time we look up we are battling yet another dealer ten. That's not you imagination either. The more the cards are played, the more first card tens the dealer gets. The more first card tens the dealer gets the more you hit. The more you hit the more you break. Are they cheating? Absolutely not. The dealers don't cause this phenomenon. Basic Strategy, itself, causes it. YOU cause it. This is why I continuously tell players that basic strategy is eventually self defeating. PERFECT basic strategy is PERFECTLY self defeating. Eventually you lose perfectly. Please do not take my word for this. Both are very simple things to go out and see for yourself. Once you do, you will never play your cards the same again. Or you will but now you will know exactly why you lose. But all the books say..... Forget the books! Those guys don't play! I do! And so do you! We must play actual real world conditions. We aren't playing book conditions or what book writers wish was happening. We are playing what IS happening. That is what NBJ is all about. We teach you how to duplicate real world conditions at your kitchen table. This conditions your play to REAL Black Jack. When you practice against real conditions your practice teaches you how to beat real conditions. When you practice against ideal book conditions, your practice will teach you how to lose. DO NOT take my word for this. Go out and see for yourself. Only then can I begin teaching you how to beat what you just saw for yourself. There are REAL winners and there is wishful thinking. Which do you want for yourself?

Zenwin is right. Where are you guys? Carlos, Char, Mad Dog?????

Yeah Zenwin. Reads are a mixed blessing. Yes ideally they give you a better idea of what to do then Basic Strategy. But watch out when your read gets too good. Remember that the better your read the more the cards are clumped. Right up to unplayable. That's when you start pushing 20's. When your read is too good it only serves you to tell you exactly why you're about to lose the hand. Ie., beware of great reads!

Playing off the wash is an art form but easy to learn. In prior posts here I noted that it is my favorit game because it gave me a virtual guaranteed win for the day. I almost always won in the morning and then used that win as my stop loss for the day. Only once in a blue moon did I have to make up for a morning loss in my second session. And it was rarer still that I went into a third session down. I don't remember this happening more than 5 or 6 times in three years of continuous play but in each case I managed to get ahead in the third session and immediately quit ahead for the day. Recognize that I had one advantage over you. I had all of Atlantic City to choose from and I knew where the morning card preps produced the best and most consistent games. This took a lot of preparatory work that paid off well. New cards don't guarantee a good first or third base game. But they do guarantee two very advantageous facts: no dealer biases and head to head opportunities. BTW, I always started head to head in the morning. And I always selected green tables to avoid other players as long as possible. The first secret of winning morning play is to put yourself in the mind of the casino. Casinos are of two schools of thought for new cards: One school says we know that we do best with clumped cards. We also know that the boxed card order of cards produces perfect clumping. Therefore we want to disturb that clumping as little as possible during our card prep. This school often (but not always) produces ideal first base conditions particularly for head to head play. "Boxed card clumping" is very obvious because cards are not only clumped highs vs. lows but also by suit. The other school says let's start with random cards. Players tend to beat random cards but usually start small. They win a few shoes and start betting big about the time play begins clumping the cards causing them to lose. A dead givaway is when the casino inverts every other deck in their card prep so that highs are shuffled with lows and lows with highs. Your job is to determine what kind of cards YOUR casino produces with their card prep. It might be First base, it might be Third base and it might be unplayable. But it is unplayable much less often than with played cards. Note that new cards also may depend on table denomination. They may prep their red tables different from their green tables. But fortunately casinos don't change the morning prep very often. They tend to stick with whatever they determine works best for them. I've seen good morning conditions last for a month. But also recognize that your play alone can end up being their deciding factor to change. Mine often was. That is also why you don't want to spread this around to other players. So, was it luck that your third base experience was so good? Yes and no. Yes because it was luck that the prep was a third base prep. No, because unlike all other players you knew enough to play new cards. Now your job is to eliminate the luck part of it and base your play on known facts that you took the time to note. It's not hard once you know a few key secrets like those detailed here. Don't think like a player. Players lose. Think like a casino and learn their vulnerabilities. They ALL have them.

Hi Vegas, Nice post and right to the point. A few thinking people will heed it but most won't. The promblem is the same old thing. The extremely abundant marketing of card counting is everywhere with tons of casino money pouring in. Its all people hear. It's in the movies. It's on TV and radio. It's all over the internet. The casino's do their own TV specials promoting card counting. It's a very popular daily gambling topic among want-a-be Blackjack players. Their brains get saturated with this dailly bombardment. Any voice against it gets out shouted by a million brain washed voices that believe that a million people can't be wrong. One thing that you know that they don't know is that card counting depends entirely on basic strategy and basic strategy depends entirely on random cards. That is precisely why the casinos do all possible to prevent random cards. They know exactly how to do this and have known for 20 years. They KNOW that their methods beat basic strategy hands down. That is exactly why they spend so much money promoting basic strategy and card counting to a gullible public. It's so much easier to simply join the crowd. Non random cards is the easiest thing in the world for anyone to prove to themseves. All they need do is walk up to any BJ game and count how often highs are following highs. They don't even have to worry about lows because whatever highs are doing, lows are also doing. Since there are just as many lows as highs, in random cards lows will follow highs half the time. That's simple fourth grade math. But they will soon see that they don't at all. And if they check further they will find that the longer the cards are in play and the more players there are the more highs will follow highs and the more lows will follow lows and the weaker basic strategy becomes. We call this clumping. Clumping is not an arguable point, it is an absolute fact of life. The casinos see to it. That's how they win. Its their bread and butter and all published casino takes prove it far beyond all doubt. Every card counting instructor knows this as well as he knows his own name. Clumping is precisely what card counters count. They count the disparity of highs vs lows dealt. That IS clumping! The count tells you the degree of clumping. Precisely! It is ridiculous for card counting instructors to deny clumping when that is precisely what they are teaching you to count. But they must! They must because they KNOW that clumping destroys basic strategy and they know that the basis of card counting IS basic strategy. For them, it is a paradox. Where the card counting instuctor goes wrong is when he teaches that the higher the count the better your odds. This is not true at all because the higher the count the more the cards are clumped and the more the cards are clumped the more basic strategy errors. See the paradox? They would be challenging their own basis. But that is not nearly the only mathematical flaw of card counting. It is riddeled with flaws. Here is an example. Card counters are taught to bet minimum in negative counts. They are taught that the dealer has the advantage in a negative count. Half of all shoes begin with negative counts. Most of those stay negative throughout the shoe or don't go possitive enough to trigger card counter bets. Most are still negative at the cut off card. The card counter just sat their like an idiot never raising his bet. Now lets try using our brain for just a second - something card counters are immune to and taught never, never to do. Always make the "correct" play according to your B.S. chart and always bet by the count. Is that not exactly what they are taught? Is that using your God given brain? Well think about that extremely common shoe (about half of all shoes) where the count stayed negative or close to it, all the way to the cut off card. What exactly did that mean? What does your BRAIN tell you happened in that shoe? Well for all you guys who have been taught not to use your brain, I'll tell you what it means. It means that a preponderance of dealer favorable lows were trapped behind the cut off card and never came into play. It means that a preponderance of player favorable tens WERE in play throughout the shoe. It means that our card counter just sat there like an idiot through a highly player favorable shoe. Is that skill? No, that's stupidity. That's what they are taught to be, oblivious to what's going on directly under their nose. So what was our card counter waiting for? A high count. Well let's take the opposite shoe. The count goes up at the beginning and stays positive all the way to the cut off card. Our card counter bets like crazy. negative progressions and all, just like he is taught. Was that a player favorable shoe? Well I'll answer again for the non thinkers, the lemmings. Hell no it wasn't player favorable. That count means that a preponderance of player favorable highs got trapped behind the cut off card. Everybody loses and our counter likely lost the most. See why the casinos introduced the cut off card? See why they keep moving it further up the shoe.? See why they move it to the middle whenever a counter sits down. See why they ignore the cut off card altogether in single deck and simply shuffle up whenever they want to? Well maybe not. Maybe you need time to get used to using your brain after all that brain washing. Maybe +1-1 is a little too complex for you right now. Let me make it real, real simple for you. Card counting hasn't produced a single winner since the days of single deck BJ. Does that tell you anything? Even their best and most infamous player, Kenny Uston, quit the game in disgust because he couldn't beat multideck BJ. At all! Does that tell you anything? You have never seen a card counting instructor conduct a public demonstration of his wears in a real casino, put his money where his mouth is. Why not! I've done it hundreds of times. Many of you have watched me. Oh yeah, save Jerry Patterson. I have to give credit where credit is due. After watching me do it several times, Jerry tried it in Vegas. The casinos even let him bring cameras in with a full camera crew. Why? They never let me do that. Maybe because they knew exactly what the outcome would be. Yep, he lost! Again and again and again. Mortified, he quit teaching counting forever and began selling NBJ. Does that tell you anything? Their top garu, Stanford Wong quit and went to work for Jerry Patterson. Does that tell you anything? Well, I hate to be so rude. It's not in my nature. But I am just one tiny voice in the wilderness. Vegas, maybe that is just what folks need - a rude awakening. NBJ refreshingly frees you to use your brain and teaches you exactly how. NBJ is based on actual fact, actual casino conditions. It is not based on the wishful thinking or the conditions some non playing, high paid card counting garu wishes was happening. NBJ is based on what IS. Also refreshingly, we have lots of winning players ready and willing to help you at every turn. And I'm not talking card counting peanuts here, I'm talking real money. Stop banging your head against a brick wall. It feels so good when you stop. Join the winners! It's not expensive as some of these jerks would have you believe. It's cheap, probably less than your average loss. And its fun and there is lots of comradery here. I've been teaching NBJ for more than 20 years and over 4000 players. I can teach you too.

