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It appears that the originator names got goofed up on the last two posts. Regardless, any NBJ player knows that who's as third and how he plays makes a huge difference. NBJ is far advanced vs the site you noted. Your job at third is to control dealer breaking. One of the many problems with Basic Strategy is it seldom hits in low card high density areas of the shoe because the dealer usually gets a low up card in these areas. This greatly aids the dealer when the dealer favorable lows are left for her. Dealers can't break on all lows. This is why dealers almost never break at the mathematical 28%. Remember that all B.S. plays are calculated assuming random cards which virtually never actually happens in the real world. Basic strategy bases all plays on the dealer up card. NBJ points out that this process attributes far too much significanse to the dealer up card. Recognize that the dealer up card is only half her hand. Her down card, ignoring the cards in play as B.S. does, is just as likely to be low as high. Two lows often make a high often making her more dangerous with a low up. Since highs follow highs and lows follow lows more often than they mathematically should, the NBJ player at third has already made an educated assessment of the dealer's down card. He does this by noting the cards before and after the dealer's hole card. He knows that the more lows he takes out of the game the more the dealer will break. Therefore in low card favorable sections of the shoe (half the time) the NBJ third base player will favor hitting against a dealer low up card. He knows that the dealer is least likely to break in low card favorable sections of the shoe. Plus he has weighed several other factors. For instance: what is the dealer usually breaking on in this game, a high up or a low up? What is the dealer break rate so far in this game? To the benefit of all in the game, The NBJ player at third will make the best play FAR more often than the BS player. Basic Strategy basically says: Don't think! Ignore all information in the game. Go strictly by the meaningless dealer up card on every play. "It doesn't make any difference whether you win or lose as long as you make the correct play." The casinos love it. They couldn't write a strategy more in their favor. Then the casinos prove it by winning an avg of 15% of the money bet. NBJ says: Winning is everything! It is the only reason you are there! Use ALL the information at the table to make the best possible play every hand. THINK! The proof of the pudding is the resulting hands won rate. The basic Strategist wins 38% of all hands played measured over tens of thousands of plays. And even that allows that he is smart enough to avoid crowded Saturday night tables where his hands won rate dips into the 20's. But alas, he isn't that smart. His book teaches "it doesn't matter when you play or where you sit." The accomplished NBJ player wins 52% of the hands played. He does this because he knows when to play and how to play and because he is allowed to think for himself. So, who do you want at third? Some chicken hitter or a true pro? An NBJ player at third helps everybody in the game, including himself! Now, you can Keep playing BS by rote just like the casinos want you to and keep losing or you can order NBJ right here at half price. One last thought. I'm barred from every casino in the land. I don't know of a single BS card counting teacher barred anywhere. They even let them teach right in the casino. Why do you suppose that is? Try this simple experiment: Call any major casino. Say " I'm a perfect Basic Strategy Card Counter. I'd like to put 50 grand in your cage and play a few days. What can you do for me?" They'll comp you to everything and send a plane for you. Now call any major casino and say I'm a perfect NBJ player. I'd like to put...... click..... dial tone.

Ed Goldstein was a character and a half. I met him when he showed up at one of my Vegas seminars with his ever present wife. As soon as I saw him I knew who belonged to the motor cycle out front. His wife and motor cycles were the only things Ed loved more than BJ. He never said a word durring the seminar but approached me afterwords introducing himself as the best player in Vegas. He said that it was the first time he ever heard what he does at the table put into words. He said that before the seminar he thought he was the only player in the world that understood the game. He lamented that nobody else plays this game right. We ended up playing up and down the strip that night winning at all seven casinos we played. Afterward he said I could do your seminar better than you. So I said well we have a seminar scheduled at the Holiday tomorrow at 7P. Why don't you take it. Much to my surprise he said sure. We had all the people seated and I was about to start the seminar myself when we heard the unmistakable roar of a motor cycle deafeningly close. When Ed walked in in front of 55 attendees I took one look at him and said Oh No! His equally dressed wife in tow, Ed was resplendent in muddy motor cycle boots, greesey jeans with holes in the knees, and a black filthy Hell's Angles T shirt with a 9 inch triangular tear acoss his chest with black gleaming chest hair poking through. When I reluctantly introduced him he simply said to me: "That will be all". As I made my way to the door he began by saying, "I'm here to tell you why you lose and I win". This drew a large roar from the audience, most of whom seemed to know Ed. Then the audience was abuzz with those who knew telling those who didn't who Ed was. I could hear: "That's the guy I was telling you about - That guy that always wins!" He starts out by declaring, "Basic Strategy is right when it talks about how to play your good hands. But winning BJ is not about how to play your good hands. Any idiot knows how to play their good hands. Winning Bj is about how to play your bad hands. Why would you stand and bet the dealer will break like basic strategy makes you when you know damn well that the dealer is not going to break because she almost never does. Why would you bet on something that almost never happens. That's plain ignorant. This here book" and he thumps an NBJ Manual "tells you what basic strategy doesn't, how to fight to win your fair share of your bad hands. Basic Strategy says give up. If you are that stupid, you will lose." I walked to the bar thinking all is lost. Before I finished my first Scotch I heard the seminar door open. It was my secretary coming out. She knew where to find me. I asked who's taking orders. She threw up her hands and said Ed's wife. I taught her how cause she wanted to do it. I immediately went back to my Scotch. Just 20 minutes later Ed's wife came out. I said where's Ed. Surrounded by a bunch of people asking stupid questions. I asked who's taking orders. She answed handing me a pile of credit card receipts. Heres 47. The rest are in cash in this plastic bag! It was the quickest seminar in history and from a % of sales standpoint, the best. A couple years later they took a west coast motor cycle trip clear up to Alaska. I stayed in the office booking seminars ahead of them, posting newspaper ads and overnighting boxes of manuals to the seminar sites. I gave them half the money. When they returned to Arizona two months later, Ed called me and said You Know Ellis, our dream is to open up a motor cycle camping site here in the desert. We've got more than enough money now so we quit. I never heard from Ed again.

