FROM MY MAILBAG—PART II

Tips & Advice

Our first question comes from a reader who asks: Thank you for your magazine that has so much important information in it. Here are 2 gripes I don't think I have read about.

First, the blackjack table limits are so expensive. This is a question for T.J. – what casino in AZ has the lowest table limit?

Second, I don’t like it when someone stands behind me and watches me play. Does that ever happen to you? If I ask the dealer can he do something about the people just standing and looking? It makes me feel very uncomfortable with somebody standing behind my back.

Well unfortunately almost all the casinos have $15 minimums at the blackjack tables on the weekends, the days of $5 tables are all but gone. If you go during the week, you can find some $10 tables. Your best bet is to go to a less visited casino during the week and you might find a lower table amount.

Unfortunately you just have to put up with people watching you play. Maybe they are admiring the way you play and are trying to pick up pointers. Take it as a compliment. Try playing on TV sometime if you want to feel like you are really being watched. LOL!

The next question comes from Verneesa who writes :

TJ, when did the casinos decide to put more than one set of cards in the holder? The Old School way was to play blackjack with just one set of cards. That's why counting cards was so easy.

Now, dealers put more than one set of cards into the holder. Isn't that unfair to the players? Are the sets of cards put into the holder, like they are stacked in the box that they come in, meaning one set after another? Which still makes them easy to count, if they are done this way. Or, are the sets of cards all mixed up and then put into the holder? That isn't fair, then the casino is cheating.

Well it probably has been a long time since you played blackjack so I will fill you in. Around the 1970s most casinos went from a single deck hand pitched game to multi deck shoes or holder as you like to call them. This did several things, it eliminated the shady dealers who could manipulate cards while

Here, in Arizona, most casinos use six deck shoes, although you can find some double decks but it’s rare. The cards are all shuffled together before they are placed in the shoe. The more decks that are used the larger the house edge is, as a general rule. It is not cheating for casinos to use more decks. A lot of casinos offset the multi deck advantage with player friendly rules, such as re-splitting Aces and doubling down after a split, which is something very rare in single deck games.

Stay tuned for The Best “Trick” For Beating Blackjack in next month’s issue! $

Writer TJ Jorgensen has been a professional Blackjack player for several decades. He is well known for his tournament play and has beaten some of the top tournament players in the world. He has also won the World Series Of Blackjack. His newest book “How To Become A Blackjack Jedi” is available online at Amazon.com.