Hi Zenwin: First, I don't mind answering general questions on the public forum because we don't get into the specifics of NBJ. But it gives the sharper, more experienced public players sufficient information to know that we know exactly what we are talking about. When they compare us to other BJ sites they will find that we are far and away the best there is. I seriously doubt that they can find another site that is run by an actual player. If you don't have the experience of playing this game, the experience of putting your own hard earned money where your mouth is, you don't qualify to teach others how to bet THEIR hard earned money. Let's take your last question first: Does the casino know who you are? If you win with any regularity, yes, they know who you are. Can you prevent it? NO. Here's a war story that makes my point clear: My son Mark and I developed a partners Baccarat system that is almost impossible for the casino to beat. Partners Baccarat is one of the things we get into over on the members Baccarat forum. We thought we had the secrecy of it down pat. We stayed at the Claridge in AC but played the Sands across the street. We walked into the Sands separately about a half hour apart. We sat at the same table but never spoke to or acknowledged each other. We picked the Sands because neither of us had ever played Bac there before. We entered the game at different times. After we had both been in the Big Bac, $100 game about an hour, the casino shift changed. The old pit boss was updating the new pit boss as to what was going on in the game. Although they were about 8 feet behind me I could hear every word of this conversation. I have very good ears and I have learned how to exploit this ability in the casino. The old pit boss said, word for word: "Everybody is down a little except for two guys. That's E. Clifton Davis at 9 and that's his son Mark at 3. They are playing partners. Ellis is betting repeats and Mark is betting opposites. They are $800 up at the moment." Never underestimate the casino. They are much sharper than they seem. Now, let's answer your question 2 above: This was a very astute observation. And very useful! It's in your manual. Remember what I said about your manual: Your first reading only a few light bulbs will turn on. But the more you read it the more light bulbs turn on. Our pros here still read their manuals and light bulbs still turn on. I just had one of the long time pros this morning ask me for a new WCB manual because he had worn out his old manual. It is a good trick to ALWAYS note what the dealer is breaking on. In some games, yes, she is breaking where she is "supposed" to be breaking: in high ratio rounds with a first card 10. But in MANY games she might very well NEVER be breaking where she is supposed to be breaking but repeatedly breaking with low ups and in low ratio rounds. Now think about that. If you KNOW where the dealer is breaking isn't that extremely useful information? Isn't that REALLY what BJ is all about - to correctly anticipate dealer breaks? You will be the ONLY player in such a game to note this information. AND, you will be the only winner. I guarantee it. Just keep reading your manual. There are many, many invaluable tips in there that help you beat games nobody else can beat. Ask any of the pros here. They are very, very accustomed to being the only winner at the table. They are ALWAYS the most enlightened player at the table. If you're going to gamble, be good at it. Now lets take 1. above. NO, there is no counting method that predicts the order of card fall. In fact, YOU will soon be able to do this better than he does it. See what your manual has to say about Zippers. And there are many other tricks to this in your manual. Sometimes you can predict with seemingly uncanny accuracy. Case in point: Keith and I were in AC on a crowded Sat night to count dealer first card tens. Table after table, casino after casino, up and down the boardwalk, they were getting 8 out of 13 first card tens. I would have said this was totally impossible if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. Later we had a dozen experienced statistic gatherers checking the same phenomenon. We had a hundred checking it in Vegas where 6 tens out of 13 is common on Saturday night. Such games cannot be beat by anyone. It's one of those things your manual teaches you to check. So, anyway, I said to Keith "I sure ain't gonna play tonight, I'm coming back tomorrow early to play NEW cards." Walked into Caesar's at 8 AM. I was a little too early and ended up playing one shoe of last night's cards for red and lost nearly every hand in the 4 player game. The new cards came out. The other 3 players left and I played the dealer head to head for green. I killed him and in the third shoe I won or pushed on ever hand. That's a lot of hands in 8 deck without a loss. So the dealer stopped the game and called the pit boss over and said; "This guy can see the cards!" "What makes you say that!" "He just won every hand in the shoe!" - a slight exaggeration, "and he never plays the same way twice - sometimes he hits 16 against my ten and sometimes he doesn't but he's never wrong" So I pipe in: "You didn't complain four shoes ago when I LOST every hand so why complain now?" The pit boss was having none of that and says "OK buddy, what's the next card in the shoe?" Me, "This is ridiculous, I don't know!" "GUESS!" "OK, the 4 of clubs!" The pit boss pulled the next card and unfortunately, you guessed it, it was indeed, the 4 of clubs. I was the only one shocked by this. "YOU'RE OUT OF HERE!!!" "does this mean I can't have breakfast at the....." "GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!!!!!" See, sometimes our predictive abilities can get us into a little hot water. Later that day it was all over Atlantic City. "Davis can see the cards in the dealer shoe before they're dealt!" Now that gave me a few problems for a while. So don't worry about your big player. He was just a very experienced player showing off to a rookie. It won't be long and you'll be showing him a thing or two. Should we take a second card? Absolutely, sometimes 5 or 6. How often have you stood only to find that you could have taken three more hits? Here's a good rule of thumb: If lows are running, assume they will run forever. That's right out of your manual. AGAIN! Why would you do this? Because YOU are the only player at the table who KNOWS that lows follow lows more often than they randomly should just like highs follow highs more often than they randomly should. The odds are with you. How do WE know that? Because we tested that statistic over millions of hands. How do YOU know that? Because its in your manual. Again. Will you ALWAYS be right? Of course not. But thankfully BJ is not about ALWAYS is it. BJ is about USUALLY! There is such a thing as not breaking enough. Think about it. If you NEVER hit to a breaking card you could NEVER win could you? We call them "chicken hitters!" Chicken hitters are to be dispised and avoided. Why? Because they don't take their fair share of dealer favorable lows out of the game. They leave them for the dealer and cause everyone at the table to lose, except the dealer. On the other hand YOU would always win if ALL the other players at the table kept hitting until they couldn't hit anymore. We proved that beyond all doubt in our Bahama Team Play Adventure. All 8 5 man teams won every shoe until they kicked us out of both casinos. How? Easy! 4 sacrifice players played $5 chips and hit out. The Big Player at first played black normally. He couldn't lose. No lows left for the dealer. She began breaking HALF the time. We all split the money afterwards. Lot's of it! Enough to pay our hotel, our meals our plane fare and still bring home a wad of cash. Now that's the kind of vacation I like! Maybe us members can get together for Bahamas TWO!