This Aussi reminds me of the night I got a phone call from Australia at 4 AM. Turned out to be 4 drunk Aussies that had just learned they all had an Uncle Ellis. They had all ended up at the same table and realized their play had something in common. Went to the bar and one of them realized he had my phone number. BTW, Uncle Ellis is my code name in the casino. Look JJ NBJ stands for New Blackjack and WCB stands for World Class BJ. NBJ has sold more than ALL other BJ books put together. Even in Australia. I personally sold 4200 copies of NBJ alone. Jerry Patterson sold a whole lot more than I did and the underground press has sold more than the two of us together. At 67, I tried to retire a few years ago but Keith just won't let me. I happen to know the play record of both these guys you're flirting with and I can assure you that neither record can be approached by the ten best card counters of all time put together, including Kenny U who was a friend of mine and played AC at the same time I played there full time. If Mad Dog does't make ten grand he considers it a bad day. He plays Vegas 6 deck. Carlos is closer to the 50 grand player but then he's completely insane. He lives, sleeps, eats and drinks Blackjack. Most nbj players are x card counters. Thousands of players have gone from card counting to NBJ but no one has ever gone from NBJ to card counting. You can order NBJ right here on this site at half of the lowest price I ever sold it at. Keith will download it to your computer. No one has ever asked me for their money back. But if you are a serious player, buy it. If you don't like it I'll personally give you your money back. It's the only way to beat this game. Then, when you feel ready, graduate to WCB. Mad Dog just did. I personally played AC full time for 3 years W/O ever having a single losing day. NBJ is a book about exactly how I did that. You won't find a card counter anywhere that can even come close to that record. I did the Taj 1 and Taj 2 exhibitions in front of large audiences. Won $10,000 in both w/o ever betting more than $300. Each took me less than a half hour. No card counter can do that, not even close. I don't know or care why NBJ is unheard of in your area. Every casino owns a copy. But you don't see casinos going out and buying card counting books. Many dealers have told me that NBJ is mandatory reading for all their dealers. They don't make them read card counting books. I'm black listed at every casino in the US, most of Canada, and The Bahamas. Probably Australia too. Or, you could keep throwing your money away!

Well perhaps I should be more explanitive. It is the casino manager's job to present an unbeatable game. He knows that the more players at the table, the more the cards clump and the more the cards clump the less the dealer breaks and the less the dealer breaks the greater the casino take which is the single measurement of his job performance. Casino managers don't have to physically manipulate cards. All they have to do is keep the tables crowded. The casino controlled rules of the game do the rest. The most important rule from a clumping standpoint is picking up the break cards first. That is the instrument of clumping. That process separates the mostly low break cards from the mostly high non break cards. The casino mgr then controls the shuffle types used. The major assignment to shuffle machine designers is the same, to maintain clumping. Basic strategy also helps. It eventually creats a cycle bias that favors the dealer. Did you ever notice that dealers consistently get better cards than players? The longer the cards are played and the more players at the table the more the cards favor the dealer. There is one easy way to prove this to yourself. Go to any main line casino on a Saturday night when the dealer bias is at max. Count dealer Ten ups. Obviously she should get 4 out of 13 ten ups. Nope. Count them! you'll find that she gets closer to 6 out of 13 in 6 deck and 8 out of 13 in 8 deck. Think about it. This totally changes the real odds of the game in the dealers favor. That's only part of the effects of the cycle bias. You could say that basic strategy kills basic strategy! Next, count highs following highs and lows following lows out of the shoe. Given neutrals, it should be considerably less than 50%. Nope. You will find it higher!. That's clumping! It completely destroys the mathematical 28% dealer break rate and the odds of the basic strategist. Now, you're getting an idea of the real odds of the game and why the casino take rate is over 15% rather than the mathematical 0.5%. If casinos had to accept 0.5%, there would be no casinos. Then, on top of that, is the many ways casinos cheat. Like the Bahama hole card trick. That's where the dealer glimpses her two cards and turns the higher card up rather than the first card. This changes the odds 17% in favor of the dealer. But like you say no legitimate casino..... We caught them at Caesar's, Las Vegas, red handed. Once you complete those two experiments you'll know what we knew 20 years ago. Before you can learn to beat them you must know what you are up against. We call this casino orchestration. NBJ uses their own orchestration to beat them. If cards are not random, they are what??? Think about it. Yep, they are predictable. If they are predictable............ I'll enlighten you with one simple trick we use, that, alone, will improve your game considerably. Every book you ever read tells you not to insure, right? Watch the card that falls right before the dealer's hole card. When its a ten (4 out of 13) INSURE. Tens follow tens more than they mathematically should! On avg you will be right 50 - 55% of the time. It pays 2 to 1. Do the math. Now there is a worthwhile gift. Say thank you Uncle Ellis. There are hundreds more like that in the NBJ manual. It's an easy game WHEN you truly know what you are doing.

Maybe on your planet. You'd make any casino manager burst into uncontrolable laughter here on Earth.