Sorry guys, I was a little busy with Zenwin (good news) Billy Baxter (bad news) and Christmas and SAP. I would like to hear your comments on The Art Of Doubling which I posted on both the private and public BJ forums. If you post on the private forum, I'll decide which posts to also put on the public forum. Also, I would like to see you guys put some input into Zenwins messages. She's doing a great job selling NBJ. There are several new players keying off Zenwin's posts and our replys. Also, where is Mad Dog? Mad Dog??? OK, losing games: First and most important: I look at EVERY losing game and EVERY losing session as a mistake. Theoretically it is possible to play W/O losing. Therefore, for every loss I like to identify the mistake I made. I never chalk off a mistake to bad luck. There is no such thing as luck in BJ. If you lose you did SOMETHING wrong. What was it? While it is good to note the circumstances surrounding a win so that you can duplicate it, I think it is even more important to study the circumstances surrounding a loss so you can avoid them in the future. I find that most losses are caused by My own lack of condition to play. That is why I always count down a deck to check my physical condition before each session. There is a natural boost of adrenaline in the pre-session moments. Sometimes this adrenaline rush makes you seem to be alert when in reality you are too tired to give it your best. Poor condition makes you tend to take short cuts finding the right game. It makes you stay in the wrong game too long. And of course it clouds your play and your judgement. You are less alert to ALL that is going on in the game. You are much better off to identify the reason for the loss rather than the excuse for the loss. ANYONE giving himself an excuse to lose, will! Excuses are to be avoided at all costs! There is ALWAYS a reason for a loss. Identify that reason, study it and don't ever make the same mistake again. Let losses TEACH you rather than ruin your spirits. YOU are the BEST player in the casino. Think that way! Act that way and never never ignore rule number one: NEVER play a losing game!

Well put Zenwin and congrats on an early win. We all remember those starting days. You're right about the amount of the win. It doesn't matter right now. The first step is to learn to win without being swayed by the table. You'll soon learn that the table LOSES. The second step is to learn how to win BIG! That one is the easier of the two steps. Big wins are strictly a function of the color of the chips. AND, the cards don't know what color chips you are playing. You bring up a point worth discussing. Players, in general, play like lemmings. It's a case of the blind leading the blind. If you play like they do, like they want you to play, you'll lose just like they do. When you're first starting out there is a lot of table pressure to play WRONG just as they do. There are two big mistakes you can make because of this pressure. 1.) you can succome to pressure to play like them or 2.) You can find yorself playing opposite them, sort of out of spite. BOTH are wrong! Play your hands exactly as I teach you. Sometimes you will be with the table, sometimes you will be against the table. Ignore the table! I know this is very difficult starting out but it separates the winners from the losers. This problem will soon vanish. While everyone has a lucky night once in a blue moon the fact is NOBODY wins consistently except NBJ players. You will soon build a reputation both with the casino AND with the players. Soon, no one will question your plays. In fact, they will begin studying your plays. You know you have it made when the players start asking YOU questions rather than asking the dealer. And you really know when the DEALER starts asking you questions. They play too, you know. This business about the casino hating you and back rooms and all that crap is just that, a lot of crap people pick up from $10 books. Wearing disguises and all that crap is a lot of heuy. The book writers feed you all that crap because they have no idea what really happens when you win. They've never been there. Yes, the casino tries everything to beat you but when you beat them anyway what really happens is you get a lot of respect from them. Dealers, in particular, love winning players. You become their hero. They like to study your play and pick up tips from you. You're on your way now! Keep it up! Don't get over confident. Think it through. Don't play losing games. Pick your spots just like I teach you. There's plenty of great players here that will help you all the way.

And one other thing while we are talking about doubling. BS books fail to mention this: Once you signal you are doubling you can only get one card. The casino does this to reduce your chances of a successful double. Meanwhile the dealer is allowed all the hits she needs. Therefore, since you are now betting twice as much money, you better have a good idea of what that one card is. You are betting you will get a ten. The BS players odds are 4 out of 13. Yours are much, much higher since we only double with highs running. No read - no double. Low card read - no double. High card read or ten's running - double. Thats why we are at 90%! That's why they are at 50%. That's what learning to think it through gets you. Or, You could play by some 30 year old chart. It's right half the time. Whichever you prefer.

And one other thing while we are talking about doubling. BS books fail to mention this: Once you signal you are doubling you can only get one card. The casino does this to reduce your chances of a successful double. Meanwhile the dealer is allowed all the hits she needs. Therefore, since you are now betting twice as much money, you better have a good idea of what that one card is. You are betting you will get a ten. The BS players odds are 4 out of 13. Yours are much, much higher since we only double with highs running. No read - no double. Low card read - no double. High card read or ten's running - double. Thats why we are at 90%! That's why they are at 50%. That's what learning to think it through gets you. Or, You could play by some 30 year old chart. It's right half the time. Whichever you prefer.