Good questions! I should have covered this. On the first question the answer is no. The third bet presents a brand new ball game. In fact if the TT's continue it is best to play straight down until they end. Each prog wins half it bets which is optimum. TT's end either with a one in a row or a 3 or more. With a one in a row both progs still bet straight down awaiting a 2 in a row across from the F2 prog. In the case of a 3 in a row the F2 prog would follow the 3. On the second question: Yes the F2 controls the bet placement and is the lead prog while the F2N is the slave prog. When either prog pauses, I think its best to call the paused prog the F2 prog. While it is paused our table bet is the entry of the other prog just as if the paused prog was betting 0's until it wins 2 0's in a row. Now Jim did not play that way. He kept the intergity of the F2 prog and if the resuming 2 in a row went to 3 he followed that 3 with the F2 prog. Maybe Jim could look at both ways on his shoes and see which way fares better. Any questions?

hatign, I'm not sure what you are referring to. Your post came out under on line card counting but it sounds like you are referring to major land based casinos. Could you quote or mention the post you mean to be replying to and clarify your statement. Thanks

Russ said: Please describe your table entry and table departure criteria. How much of it do you think is intuition? Hold on guys, Ellis here: Let's not be divulging NBJ secrets here on a public forum. After all, Keith has gone to great lengths to make the entire NBJ package available at half price right here and I have agreed to coach these students just as I did Carlos. If you can't find Keith's offer, Email him direct and he will guide you to it. Russ' question above is so important that I have devoted an entire NBJ manual to it called In Search of the Winning Game. If Keith doesn't have it available yet, I do. Either way the price is $95. No serious player should be without it. Right Carlos? In Search Of is the final word in table selection. First, we know WHEN to go to the casino. Ten minutes after we arrive we know the best table to play in that casino. This makes life a whole lot easier. We also know whether its a first or third base game. We know how clumped or how random the game is. And we know exactly when to leave that game. As Russ says table departure is a good skill to have in your bag. I have to laugh at the cardcounters who keep arguing with us whether the cards are clumped or random. The fact is that an NBJ player at third base in a random game is in a can't lose situation. We will kill that game every time while the card counter never gets sufficient plus count to bet. It's our favorite situation. I also have to laugh at Russ' comment above that the card counters, what Russ calls the 5 percenters, claim they can't beat a 6 to 5 BJ payout game. I totally agree with Carlos. Geez, if you have to depend on BJ's to win you need to give the game up. Take up Big Wheel or something. Can you imagine the poor bastard coming home and saying, "Well I would have won Honey except I didn't get any Blackjacks." That would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad. We have plenty of big wins where we never saw a BJ. Who cares! We use those little chips to tip the waitress and dealer anyway. We actually usually make more money on insurance bets than BJ's. No self respecting counter would ever get caught insurring but WE do it frequently and WE are right more than half the time. A 2 to 1 payout on 50 % accuracy is a pretty darn good deal. And in clumped games our accuracy goes up. I was once kicked out of the Claridge in AC for never making an incorrect insurance bet in 5 straight hours of play. Every single time I insurred she had the ten, Every time I didn't, she didn't. That really ****es them off. That was 10% luck but it was 90% skill. If you're going to play this game you need to know when to insure and when not to. The count can't help you. But NBJ can. Winning on insurance is a given with NBJ. If you can't do it you need to join that other feller at the Big Wheel. Better yet, if you can't do it you really need our help. If you depend on BJ's you really need our help. If your hands won rate is below 50%, you need our help. BTW, basic strategy produces a 38% hands won rate. Good luck. E Clifton Davis, author of NBJ (New Blackjack) WCB (World Cl*** Blackjack) and In Search of the Winning Game.

Hi Russ, Ellis here. Yes, Carlos' table selection is a major factor in his strong wins, While we all pride ouselves in play ability it is best to find a game we can beat easily where we really don't need that ability. But yes, perhaps we can get Carlos to respond himself and give us his blow by blow selection and game story. As for your friend, I find his story highly credible. First I have written and said a zillion times that new cards are probably the best cards you are likely to see all day. There are no dealer biases yet and boxed card clumping is highly readable and predictable. At Tunica, I too have gone to single and two deck. I'm not sure what you meant by "6 to 5 BJ"??? At Tunica, they bring new cards out in 1 and 2 deck bj so frequently that you always have readable clumping and dealer biases never get a chance to develop. I prefer single deck when available. They know me there and when I play they bring out new cards even more often. I find this comical since it is the new cards that make it so easy for me. I complain about the frequent new cards which insures that they will keep doing it. I play first base with a low and high bet usually $100 - $200 and bet hi only when I strongly suspect a first card ten. I seldom lose the hi bet but when I do, I bet $300 on the next high bet opportunity. I don't recall ever losing that $300 bet. Aside from the abscence of dealer biases, the beauty of 1 and 2 deck is that there simply are not enough cards to have long runs of lows so you always get your fair share of wins. On the other hand I found the 6 deck game at Tunica to be extremely dealer biased. You get dealt a 20 against a 4 and you're still nervous because it loses so often. In single deck, a 20 against a 4 is money in the bank. I think your friend has method in his madness.

Ellis here: Jim is that you? If so please feel free to call me at 901 405 1723 or email me at ellis_858@hotmail.com. To answer your question: Yes while speed dealing can help you in BJ, it can be a real pain in Bac. First, you need to know if he is cheating. If he is drawing cards from the shoe one at a time to the table, fine. However, If he is pulling the cards with his left hand to his right hand and all 4 cards end up in his right hand before going to the table, he is cheating and can completely control which side wins. This is getting all too common. When you see this note the dealers name, leave the table and never play against that dealer. If he is dealing legal but too fast, first you can ask him to slow down, but that seldom lasts very long. Second, you can try leaving your hand on your bet. Technically, he can't deal while your hand is on your bet. It's not a bet until you remove your hand. While your hand is still on your bet you are legal to move it, change it or remove it. He usually gets the idea right away. If he deals anyway you are legal to move your bet to the winning side. So he won't try that more than once. But, if you do this, be ready for an argument. Sometimes being right doesn't help. As to your comments on AOW, I need to first know what version of the rules you are working from. I posted several. If you could email me the version you have we can go from there.