12-24-2007, 01:49 PM Zenwin Junior Member Join Date: Nov 2007 Posts: 8 Rep Power: 0 Re: The art of doubling -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you Ellis. I am enlightened. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to Every Member !! Zenwin View Public Profile Send a private message to Zenwin Find all posts by Zenwin Add Zenwin to Your Buddy List #3 12-24-2007, 03:09 PM CarlosM A Blackjack God Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Canada. Toronto, Ontario. Posts: 198 Rep Power: 39 Re: The art of doubling -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Merry Christmas everyone. I want this to be the best new year for everyone. __________________ Carlos Maiato Molina CarlosM View Public Profile Send a private message to CarlosM Send email to CarlosM Find all posts by CarlosM Add CarlosM to Your Buddy List #4 12-27-2007, 08:37 AM E. Clifton Davis Professional Player Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 379 Rep Power: 42 Re: The art of doubling -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Merry Christmas right back. However I see a flaw in my art of doubling reply that I would like to correct here so as not to mislead you into making indiscriminate doubles. While the 9 vs 8 part of my reply is correct, I later implied that you would ALWAYS double on 11 vs. 5 or 6. I did not mean to make that implication. If you were to always double on 11 vs 5 or 6, it would make you much less of a player than I want you to be. Of course the basic strategist and card counters are taught to ALWAYS double on 11 vs. 5 or 6. This is one of the major flaws in the mathematics of card counting and Basic Strategy. And it is one of those many opportunities where we get to use our head rather than the chart. Charts can't think! We Can, and MUST to win! 11 vs 5 or 6 SOUNDS good but consider this. It STILL depends on what's running. It is no good if lows are running and they very often ARE with this hand. How do I KNOW that? Simple: The dealer has a low and you have at least 1 low, probably 2. That's a lot of lows. Lows may well be running. Why do I say you probably have 2 lows? You have 11 right? You can't have a 10 and a 1, that's BJ. The highest card you could have is a 9. But more likely you have a 5 and 6 or a 7 and 4. Either way, the way WE distinguish highs from low, the best and most accurate way, you have two lows. You DON'T ever want to double with lows running. In all likelihood you'll get a stiff right when the dealer can't break. You lose! Now, Ain't that just a little bit smarter than your BS chart? You bet. Also consider these two things: 1. Basic Strategy says ALWAYS assume the dealer has a ten in the hole. Why would you ever assume something that is going to be WRONG 9 times out of 13. Isn't that a little NAIVE? - to use a polite word. Your hole card read will be better in some games than others depending on the degree of clumping BUT IT WILL NEVER BE WRONG 9 OUT OF 13 as Basic Strategy is. See where using your head can get you? 2. And consider this: Basic Strategy ALWAYS calls the play according to the dealer's UP card. EVERY single play. This is INSANE! There are exactly as many low cards as high cards and MORE low cards than tens. Her UP card is only HALF her hand. It is often the LEAST important information available on the table. WHY would you bet on THAT? What you want to bet your hard earned money ON is the MOST important information on the table. What is the dealers WHOLE hand? IS it strong or weak? That is precisely why we teach you to always access the dealers ENTIRE hand. And that is why we painstakingly teach you exactly how to do that. That is the MOST important element of NBJ after finding the right game in the first place. Finding the right game will ALWAYS be your most important task. Then comes assessing the dealer's ENTIRE hand AND assessing your hit card as well as the dealer's. That is why you are ALWAYS at first or third. That is where you get your greatest accuracy with these all important assessments. Will you ALWAYS be right? In some games where the clumping is right you will virtually always be right but you will be right less in random cards. But you will ALWAYS be right far, far, far more often than the Basick Strategy player who is taught to ridiculosly base every play on thin air - the dealer's up card. But remember, we ALWAYS beat random cards. Basic Strategy USUALLY beats random cards. That is precisely why the casino avoids random cards as much as possible. The entire game, rules, shuffles, presentation, table crowding and a host of other things is carefully designed by the best casino experts to avoid random cards. That is why ALL dealers are taught to give you the "correct" Basic Strategy play whenever you ask. That is why the casino gives out Basic Strategy charts and why they sell basic strategy and card counting books right in their casinos. BUT, that is also why we devoted an entire extra manual to exactly how to find the beatable games and exactly how to avoid the losers. It's a war out there! Basic Strategy and card counting is like going to war against the most formidable foe armed with a pea shooter. We arm you with the best weapon there is. We teach you how to use your brains. These days EVERYONE, even the Basic Strategy Card Counters, agree that the cards aren't random. Well if they aren't random, what are they? What is the opposite of random? Yep, PREDICTABLE! We use the casino's own orchestration to beat them. That's pretty darn ironic isn't it? But ask anyone on the private forum. NBJ beats them and these pros on the forum have the money to prove it. I'm not talking 1/2 % here. I'm talking hundreds of thousands of dollars. That's why we play the game! __________________ Order Universal Baccarat

Merry Christmas right back. However I see a flaw in my art of doubling reply that I would like to correct here so as not to mislead you into making indiscriminate doubles. While the 9 vs 8 part of my reply is correct, I later implied that you would ALWAYS double on 11 vs. 5 or 6. I did not mean to make that implication. If you were to always double on 11 vs 5 or 6, it would make you much less of a player than I want you to be. Of course the basic strategist and card counters are taught to ALWAYS double on 11 vs. 5 or 6. This is one of the major flaws in the mathematics of card counting and Basic Strategy. And it is one of those many opportunities where we get to use our head rather than the chart. Charts can't think! We Can, and MUST to win! 11 vs 5 or 6 SOUNDS good but consider this. It STILL depends on what's running. It is no good if lows are running and they very often ARE with this hand. How do I KNOW that? Simple: The dealer has a low and you have at least 1 low, probably 2. That's a lot of lows. Lows may well be running. Why do I say you probably have 2 lows? You have 11 right? You can't have a 10 and a 1, that's BJ. The highest card you could have is a 9. But more likely you have a 5 and 6 or a 7 and 4. Either way, the way WE distinguish highs from low, the best and most accurate way, you have two lows. You DON'T ever want to double with lows running. In all likelihood you'll get a stiff right when the dealer can't break. You lose! Now, Ain't that just a little bit smarter than your BS chart? You bet. Also consider these two things: 1. Basic Strategy says ALWAYS assume the dealer has a ten in the hole. Why would you ever assume something that is going to be WRONG 9 times out of 13. Isn't that a little NAIVE? - to use a polite word. Your hole card read will be better in some games than others depending on the degree of clumping BUT IT WILL NEVER BE WRONG 9 OUT OF 13 as Basic Strategy is. See where using your head can get you? 2. And consider this: Basic Strategy ALWAYS calls the play according to the dealer's UP card. EVERY single play. This is INSANE! There are exactly as many low cards as high cards and MORE low cards than tens. Her UP card is only HALF her hand. It is often the LEAST important information available on the table. WHY would you bet on THAT? What you want to bet your hard earned money ON is the MOST important information on the table. What is the dealers WHOLE hand? IS it strong or weak? That is precisely why we teach you to always access the dealers ENTIRE hand. And that is why we painstakingly teach you exactly how to do that. That is the MOST important element of NBJ after finding the right game in the first place. Finding the right game will ALWAYS be your most important task. Then comes assessing the dealer's ENTIRE hand AND assessing your hit card as well as the dealer's. That is why you are ALWAYS at first or third. That is where you get your greatest accuracy with these all important assessments. Will you ALWAYS be right? In some games where the clumping is right you will virtually always be right but you will be right less in random cards. But you will ALWAYS be right far, far, far more often than the Basick Strategy player who is taught to ridiculosly base every play on thin air - the dealer's up card. But remember, we ALWAYS beat random cards. Basic Strategy USUALLY beats random cards. That is precisely why the casino avoids random cards as much as possible. The entire game, rules, shuffles, presentation, table crowding and a host of other things is carefully designed by the best casino experts to avoid random cards. That is why ALL dealers are taught to give you the "correct" Basic Strategy play whenever you ask. That is why the casino gives out Basic Strategy charts and why they sell basic strategy and card counting books right in their casinos. BUT, that is also why we devoted an entire extra manual to exactly how to find the beatable games and exactly how to avoid the losers. It's a war out there! Basic Strategy and card counting is like going to war against the most formidable foe armed with a pea shooter. We arm you with the best weapon there is. We teach you how to use your brains. These days EVERYONE, even the Basic Strategy Card Counters, agree that the cards aren't random. Well if they aren't random, what are they? What is the opposite of random? Yep, PREDICTABLE! We use the casino's own orchestration to beat them. That's pretty darn ironic isn't it? But ask anyone on the private forum. NBJ beats them and these pros on the forum have the money to prove it. I'm not talking 1/2 % here. I'm talking hundreds of thousands of dollars. That's why we play the game!

You don't know. Yeah, you can get a clue from the isle but you don't KNOW. That is why you capture the chair and say to the dealer I'll start the next shoe. Do this right after a shoe has started if at all possible. This gives you a whole shoe to determine how best to play that table. And when you start you STILL need to test the water because now you're playing the other color you haven't checked yet. Fortunately in BJ there is USUALLY little difference between deck colors but now and then their is. Don't be in a hurry. It's not about time or dollars per hour. It's about who leaves the casino with the most money. When you sit down think of yourself as a gathering storm. If you like what you see fine. If you don't, that's why you keep one foot on the floor. In the test the water phase always be ready to pick up and leave. We never challenge the dealer, we only play games we know we can win. Some days that means we don't play at all. Fine. That's better than losing.

It doesn't take that long if you get plenty of practice time in. It's good if you can have a place in your home allocated to practice so you don't have to waste time setting up and tearing down every time. It is also good to develop your abilities of abstract thinking. In other words to think in pictures. Picture the paint as waves in a calm sea. How big are the waves and how many rounds are they lasting? The object is to avoid betting high into a suspected low round. And to avoid betting low into a suspected high round. Pay particular attention to the last 5 cards in a round. They are a BIG clue as to what's coming in the next round. Fortunately you don't have to be right ALL the time and you won't be. The whole idea is to be right MOST of the time. So how do we use this skill once we have perfected it? We know that from Third base our 3 bet prog works best in random cards. BUT a random table is seldom consistently random throughout the shoe. We usually have one or two high clumps somewhere and their corresponding low clumps. At a mostly random table we could ignore those rare clumps, stick to our 3 bet prog religeously, and do pretty well. BUT, we are always striving to be as good as we possibly can be. To that end we watch for and anticipate these high AND LOW clumps and adjust our prog accordingly. For instance: As you may know, we tend to do better in low card clumps than the rest of the table. They are trained to sit there and stand and let the dealer win in low card clumps. We know better. But suppose, playing a 1,4,6 we win our one bet at the end of a low card clump and see from the final cards that we are going into the high card clump where our odds are better. We might very well win 2 or 3 more 1 bets in that high card clump. As you begin your casino play, you will be perfectly happy to win 4 or 5 one bets in a row. But, as you sharpen your skills you will tend to chastise yourself for doing that. You'll frown and say "all those one bets should have been 2 bets. I should have known." See, for the high card clump duration you should have changed your prog from 146 to 246. You see that? The reverse can happen where you lose your 1 bet just in time for a low card clump. So do you bet 4 right into the known or suspected low card clump? It's brave but is it smart? Usually not. Change your prog to 1146 or even 11146. The object being to bet 1 throughout the low card clump. This way we can often squeeze out a few more units out of a good shoe. Does it ALWAYS work? Not important. Does it usually work? Yep. Now, as Carlos is quick to point out, Some games your performance in low card clumps is sooo good that you simply forget all that and stick to your 146. But tables are not always that good. The tougher a table is the more your honed skills come into play. But don't rely on your skills too much. Always remember that our TOP priority is to find the EASIEST game in the Casino. Carlos is so good at that that he often finds it unnecessary to alter his prog. The key to getting THERE, Carlos will agree, is practice.

Figure it this way. There are 4 tens in every 13 cards. If there are more, the ratio is high, less the ratio is low. While this sounds somewhat difficult at first it is one of the reasons that we push home practice. Eventually you get to a skill level where you can declare a round high, low, or neutral at a glance without counting anything. We call this going by the paint on the table. Now Carlos likes to go a little further than that. He looks at high cards vs low cards instead of paint. I can't knock success. What he does obviously works for him. We could actually count high vs. lows by assigning +1 to low cards and -1 to high cards. That's how counters do it. And many NBJ players do that esp. X cardcounters, which many NBJ players are. This, of course, works, but I don't encourage it. There are many important things going on in any BJ game. I like my players to be extremely observant. Things like hole card reads, dealer biases, etc. I fear a player can get so preoccupied by counting that he misses other more important information. Paint gives you a good picture of what's going on with the high card distribution. Whatever is going on with the highs is also automatically going on with lows. I've tried both methods and for me I prefer the paint approach.

No Zenwin, NBJ players would NOT have doubled. You did the right thing. While we sometimes double where no body else would like 8 against 7 with highs running, overall we double significantly less. We are much safer because we ALWAYS go by what's running. If you went to a casino and simply recorded the outcomes of players' double downs as we have, even if you only recorded book double dows (basic strategy double downs), you would find that overall, players lose on double downs. Splits too for that matter. Yep, it's true, street players would be better off to NEVER doule or split (or insure or surrender for that matter). Yep, the very plays that are supposed to work to the players advantage actually add to his destruction. We KNOW this for an absolute fact because we have recorded tens of thousands of actual casino outcomes. But, if you record an NBJ player's outcomes you will quickly see that we win a very impressive percentage of our doubles, splits, insurance, and surrender outcomes. That's the name of the game. How often you doubledown is not important. What is important is how often you WIN your doubles. (or splits) Our record on insurance is even more impressive. While most players lose overall on insurance, we win the vast majority of our insurance bets. In fact it is not uncommon for us to decide EVERY insurace bet correctly in a given game. I was once ejected from the Claridge in A.C. solely for making EVERY insurance decision correct for 4.5 hours straight. BTW, we don't call it correct when you play by some book's version of correct. We call it correct when you WIN.