For many years now this has not been a subject we could discuss. From the mid 90's up until just a few months ago the casinos have had the upper hand with the ability to control BJ conditions to their favor. We NBJ players KNOW that the fewer players we have in a BJ game, the better our odds. The casinos also know this and for nearly ten years have had the ability to keep tables loaded up to 6 or 7 players. Even our strategy of playing new cards was thwarted by the casinos. They knew just how many tables to open so that the tables would quickly load up with players maintaining an optimum casino edge at all times. Even our strategy to play new cards at only the high stakes tables was easily thwarted by the casinos. We could seldom exploit the advantage NBJ players know they have in one or low player games with new cards. Now, the tables have turned. With the advent of Poker popularity together with the diminished popularity of BJ, it is far more difficult for the casino to control player numbers. Many players will elect to play Poker rather than fight crowded conditions at the BJ tables. These players know nothing about how player number effects the odds. After all, all BJ books prior to NBJ ***erted that "player number makes no difference". BJ players simply elect to play Poker because the playing conditions are more comfortable. The reasons why are not important. The fact is that we can now find virtually any BJ conditions we want. Given all our druthers, I think that now, we should be thoroughly discussing what our best and strongest strategy options are. There hasn't been much point in discussing this in the last ten years or so because we simply could not find the conditions required. But today, finding the right conditions isn't much of a factor. We can select virtually any conditions we want. Suddenly given this advantage, the question today is: what do we do with it? What is the very best combination of conditions and strategy? I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Off the top of your head you might say: Well, we look for a high stakes head to head game with new cards. Right, except that there is an inherant disadvantage. You don't get to see the cards first. You will be betting hard earned money BEFORE you know what game type you are in. Carlos was lucky. In his third trip, he had the opportunity to watch the cards and determine the game type BEFORE he sat down. Then, when he did sit down, he had the good fortune that the other player left. Now, he is playing new cards in a game he already determined is a first base game. And this is not all that uncommon. Some players prefer to play head to head. After all, a random cards head to head game stays random. Basic Strategy works best in random cards. Since the cards are picked up in the same order regardless of whether the player wins or loses, a single player cannot clump up the cards. So while what happened to Carlos (the other player leaving) is not all that uncommon I do not think it is an occurance we can depend on. And, players are more likely to jump into a two player game than they are to jump in a one player game. So there we are: A high stakes game with new cards freshly shuffled. There are four possibilities: The game may favor First Base The game may favor Third Base It may favor neither It may favor both So what do we do? Of course, one option is to sit down and find out while flat betting at the table minimum. But is there anything less risky? What if we had a playing partner? An NBJ partner, of course. What if one partner takes First Base and the other takes Third Base? They would actually sit in the first and last seats to prevent others from doing so. Now, yes, it is more likely that other players will join a two player game quicker than a one player game. But high stakes players also tend to favor first or third and those seats are taken. But ***uming our two players are left alone, there are four possibilities in this order of frequency as I see it: The first base player wins and the third base partner leaves the game The third base player wins and the first base partner leaves the game Both players win Both players lose Of course the third possibility (both players win) is best because not only do we have two players winning, we also have two players taking lows out of the game, improving conditions for both. It seems to me that that is what we should be shooting for. And it is not uncommon. When new cards are clumped (first base) they are seldom clumped throughout the shoe. Likewise, when new cards are random (third base) they are seldom random throughout the shoe. What do you guys think???

An excellent post Russ and very accurate: Changing the player no. Yes, changing the player number by 2 players almost always breaks a dealer bias at least for a while. We had a very successful 4 man team that operated on that very fact. They would hit a table after the wash and usually do well until the dealer bias showed. Here, the dealer would begin getting far too many first card tens and would turn too many 5's and 6's to 20's and 21's. At that point 2 of the players would leave the game with place markers up. This broke the dealer bias. The remaining two players would continue play until a bias redeveloped. At that point the other two players would reenter the game again destroying the dealer bias. It was a neat trick and those guys swore by it. The hard part was the logistics of keeping 4 guys organized and on schedule.

Well, of course, at the sands, because of the clear card prep tell, I could drop the "test the water" procedure that all NBJ players are taught to conduct on new cards. But that is not the only new card tell. There are some big advantages ***ociated with playing full time. Most casinos use a specific card prep procedure for weeks, even months. They use the procedure that has historically produced the highest table take for them. They keep that procedure until it begins to falter. This occurs when players, esp. street players, learn to beat the conditions the prep produces. So they change it. But, we often find, playing full time, that a given casino's initial card prep produces good first base or good third base conditions. So we exploit that situation for as long as it lasts. The peculiar thing about the Sands was that they had two card prep procedures that produced almost opposite results. A good trick! This completely confused the street players because a given table would play completely different from the table next to it. Street players are generally not skilled enough to gleen a tell from watching the card prep. Like I said before, I was always the only person there watching the card prep. When we walk into a casino to play new cards, our first job is to determine whether we should play first base or third. Unless we are experienced with what the current card prep procedure at that casino produces, we have no idea of which system to play. We must either stand there and watch the cards play, as Carlos did, or jump in and make our determination while playing. In this latter case we will use a test the water prog like a 112 until we confirm the conditions. Of course, we may confirm that conditions are poor for either first or third. Or, as Russ points out, the game may crowd up durring our test the water procedure. So, we try again at a different table. But the advantage of new cards is that the shoe is usually more consistent throughout the shoe than old cards. If this consistancy matches either our first or third base system we drop our test the water procedure and start real play. We are aggressive because we want to get the money before dealer biases develop as they surely will. Esp in first base conditions we hit out in low card clumps as Carlos did. This helps stave off dealer bias development for as long as the table remains at three or less players. 4 players is iffy and 5 or more is almost always our table departure signal. When I began my three years of full time play in AC I paid no attention to the time of day or the day of the week or the number of players in the game. But my notes quickly confirmed that my results were far better durring uncrowded conditions. The fewer the players in the casino and at my table the better I did. I experimented with very late night play, after the casino cleared out. This was good but not as good as new cards. When you are playing at 3 and 4 in the morning, you aren't going to be in any kind of condition to play at 9 am after watching the card prep at 8 am. I quickly learned to give up night play altogether and ONLY PLAY NEW CARDS. This does not mean that I could only play at 9 am. The high stakes pits open much later in the day. I soon new the start up time of every high stakes pit in AC. and I followed these start ups. I soon learned to play ONLY the high stakes pits. There is no way to avoid the crowding of the low stakes floor tables and my notes strongly indicated that my time was far more profitable in the high stakes arenas esp those with no mid shoe entry. With this background information, perhaps it will be easier for you to understand how the Taj 1 and Taj 2 expositions occurred. They were no accident. I had been getting complaints from my players saying "but Ellis, we can't afford to play the high stakes pits!" I would reply: "Well I can't afford to play the low stakes pits!" Eventually, the clamor became overwhelming. Finally I said: O.K., I'll prove it to you. You guys usually have at least a $1000bank roll. I'll prove to you that a $1000 bank roll is enough to play high stakes. Be at the Taj high stakes pit at high noon on whatever the date was. About 60 of my players showed up. I picked the Taj because the high stakes pit can accommodate a large gallery standing just outside the pit railing. I picked the closest table right next to that railing. But I had a lot going for me. I knew they would just be finishing their new card prep at noon. I knew that their prep strongly favored first base play. I knew there would be virtually no players there. As Russ points out, people are reluctant to open new card tables esp. high stakes. I had the pit to myself just as I had many times in the prior weeks. I bought in for ten black chips. I started with a 1-2 prog and quickly went to 1-3. I NEVER bet more than 3. A half hour later I had $11,000 in chips on the table and quit. The next day I got a call from Jerry Patterson complaining that he had missed the whole thing. I said fine, I'll do the whole thing over in two weeks. I got my newsletter out announcing Taj 2 to my players. This time both Jerrys players and my players showed up, at least 80 people. Jerry and Nancy came right into the pit and watched every play right over my left shoulder. Bought in for $1000 and again quit up $10,000 in a half hour. This goes to show you just what you can do with new cards after confirming the game type the card prep produces. Anybody that KNOWS NBJ first and third base, and knows it cold, can do this. Carlos did! But he had sense enough to keep increasing his bet once he had won at least two bets worth of the next denomination. Again, good job Carlos!

It occurs to me that I have posted very little on this most important subject. Yet, it is the most important subject we could discuss. Why? Two good reasons: 1.) New cards present the best possible NBJ conditions. 2.) This opportunity presents itself every day in every casino. We don't have to go out and look for it. We just need to note when new cards come out at a given casino and show up. While nearly all of the traditional Bj books tell you to avoid new cards, I found very early on durring my full time play years that new cards are the very best cards you will see all day. You just have to know what to do. Why are they the best? Because they are either random or they retain box card order clumping. In either case you know what to do. There are no dealer biases in new cards because it is play itself that creates these biases. It's the fairest most exploitable game in BJ. Ellis I used to show up at the Sands, AC every day except Sat and Sun at 8 am to watch the new card prep. at the 8 deck $25 pit. They usually start about 8 tables at once. There was this very bright female pit boss who bossed the card prep at every table. Everything was done exactly the same way at every table except one crucial thing. Once the new cards were unwrapped and checked, they shuffled each fresh full deck with another full deck. On half of the tables these 4 two deck riffles would be aces to aces. kings to kings and so forth. But at half the tables she would instruct the dealer to reverse the order of ONE of the two decks for all 4 riffles. So aces got shuffled with twos, kings with threes and so forth. I noted which way the cards were prepped at every table. Why, Because its a huge tell. On the tables where the second decks were reversed, they were shooting for random cards. On the other half of the tables, they were going for boxed card clumping. All I had to know is which tables were which. It always started off my day with a bang. It was more the rule than the exception for me to be up a few thousand by 10 am. Did it always work every time? No, but it usually worked at the first table I played. If not, or if the table crowdwd up, I knew the conditions at seven more tables. Overall, yes, it always worked. On the "random" tables, I played NBJ third base quickly moving up to a 1 4 6 prog if all went well. If not, I changed tables. My preference was head to head. On the clumped tables I played NBJ first base usually starting with a 1 2 and quickly moving to a 1 3 if all went well. If not, again I changed tables. So I ALWAYS ended up in a good 1-4-6 or 1-3 game. I really didn't care which. Didn't she notice me watching the card prep? Absolutely, esp since I was virtually always the only person watching. Hey, I wasn't doing anything illegal! But eventually, after about 3 weeks of this, I walked in one morning and faced a new pit boss who watched every move I made from the moment I walked in. This guy did not bother with reversing the order of half the decks so that all 8 tables were ripe for first base play. Which, of course, I did. But as soon as another player would sit down, I would move to the next table. When I got to the 8th table, the new pit boss had me ejected mumbling something about starting 8 tables in half an hour. I waited about a month for this guys job to get rotated and started in with a new pit boss. So how does this phenomenon occur? In, what we call super random cards, this is where counters get virtually no count because highs and lows are interspersed so well with no dealer biases, it is virtually impossible to lose playing NBJ third base. In fact it is rare to even get to your third bet. In fact, in these conditions I usually dropped the third bet altogether and simply played a 1-4 prog. When to do that will make another interesting topic. Likewise, in boxed card clumping, the cards are so readable that it is virtually impossible to lose playing NBJ First Base. Note Carlos' trip. Hey, it's there for the taking. All you need to know it the NBJ first and third base systems. Right Carlos?