Here is another new member. I'm transferring her Email correspondance to this thread because it is a good thread for questions that everyone can benefit from: Ellis, I have been busy doing my homework this week. I got the WCB manual out again and studied the head to head section. I also purchases the IN SEARCH OF and studied it. Good, that will help. Tuesday evening after work I went to Argosy hoping to see them do a wash before opening more tables as the crowd came in, but in spite of hearing the dealers and pit talk about opening more tables, the crowd remained about the same, so no tables were opened. I watched for a while but the games did not look very good. Right, the Casino Mgr sees it as his most important job to precisely limit the number of tables he opens to the crowd at hand to create the greatest no. of players per table possible while at the same time insurring that everyone has a place to play. Does Argosy have Poker? Poker makes the Casino Mgr's job much tougher because people will head for the poker room rather than endure crowded BJ conditions. Therefore BJ conditions are always better at casinos that also have poker. Recognize that the casino mgr KNOWS that the more players in a BJ game the more it favors the casino. Unfortunately, we inadvertantly taught them that many years ago. ALL casinos have there own copy of NBJ. We can't stop them. Today, I braved ice and snow and made it to Argosy at about 9am. I watched one table that had been opened at about 8am. Five people were playing, but none of them were winning any chips. There were some small clumps but first base play didn’t seem very consistent. When I predicted a 10, often a low card would appear. The dealer was breaking at some strange times when I did not predict it. Right, 5 players will almost always create dealer biases that favor the dealer. That is why we seldom play 5 player games. When a new table finally opened up, I watched the dealer do a real wash and you could definitely see green felt. When the game opened there were only three players, and as I watched the first three shoes, the dealer was definitely getting more than his share of blackjacks. Two of the times I predicted the blackjacks, but the three other times the dealer’s blackjacks occurred on low cards rounds when they were not expected. The cards seemed to be mixed well but with some small clumps. How would you play this game? One player was making progressive bets, but he would win a prog or two and then lose. After three shoes, he was still about even in chips. Right, first I would check it for first base play. In spite of the wash, the cards may well be clumped enough for successful first base play. While prep monitoring is good, in the end the cards tell the tale. It doesn't take a lot of clumping to create good First Base conditions. But remember that your entry will change the player number. This might make First Base conditions better or worse so you MUST test the water. If Third looked good I would try it with a low grade prog like 123. But my emphasis would be on avoiding betting high into a suspected low tens ratio round. In this type of game (not the easiest) Monitoring the tens ratio is the name of the game. The question you need to answer is can you fairly accurately predict the next round as high or low? If you can't, get out. But if you can, this makes this game fairly easy to beat. When you suspect a low round, bet 1 even if you just lost the last hand. Save your 2 and 3 bets for when you suspect high rounds. The prog player probably religiously played his prog regardless. This is fine for Random cards but not clumped. Had he delayed his higher bets and saved them for high ratio he probably would have done much better. How would you play this type of wash? I was having more trouble reading the cards after being used to seven players. Thanks for you help. Right, 7 players usually makes it easier to read the cards but unfortunately that only serves to tell you why you are going to lose with 7 players. We sometimes practice with 7 players to purposely clump the cards up to the conditiond we face in the casino but that is the only purpose of practicing with 7. Once they are clumped we change our practice down to the number of players we usually play with in the casino. The key is to practice under the same conditions you expect to play. OK, the rest is earlier correspondance you may find interesting: Ellis, Thanks for sending the tapes. Springboro is about 20 minutes south of Dayton, Ohio. I live about 30 minutes north of Cincinnati. And the nearest and best Indiana riverboat is the Argosy which is about an hours drive for me. While the Argosy sits on the Indiana shore side of the Ohio River, to my knowledge they are no longer actually taking the Argosy out of dock as they used to when the casino first opened. They originally required an eight dollar fee per person for a two hour outing. But so many passengers remained aboard that they eventually remained docked so that passengers could come and go as they pleased. Some of the gamblers will tell you that they have been playing all night and all day long, so there is no limit to how long you can stay. I have never seen them change cards, but I was told that they open with new cards early in the morning when only a few tables are open. As they open new tables throughout the day, they open new packs of cards, show all the cards in the decks face up in order, and then the dealer does a circular swirl type wash of the new cards, and then they shuffle. At the six deck tables, they divide the decks into six equal piles and then do a crisscross shuffling of a small pile from each side. They shuffle each pile twice, but then they strip each pile, and I think this is what makes it difficult. I do not know the name of this type shuffle, but the stripping makes the games choppy. So card reading seems more difficult in this type of game. From the card read you are expecting a 10, but up pops a 3. If I keep hitting to 17, I almost always bust. How can I overcome this type shuffle? I do not think they are cheating. But with all the stripping, they make it difficult to win. The dealer does offer a player a cut. The tables are very crowded, but I did go last Thursday evening, and I think that I have found a good time to play. The Argosy is in the process of building a new bigger boat which should be ready in the next year or two. But right now choices and tables are limited. There are several uncrowded $25 min tables where the card flow seems better, but I think I need to build up my confidence and experience first. There are some eight deck games on a lower level of the riverboat, but most of those games have changed to continuous shuffling machines within the last year. Can NBJ work with an automatic continuous shuffling machine? In the 6 deck hand shuffled games, it is S17, DAS, Insurance, no surrender. The dealer does deal her own first card up. Backing betting is not allowed. Being new to the concept of clumping, I have difficulty seeing patterns yet. While I am seeing a lot of low card clumps and some less numerous high cards clumps, it does seem like at least 3 or 4 players at the table are often getting intermixed high card/low card combinations. I do not know if it is normal to have so many 10-3s, 10-4s, 10-5s, and 10-6s. After reading NBJ and the World Class Blackjack, maybe this is what happens in every casino, and I just need to learn to adjust my strategy and learn how to better overcome the 12-16 card dilemmas in order to improve my game. Last Thursday evening I did find a first base seat where I was playing the first base strategy and it was working. I was only making some simple $10 unit bets with some $15 and $20 dollar bets when the cards were favorable. I managed to win $140 when no one else at the table seemed to be winning. When other players started coming and going quickly, the game started to deteriorate, so I quit and went to another table. There I played 3rd base, but I quickly lost $70. Is there any hope for me? This game fascinates me and frustrates me at the same time! Any advice that you can give me would be much appreciated. OK this is ALL good news and yes, this game is beatable depending on your ability to schedule your play. Tell me about your personal schedule. Are you free to come and go as you please or do you have scheduling limitations? Essentially what we have here is an ordinary land based casino that happens to be in the river. If it is always open. It is playing A.C. rules. They put the cards IN ORDER? This is very important. Like they put the cards in boxed card order by suit A thru deuce? To show that all the cards are there. ALL casinos used to do that but most have stopped it and merely string the cards out face up in no particular order. If they put them in order this gives us something to work with so I want you to be absolutely sure. You are going to need In Search Of. I can simply tell you what to do but It would be a whole lot better if you understood WHY you are doing what you are doing. The ISO manual will cover that detail nicely. I know you've just spent a lot of moey but if need be I will comp you to ISO and you can pay us later out of winnings. Let me know. That circular swirl you mention is called a wash. There are two kinds. One we call an eye wash. Here, the dealer uses the palms of her hands and you never see green felt down through the cards. The other, a real wash, the dealer uses her finger tips and you DO see green felt. This is a much more thorough wash. I need to know which they use. Can you do that? With all of the great information you have given me it appears from what I know thus far that our first target should be new cards. We need to do some detective work first. Their standard card prep should produce consistent results. We need to know what those results are. They will likely consistently produce either good first base or third base conditions. We need to know which. Don't play yet, just watch. Your target is new cards right after the wash. Here is what you look for: Call 2-7 low and 8-k high. Aces swing. If they follow a high they are high. If they follow a low, they are low. Are the cards coming out of the shoe in clumps of highs and clumps of lows? This is usually the case when they put the cards in order. We call this boxed card clumping. It is often ideal for first base play. OR, are the cards, in spite of putting them in order, coming out of the shoe randomly intermixed between high and low (ideal third base conditions. Can you do that? There are 2 major advantages to playing new cards: 1. Consistency, 2. New cards do not have a dealer bias. Dealer biases are caused by play. As observant as you are, you have probably noticed that the dealer gets more than her fair share of good hands - Too many first card tens, (more than 4 out of 13, often as many as 6 or even 8 particularly in 8 deck). She breaks less than her mathematical 1 out of 3 or 4 - more like 1 out of 6 or 10. And she seems to be able to hit with relative impunity while you hit and break. Have you noticed this? That is what we call dealer bias. New cards do not have dealer bias. That's why we'll target them first. Well that's enough for now. Oh one other thing. You have the WCB manual right? I want you to study the chapter on head to head play. Don't be nervous. I won't ask you to do anything you are uncomfortable with until you are comfortable with it. But I want you to be ready when the time is right. Have faith! I did not know if I should email you and if you would prefer that I send questions to the Beat the Casino website. I did not think that it was fair to put all the Argosy info on the website, but maybe parts of these questions would be helpful to other new members. Feel free to edit out parts if you would like some of my questions to be on the website. I do not know if there are very many other new members who are struggling like me. Some of the website players seem much more sophisticated and are so far above my playing level. I feel like I have a million questions and I don’t know what to ask first. I go to the website every day, hoping to learn more. I have also tried to read and learn as much as possible. Unfortunately, much information is contradictory and often you feel like you are going around and around in circles. Hopefully those tapes will arrive soon and will offer me more insight. Thanks again for all your advice.