Certainly congratulations are in order for Carlos from everyone. Carlos has left me with virtually nothing to say about his escapade. This was a "go for the jugular" performance right out of the book. Every action, every decision was right out of NBJ right to the letter. I guess this helps confirm our suspicions that the advent of poker popularity has greatly improved BJ conditions. It is far more difficult for the casinos to keep their BJ tables full, especially in the high stakes arenas, when the players have another choice. Carlos play also helps confirm a number of controvercial NBJ points that I have been spouting for years: New cards are likely to be the best cards you see all day. Favor hiting in mostly low cards and favor standing in mostly highs. I only play high stakes because I can't afford to play low stakes. When the opportunity presents itself, it is your duty to go for the jugular. The fewer players in the game the better your odds. There are only two winable seats, first and third base. Carlos played the NBJ first base strategy here after confirming that this was a viable NBJ first base situation. Of couse the secret to this strategy is WHEN to bet high and WHEN to bet low. I'm not going into that here because some of you are likely not NBJ players. Suffice it to say that once again the NBJ First Base strategy has proved itself. You have a huge double digit player advantage in this situation that makes the claimed 0.5% counter advantage look ridiculous. Carlos' adventure also points out the tremendous advantage of searching out the right game. As I have often said, finding the right game is the most important aspect of NBJ. You must know exactly what to look for. This was not as easy as Carlos trip report infers. What he didn't tell you in that report was that he made several trips to that same casino without playing a single hand. Demonstrating excellent discipline he waited until he saw the conditions listed in NBJ and and thoroughly discussed in "In Search of the Winning Game". Then he pounced! Good job Carlos! What have ya'll got to say about this?

I wrote: "NBJ notes with clarity that the object of the game of BJ is to bet high when the count is going down (when you have the advantage) and to bet low when the count is going up (when the dealer has the advantage). Also, to favor hitting in a down count (where the dealer seldom breaks) and to favor standing in an up count (where most dealer breaking occurs)." Sorry, I said that last part backwards. It should read as follows: NBJ notes with clarity that the object of the game of BJ is to bet high when the count is going down (when you have the advantage) and to bet low when the count is going up (when the dealer has the advantage). Also, to favor hitting in an up count (where the dealer seldom breaks) and to favor standing in a down count (where most dealer breaking occurs). Now it's right. Ellis