Aha, caught you. You guys were slipping this thread right by me. Vegas92c, Please feel free to Email me privately at ellis@beatthecasino.com or any other BJ player for that matter. Vegas, Carlos is right, if you are an NBJ player you are welcome to the private forum. Just Email keith@beatthecasino.com and tell him who you are and ask for admittance. Remember Keith? He was at Latham too. Turning Stone? You mean to tell me that nobody has shut them down for cheating yet? After I caught them redhanded cheating in Baccarat and killed them anyway in both Bac and BJ, they limited both Ann and me to a $50 combined bet. I took the hint. Hey good to have you aboard but let me know who you are. There were a lot of people at Latham. That's over 20 years now isn't it?

Yes, preparing the red and blue shoe differently is a casino stunt. They probably learned it in Baccarat where they employ that tactic quite frequently. This is why we ALWAYS test the water when we begin play. Yes, we buy in for 12 units. But there is nothing that says we need to waste all 12 in a shoe that is bad from the start. That is why we usually start a new table with a 1,1,2 prog or even a 1,1,1. We certainly are not going to stay in a game where we lose the first 3 hands. We do everything from the isle that we can do to protect ourselves. But it is difficult to play a second shoe from the isle. What often happens is some idiot will see you looking over a chair and slip under your elbow and take it himself. The best thing to do when red vs. blue raises its ugly head is walk away after appraising one color and if good, come back and appraise the other color. Sometimes, in Baccarat, we know to play one color and skip the other color. That tactic might come in handy for you. The effects of the created difference between red and blue should dissapate after 2 hours of play but don't count on that as an absolute. It depends on the number of players and the speed of play. It is obvious that for a relatively new player you are extremely observant. You will probably have to continue to monitor red vs. blue. The casino will attempt to make one color random and the other clumped. To some degree you can soften the difference with your play. Favor basic in the random color but let the tens ratio decide your decisions in the clumped color. Favor hitting in LOW tens ratio and standing in HIGH tens ratio. Remember that most dealer breaking will occur in high tens ratio and least in low tens ratio. You need to take some strolls through the high stakes arena if they let you. What you want to know is if they apply the same tactic in the high stakes pit. Often they don't. High stakes is "usually" under different mgt. You will usually find the games better there but not always. "Winning activity"? Your Target slip is showing. But that's OK. Carlos?

Oh, also you will find that only a few light bulbs will turn on during your first reading. This is because everything is so new to you and so vastly different from everything you've ever heard or read. But during your second reading more light bulbs will turn on and you will begin to realize that everything is related to everything else. It will take many readings before you begin to complete the picture. Our best players still read their manuals, still listen to the tapes en route to the casino. For instance, I think Carlos is up $175,000 for the year. I didn't add that last trip in yet so I think its closer to $190,000. He can correct me if I'm wrong. But my point is that Carlos still reads his manuals today and frequently still finds some great nuggets that had not fully registered before or have increased meaning today. He still asks even more questions than you do. Yes, you can learn to win quickly but the fact is you keep right on learning forever. There is ALWAYS room for improvement, forever. You can never quite get to being as good as you can be but nevertheless that is your goal. Happy hunting!