David Kent said: "..... Do I get you guys right if I say that it is the presence in the deck (or shoe) of sequences of high cards as well as sequences of low cards that favors the casino? With only high cards the dealer cannot break, and with only low cards he cannot break either. Is that the central claim behind the card clumping theories? Interesting...." Ellis here: Very perceptive David. That IS a claim of fact upon which NBJ is based but it is not the central claim. But it does explain why dealers seldom achieve the 28% break rate upon which Basic Strategy depends. Now that you understand why the dealer break rate varies widely in the shoe game, it's a small jump to see why we track the dealer break rate and how we use that information to our profit. Dealer breaking is a function of clumping. Dealer break rate is inversely proportional to clumping or said in counting language: The greater the count spread the less the dealer breaks. So, how could we use that information? Suppose you have noted that the dealer is only breaking one round in ten rather than the mathematical one in four. Why would you ever stand with less than 17 in that game? Your odds of losing by standing stiff are 90%. We also note whether the dealer is breaking mostly when her up card is high rather than the presumed low up card. This is often the case and is also a function of clumping. If the dealer is seldom or never breaking on a low up card, why would you follow basic strategy and bet that she will? To answer your question regarding "central claim" as you put it. I would say that the main facet of NBJ is to bet on what IS happening in the game you are playing rather than betting on what is supposed to happen in a perfect world. NBJ is real world Blackjack as opposed to the wishful thinking world of the basic strategist. NBJ notes with clarity that the object of the game of BJ is to bet high when the count is going down (when you have the advantage) and to bet low when the count is going up (when the dealer has the advantage). Also, to favor hitting in a down count (where the dealer seldom breaks) and to favor standing in an up count (where most dealer breaking occurs). Strangely, that is also the objective for card counters. That is exactly what they are trying to do by waiting for some arbitrary high count to make their high bets. But what if the count keeps going up? We know from thousands of casino games that you will be far more successful achieving your objective IF you fully recognize what your objective is as opposed to the counter who has the very same objective but does not know what his objective is. For instance: Suppose you have noted in the game you are playing right now that there are seldom more than two up count rounds in a row and never more than three. Shuffles won't change that. Sure, we will bet high when we see high cards begin to fall but we will also bet high after two up count rounds. That way, we coincide our high bets with down counts far more often and far more successfully than counters do and by baseing our hit or stand decisions on that same information, we achieve a much higher hands won rate than the counter or basic strategist. The best counters and basic strategists can hope for on a very good day is a 43% hands won rate. From 43%, the more the cards are clumped, the less their hands won rate will be. NBJ players, or clumpers as you call them, condider 43% a very bad day. We are accustomed to a 50-52% hands won rate. It's a hell of a lot easier to win that way. Example: Suppose you are a counter and the shoe starts with a down count. Half of all shoes do. Suppose the count steadily descends to -20. Religiously following counting theory you will just sit there making no bets, if allowed, or low bets. You watch the best part of the shoe go by. Why? Because you don't recognize the objective of BJ. The clumper, on the other hand, who's objective is to match his high bets to down counts will have a great shoe. He will already have the shoe won before the counter starts betting, if ever. Remember, half of all shoes start with a down count. That's just one example of many, many, more why clumpers fare better.. BTW, in your first question, you use the term "clumping theories". Clumping is not a theory. It is a fact of life. Clumping and count range are exactly the same thing. Count range is simply the numerical disparity from the highest +1-1 count to the lowest. (subtract your lowest -count from your highest +count). The greater the count range, the greater the clumping. Clumping creates the count that counters use, they just don't realize that fact. But betting high at some arbitrary high count in the hopes of hitting a down count round, now that is a pure theory. Those are just a couple of the facets of NBJ. Stick around and you will learn a whole lot more. As for your other question: "However, what I wanted to ask you guys is this: When playing blackjack online, where do card counters and cards clumpers end up? Even if randomness is a complex task, to say the least, as this white paper shows, that is not to say that the cards in online casinos will tend to clump up, is it? As far as I can see, any attempt to predict cards in an online casino must be foredoomed to failure, even in the case that randomness is not perfect. Do you agree?" Yes, but not for the reasons you mention. You go on to ask: "And how do card counters look at the online game (if some have the courage to appear here)? Do you consider the game as being played with a single deck that is reshuffled after each hand? Or more than one deck? I have scanned through some of the online casino sites but they don’t seem to address this issue in any great detail." And that alone should tell you something. First, "courage" has nothing to do with it. It has to do with "smarts". Look David, real casinos cheat in BJ on a regular basis. We have caught them red handed literally hundreds of times. I devote a whole chapter to cheating in the NBJ manual. And, I'm talking main line casinos not just back alley casinos. Now, if a real casino cheats right under your nose, in spite of the casino control commission and in spite of the embarassment of getting caught occassionally, what do you think off shore on line casinos do??? And who would you complain to? If real casinos cheat on a regular basis in spite of the obvious consequences, what do you think on line casinos will do where cheating is a whole lot easier and consequences a whole lot less? If you MUST play on line my best advice is to take up Poker. There is no incentive for an on line casino to cheat at Poker where the game is between the players and the casino merely gets paid to deal. There is every incentive for on line casinos to cheat in any game between the players and the casino. Sorry, but that's life in the real world. Ellis

No offense intended. Just trying to get you to show your hand. Old gambling habit. Works every time.

Do you know something unique I'm missing? Yeah, a couple things like: Differentiating between first and third base games Number of players Boxed card order on new cards. Boxed card order on single and 2 deck due to introducing new cards so often. BJ insurance reads dealer hole card reads. recommended spreads Betting progressions on your hi bets only. Noting the number of tens in a row in the game you are in. Are 8's running with 10's Are aces running with tens, Are 2's running with tens. Is the dealer breaking Is the dealer breaking on highs or lows. How often are you getting your 1st card ten How often is it winning Time of day vs new cards No vig - Betting over the sholder of the first base player on high percentage bets. Do you do any of those things.

Keith's post about the old days brings back a lot of memories. Keith, that casino was in Colorado wasn't it? I remember that after the third dealer tray refill the owner came rushing over and demanded to know what we were doing. I sais: it's easy, we can see the hole card reflected in the dealer's fingernail polish. He invited us all to lunch. That was cheaper than letting us continue playing and Ron kept trying to tip the dealer a dollar. But she wouldn't take it. Those were the best times of my life, probably all of our lives??? BTW Keith's post caused me to realize that I had my two Doctor Harvey's confused in some recent posts. I was referring to Dr. Harvey Garrison not Dr. Harvey Cohen, if, in fact, they really are two different people. Easy to do when you have two Jewish Dr. Harveys. Keith, what was the name of that other Doctor who played with us all the time? Not the Asian one but the lung disease specialist? Anyway, Team play: Russ is right, logistics is a major problem. I think I lost ten pounds durring the whole Bahamas team play extravaganza. As my memory was refreshed I realized we had a total of 41 players. We stayed at four of the Great Houses on South Ocean Beach, own by DiviDivi On New Providence Island (Nasau), a fabulous place to stay. I also realized that we played 6 sessions not 4, with every team winning all 6 sessions. I had forgotten about the two afternoon rain sessions. But just organizing a 4 or 5 player team presents a host of problems. First, recognize that you must time your trip to make sure you can all get on a table. In the Bahamas, we made table reservations to insure that we could get on tables and to insure the casinos had enough dealers working. Recogize that for normal teams to operate you first must avoid weekends to insure table availability. That can be a major problem for many if not most players. Then, you need to train the team beforehand. Then there is the money arrangement problem. We split the profits right at the casino after every session and sometimes durring the session. Of course, you can't let the casino see you do this. Then you have to avoid getting called for collusion. Collusion is illegal and teams have had all their money confiscated by the Casino in the Bahamas. We came close. It is very difficult to control your players once they become jubilent with winnings. In other words you need real pros with strict rules regarding table talk and money transfers. The easiest part is winning. Once you have players pulling lows out of the game, winning is virtually a foredrawn conclusion. It takes several shoes to set the cards up. Then you go through a winning window that can last anywhere from several shoes to all day. You need exit signals and strategy. You need a team captain that all will obey. Sometimes the shoe goes completely random and your players need to know how to react to this. Sometimes the game becomes over clumped. You will get heat and your players need to know how to react. Chastize the third base player when he stands against basic strategy. Every body has a roll to play and they must play it right. Your sacrifice players must act and look like they never played before. Sometimes they might stand with less than 12. You've got to "cover" this "foolish" play. You need a good strategy to keep the wanderers off your table. There is a lot to it. Basically your strategy is this: Put your big player at first base. He bets min., like everybody else until the cards turn in his favor, which they ALMOST always will. That's another thing you must deal with. Sometimes they don't. The job of all of the other players is to usurp the lows and feed highs to the dealer. This increases the dealer break rate and gives your big player a lot of first card tens. It's the other players job to help him get the second ten. Once you've got the game going the big player needs to move up to at least 5times the bet of the sac. players. And that's just for starters. Your goal is to get the big player to black while everyone else plays red. You need to know what to do if second base starts winning or any other spot. Depending on the casino rules and the number of wanderers, sometimes its good to have some of the sac players play two hands to keep control of all the bases. At least try to get a reserve chips up on the empty chairs. We always had the third base player sit in the sixth chair instead of the seventh. Likewise for the big player at first. Once you get everthing down pat its more fun than a barrel of monkeys and its hard to keep a straight face. But you will learn to.