Hi Zenwin, Uncle Ellis here: First please feel free to use the Private BJ forum for your questions. There, I can be far more open with my replies. However, being so new, you really didn't get into proprietory areas much and here, the public can get an idea of how we respond to questions. OK, all of your questions can be boiled down to two. Should I play NBJ First Base or NBJ Third Base against these conditions? And, how do I set up to duplicate these conditions for home practice? I'll let Carlos continue to work on your second question while I work on your first question. 8 deck is my favorit game so I think I can get you off to a good start. I like 8 deck because the games are much more stable than 6 deck. Bad games tend to stay bad saving you the trouble of going back and looking them over again and again. But good 8 deck games tend to stay good for long periods saving you from having to repeatedly change tables. I have won every shoe in 8 deck games for as long as 17 hours straight. Even then, the game didn't give out, I did. When I wrote NBJ I had just discovered the NBJ First Base System. Therefore I really didn't do it justice. I tended to treat it like a parlor trick, a ploy. I didn't realize then that it was going to prove to be the stongest play method in the history of BJ with the possible exception of NBJ Third Base System. Today most experts rate them about equal. But the most important decision in BJ is which to play in the game at hand. Or, more precisely, the question you need to answer for every game is First Base, Third Base or No play. It is just as important to avoid bad games as to find good games. We aren't heroes in the casino. We don't sit there and battle the dealer in tough games. Those games are for the crowds. We like games where we win easily W/O fanfare. The fewer the decisions the better. That's what we look for. While NBJ covers finding such games, your In Search of Manual is devoted to that one most important endeavor - finding the right game. So as soon as you get a chance..... Recognize that the crowd loses. Don't let the crowd influence you. When you go with the crowd, you're lining up to lose. Go against the crowd. If the crowd is swarming a pit, stay away. You won't find any good games there. The GOOD games will be at that quiet pit over there that few are paying any attention to. The fewer the players at a pit, the better. Its players that ruin games not dealers. The very best games are head to head games that have seen little or no play since new cards were introduced. Next best is 2 player games, then 3 players. More than 4, you are asking for problems. If the crowd is there Sat nights, play Thursdays or whenever the casino is LEAST crowded. I like to find a high spot in the casino where I can see ALL the pits. I'll pick the pit with the least play every time. The newer the cards the better the game will be. Even if its the high stakes pits. Players often say to me: "But Ellis, I can't afford green or black chips" to which I reply: "That's funny, I can't afford red chips!" Understand? If you feel you MUST play red play new cards. I've said a million times that new cards are the best cards you will see all day. New cards don't know what color the chips are - old cards do. There are no dealer biases in new cards. Dealer biases are caused by play. The dealer WILL break 28% in new cards. She WILL only get 4 out of 13 first card tens. But, as the cards are played more and more the dealer will break less and less and she will get more and more first card tens, all the way up to 8 out of 13 in 8 deck cards. Why buck those odds? What causes that? Basic Strategy. Basic Strategy is always eventually self defeating. That is exactly why the crowd loses. Everybody plays Basic Strategy. Everybody eventually loses. Not YOU! You know better. YES, ALL the books are wrong when they say don't play new cards. The casinos might as well have written those books. New cards are GOOD! OK, back to your basic question - which to play, First, Third or Neither. The more the cards are random, the more we favor Third. No NBJ player ever lost a random game. It's virtually impossible. The more the cards are clumped the more we favor First. First takes advantage of clumping. Third exploits random. BUT, cards can be over clumped, esp 8 deck cards. In over clumped cards the dealer will keep pushing the players frequent 2 card twenties with 2 card twenties of her own. This effectively wastes the player favorable tens just as if the dealer took them out of the shoe and threw then on the floor. Such games are unbeatable. That is exactly the kind of game the casino is striving for. Stay away! You can't beat them no matter what you do. Leave those games for the crowd. What you want is either random or clumping within what we call the First Base Window. Fine, How do you KNOW? First, forget the way card counters count. Throw out anything you have ever read or heard about this. It is highly flawed. Here is what WORKS. Look the game over from the isle. Eventually you will learn to do this without even breaking a slow stride down the isle but starting out, stop and watch. Here's how you qualify a game as random or clumped: Call 2's thru 7's low. Call 8's thru K's High. Aces swing. They are low when they follow a low and high when they follow a high out of the shoe. All you need to look for is highs following highs. Whatever highs are doing lows MUST be doing the same thing so we don't even need to watch them but as you gain experience, you automatically will watch both. If highs are following highs more often than not, the cards are clumped. If highs are following highs half the time, they are random. When we see random cards and an empty chair at third it's an automatic sit down. It's our BEST situation. Once we sit down, (captured the chair) we wait for the next shoe. Simply say to the dealer: "I'll wait for the next shoe." That is taken by players and dealer alike as a sign of politness. Politeness has nothing to do with it. You've got work to do. Watch the cards that would have come to you if you were playing. What you are looking for is ONE thing only. At any point, the way YOU would have played the cards, would you have lost 3 hands in a row. If yes, you leave. If no, you buy in. Recognize that at third, your hands are MOST like the dealer's of any seat at the table because the dealer gets each of her cards immediately after you get each of your cards. Generally, when you get good cards so will she but when you get bad cards so will she. This makes it hard to lose 3 in a row but you check anyway. You also watch dealer break rate and first card tens. You CAN get strong dealer biases in even random cards if the cards have seen enough play. If so, you leave. We aren't looking for a tough but beatable game. We are looking for the easiest game to beat in the whole casino. We are NOT heros, we are simply, winners. Quiet winners! We like to fly under the radar! The less they know about what we are doing, the better. Now what if the cards are clumped? OK, I have to be careful here not to over supply proprietary information. But you have studied the First Base System. You know what to look for. Is the first player getting tens when you predict she will. If no, leave. If yes, is the player number such that she is usually getting a good card with those tens. If not, leave. If yes, buy in and continue to monitor those two things. First Base games often last for hours, esp. 8 deck First base but watch for over clumping. Is the dealer starting to match your good hands. If so leave. Look for "windows of opportuity". Now, you might be wondering why I would talk so much about our secrets on a public channel? Well, I'm not really helping them. Finding a first or third base game will not help them at all if they don't know the NBJ First or Third Base Systems. Normal Basic Strategy play won't cut it. That is exactly why we so often find ourselves the only winner at the table. We match our play to the game at hand. But it will notify the public that there is far, far more to this game than they have ever read or heard. This game CAN and WILL be beat by anyone who knows and understands its many intricacies and how to exploit them. Many on the private channel DO this regularly. It's simply a question of knowing how. I'll let Carlos help you on home practice. He is very very expert at it. Just let me say this. The object is to set your practice cards up to what you generally see in the casino. BJ cards have a certain complexion to them. You want to see that same familiar complextion in your home practice. Carlos?

This is a correct observation and quite common. Life would be simple if it was a simple choice between random and clumped. But there are degrees of both. This is why we watch the sine wave. How many high rounds and low rounds are we getting in a row? And we then adjust our progression accordingly. For instance, when we get that "perfect" game and nearly every round is neutral, our 3 bet progression is ideal. We are least likely to lose 3 bets in a row in such a game because it is ideal conditions for basic strategy. Another near perfect condition is when every other round is high and every other round is low; high, low, high, low. In such a game we would want to play a 2 bet prog from third. We are literally playing first base from the third base chair. First base is probably good too but not necessarily. The wrong player number can cause us to keep getting a low second card on our high bets. Not good! But usually its not that simple. Usually in a random game, there is a high section and a low section. Picture in your mind the kind of sine wave that would produce. Very short waves above and below the axis and then suddenly a long high wave and somewhere a long low wave. We react by hitting more in the low wave and betting more in the high wave. The trick is to KNOW when you are in either of these odd sections. Of course, the sooner you know the better. We could say that good third base play is about accurate anticipation. As each card is dealt, I say HIGH or LOW to myself making it easy to declare the round high or low at the end. This helps me "see" the sine wave. Another trick players have used successfully, I know Mad Dog does this, is to memorize three consecutive cards at the beginning of these oddities and watch for them in the next shoe. This is good if it doesn't steal too much of your concentration. You might try this with only 2 high cards and 2 low cards when you first start and work your way up to 3. You might also start this with the high section only, at first. I find that the faster the dealer, the better I can see the sign wave. I find this particularly true in head to head play. This is ironic in that break up dealers often use speed dealing as one of their techniques. I love it when they pull this. The actual cards and the sine wave have less time to fade from your mind's camera.

Eventually Carlos, your reputation precedes you. Again I remember that night at the Sands. I blew a play at third hitting a stiff against a low and made the dealer's hand in a very high stakes game. The lady at first swung her long handled 25 lb. pocketbook across the whole table and knocked me clean out of my chair. The pit boss ran over swearing at her. "What the hell are you doing? You just knocked the best player in Atlantic City out of his chair while YOU can't play for shit!" But they get fewer and fewer as you show your wares and soon enough they dissappear altogether.

Recognize one more thing. When I said, "give her a run for her money" this is what I mean. In a low card or mostly low card section of the shoe the dealer is at her finest. She is very unlikely to break and most likely to make 5 and 6 card hands. She CAN'T break on cards below 6 and almost never breaks on 6's or 7's. She is MOST likely to have a low card up. This is where Basic Strategy is at its weakest. Against the inevitable low up card, Basic Strategy says STAND. Any time you stand with less than 17, you are, in fact, betting one thing and one thing only. YOU ARE BETTING THE DEALER WILL BREAK! WHY in the world would you bet the dealer will break in low cards precisely where the dealer is LEAST likely to break. Stupid isn't it. Give her a run for her money! Hit! We play high cards pretty much the same as everybody else. What separates the men from the boys is WE don't give up in low cards like Basic Strategy demands. Why give up when the dealer is at her strongest? The cards don't know who is dealing. YOU aren't any more likely to break than the dealer. OK so you break against a low now and then and think you look foolish. Nobody looks foolish with lagre piles of chips in front of them. WE are so very, very often the only winner at the table. It has little to do with high cards or double downs. It's because we are the only players at the table who challenge the dealer in low cards. You know what else this does? It destroys dealer biases. You are stealing her lows right in front of her. Basic Strategy was not writen by the casinos but for all practical purposes it might as well have been. EVERYBODY knows how to play their 19s and 20s. There is no choice. The MONEY is about how you play your lows and the money goes to the player who doesn't sit there and mindlessly bet that the dealer will break precisely when she won't. Starting to see the picture? It's all plain old common sense. Nothing up my sleeves.