Good observation! Sign of a good player! A good player observes and reacts to what IS happening. He isn't blinded by what's supposed to happen. Players who are brain washed into thinking that abnormalities are just Standard Deviation are doomed to live in a world of standard deviation, ie. a world of shit.

Sorry, I see now that you are really green. Everybody that's anybody in B.J. knows my play record. I've done countless public demonstrations with large galleries in casinos in A.C., Vegas, Tunica, MN. Colorado, and the Bahamas. Even the Canary Islands. When somebody said it was just good luck when I did Taj 1 winning $10,000 in less than an hour with a seldom used high bet of 3 black units and a min. bet of 1 black, I repeated the performance two weeks later again in front of a large gallery. Yep, $10,000 again in less than an hour. Got any card counters that can do that? I've known thousands of card counters but never knew one that could even make expenses. My advice to you is to go watch them play. Make them put their money where their mouth is. You won't get any takers. What's that tell ya?

When am I going to play? I've already played full time. Before you try learning to count you should focus your efforts on learning to read. Look, if the cards in BJ were random highs would follow highs more often than they mathematically should half the time and the reverse half the time. But that isn't what happens. It always goes one way. Highs always follow highs more than they should. That ain't random. All you need to do to prove this to yourself is count highs following highs. You can count, right?

Regarding the argument between clumpers and counters there really is no argument. Both use precisely the same information, the uneven distribution of tens. How the cards got that way is really unimportant. If there were no uneven distribution card counting would not work. Neither would clumping. "Clumping" is just a shorter way of saying "uneven distribution of high cards". The real question is: Which method utilizes the uneven distribution of tens / clumping to the best advantage. I know for a fact from casino experience, thousands of shoes played each way, that clumpers get far more advantage out of the uneven distribution of tens than counters get. It isn't even close. Here are just some of the reasons why: When the counter gets a high plus count he bets high. All he knows is that the remaining cards are high in tens and he knows exactly how high. But the counter has no idea of where this excess of tens is. He doesn't even know which side of the cut off card they are on. He doesn't know how many high tens desity clumps remain. He assumes that those excess tens are evenly distributed in the remaining cards and bets accordingly. But, in Blackjack, due to the nature of the game, tens are never evenly distributed. Why assume something that is never true? This is pitifully little information to bet hard earned cash on. And what if a high desity tens clump appears right at the start of the deal. Half of all shoes start out with a negative count. That's the only time a player has the advantage, when the count is going DOWN. The counter gets his negative count and bets low right through what may very well be the best part of the shoe. He watches the clumper next to him betting high and winning and dismisses him as "playing incorrectly". Yep, the counters have this incredible saying. "It doesn't matter whether you win or lose as long as you play correctly." That sure lets the card counting book author off the hook doesn't it? But he's the only person who benefits from this faulty and foolish way of thinking. Try telling that to your mortgage holder. "Well, yes, I lost the mortgage money but it doesn't matter, I played correctly." See if he sees any wisdom in your thinking. The true pro is there for one reason and one reason only, TO WIN MONEY! Winning money is the ONLY thing that matters. If you are winning you are playing correcty for that shoe. If you are losing, you aren't. The clumper is a real world player. He knows how many high tens denity clumps there are in the shoe he is playing. He knows how many low density rounds signal high tens in the next round. He knows how clean or dirty the clumps are. He will bet high far less often but will be right far more often. He knows that the dealer break rate is never 28% and that it is dictated by the severity of clumping. One is a function of the other. He knows when to insure and he does insure when his odds are better than 50% and they often are, making that the best bet in the casino. Counters are taught that insurring is a sucker bet. Yet you often see clumpers insurring the whole table and winning. The clumper reacts to where the tens actually are. The counter reacts to where the tens might be. The counter does all that work in an attempt to achieve a 0.5% player advantage. A clumper would call 0.5% a bad day. He works to achieve a double digit player advantage. I played full time in AC for three years without a losing day. Do you think I could do that with a 0.5 % advantage. Would you buy a stock that had a 0.5% return history. What the hell are you counters thinking? How did you get so brain washed. Stop beating your head against that brick wall. Learn NBJ. I know thousands of card counters that quit and became clumpers. I don't know a single clumper that became a counter. E Clifton Davis

Treat 2's like 10's.