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What Does Gargantuan Mean? 

Don’t get sidetracked on me here!  Focus, this is important stuff.  Who gives a crap about what gargantuan actually means, just know Wager Frequency is about as important as Blackjack gets.  You must understand this concept or you will be lost, never making sense of why certain hands are played certain ways.  If you are lost in the casino, you have all day to spend reading by the pool with the dictionary in hand, or maybe worse yet, one of several Blackjack books I wouldn’t even recommend to a person I dislike.

I will try and walk through this so it is understandable.  If it confuses you, all is well.  Take your time and if you must, come back another day and try another go at this.  You really do need to grasp this concept. 

Step one is going to the kitchen table.  If you and I were sitting at the kitchen table practicing playing Blackjack I can easily show you what this is all about.  First we need cards, as many decks as you want, a piece of paper and a writing pad.  Feel free to grab a cold beer if that is your drink of choice. 

Step two is important.  We are going to set out any hand as an example hand that we will use for our test, one for each of us, but it will be the same hand.  We are going to pick a hand that is usually split or that we might consider doubling down on.  Some examples include hands like AA, 22, 33, 44, 88, 99 (any pairs) and hands like 45, 37, 56 (any total 9,10,11) where we might double down depending on the Dealer's Up Card.  Do you follow?

Step three involves your hand and my hand sitting on the table (just the initial two card hand the dealer might have dealt us in the game Blackjack) and we haven't acted on how to play this hand yet.  Let's give you a Hard 10, say a 4 and a 6.  I am going to take a Hard 10 as well, say the 8 and the 2.  We don't have the exact same hand, but you can see we both have a Hard 10.  do you agree?

Step four is selecting a Dealer Up Card.  Let's give the Dealer a 9 up. 

Step five is just understanding what the hell is going on!  It is simple, we are playing Blackjack, you got a Hard 10, I got a Hard 10 and the Dealer has a 9 showing.  What the MOST CORRECT way to play this hand is, we don’t care at the moment, that is why we are going to have a little test.  Now you (your 10), the dealer (just their 9 showing) and I (same hand as you) are going to keep the hands we have for the entire test.  Clear so far?

Step six.  Now what I am going to do is this:  I will deal the cards.  God knows I have done enough of it over the years, while you record statistics on that pad of paper you have from Step #1.  You will record our results for the next 100 rounds.  Here is something important though.  Every single time we play a round, you are always going to Hit your Hard 10 vs. the 9, and I will always just take one card, because I am Doubling Down my Hard 10 vs. the Dealer's 9 showing.  The results for you each round will be a Win, Loss or Push when we compare your final total each round with the total the Dealer makes.  Of course since you are hitting, we'll add in that if you don't have 17 or better when you hit, you'll hit again, trying to make a hand 17 or better.  So you will bust out here and there during the test.  Bottom line is you will get one Win, one Loss or one Push each round.  Me on the other hand, my results each round will be a Double Down Win (2 wins), a Double Down Loss (2 Loses) or a Push (same as you, one push – we both break even on a pushed hand).  Are you with me so far? 

Two Beers Later 

If you are quick at recording the information this is going to take me under 5 minutes, roughly the time it takes Jr. to consume 2 brown pop (if he is pacing himself).  Now that we are done, I am going to enjoy a beverage while you add up the totals for our 100 rounds played.  One thing you should notice, if you added properly is that your Total Wins + Losses + Pushes should equal 100.  So far so good? 

My totals will be under 200, in a Doubling Down example like we did, but equal to 200 if we multiply the Total Pushes by two.  If you get this result, you are a great record keeper and you, too, now get to enjoy a beverage, as I take it from here. 

If you didn’t get those results, either I didn’t flip 100 rounds exactly, or you recorded wrong.   

The Learning Process 

We are starting to understand Wager Frequency and its more important cousin, Per Occurrence.  First off lets make up numbers to show our wins and losses for this test.  By the way, I ran one test and these numbers are real numbers from that first test.  If you do a test of your own, you can compare your results to mine below for this Hard 10 vs. the Dealer's 9. 

Hard 10 vs. Dealers Up Card 9
You -- Hitting	Me -- Doubling Down
Wins 56 (56%)	Wins 106 (53%)
Losses 34 (34%)	Losses 80 (40%)
Pushes 10 (10%)	Pushes 7 (7%)
(You won 22 Wagers, Congrats)	(I won 26 Wagers)

The numbers for the different hands are always fun to see.  If you are not sure if you should split a 4-4 vs.  a Dealer Up Card of a 6, you could run a test like this or buy the Playing 21 Program and we can show you every hand at every count, no matter how you count.  Saves paper is all.

If I had told you, “you win 56% of the time your way and I only win 53% of the time my way”, is your way clearly not better?  Common, you are crushing me!!!  Books would have you convinced your way is better for they'd be telling you, you win 3% more frequently when you hit your Hard 10 vs. a Dealer's 9.  Case closed!  Not knowing any different, you’d play your way over mine the rest of your life.  You’d also likely never be able to figure out how come you lose so quickly in the casinos when playing Blackjack.  In the end you would wind up where most non-thinking gamblers do, in front of a slot machine.  You may also find yourself with a dictionary by the pool reading useless words like "gargantuan".  Is this a 'spelling bee' or Blackjack?

You clearly won a higher percentage than I did (56% to 53%), and lost a much lower percentage of hands than I did (34% to 40%), by just hitting this hand.  We both ONLY played the hand 100 times each.  That is very important.  I didn’t get the hand any more frequently than you did.  In fact, we even played all 100 hands against the Dealers same Up Card.  If we were betting $10 per hand, or per round, we are both winners but I am $40 ahead of you and buying us lunch.  You only finished ahead 22 wagers, but I finished at plus 26 wagers.  Have you ever heard the expression that there are three types of lies, “Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics”. 

Can you see our problem with this game?  We're logic guys and this didn't make any logical sense to us at all.  You are likely sitting there scratching your head or grabbing another beer for this could be a LONG night.  I remember a friend once telling me, "This is messed up Dude."  Stick around if you want to see "Messed Up".

Splitting and Doubling 

If you got this far, you are starting to understand the importance of Wager Frequency.  Every single Double Down hand, and Split Hand are hands where you are placing more money on the table.  Every single one of these hands matter.  Even if you are losing these hands, in a mathematical game, losing less means winning more.

I said "Losing less means winning more!"  Agreed?

Imagine in our example after playing that same hand a million times each.  I would have been $400,000 ahead of you.  Not a bad down payment on a nice car! Sorry, that was "four hundred thousand dollars".  Visualize this, you could retire!  I could anyhow.  The thing is, we still only had the hand a million times each.  The Total Occurrence of the hand does not change for either of us, but Per Occurrence I am kicking your ass.  You are winning the way you are playing but is winning less not losing more?

I said "Is winning less not losing more?"  Agreed?

Overall, it doesn’t matter how often we win in terms of percentages, our total wins and total loses, as much as our Total Net Wagers, and how much money we physically won or lost.  If you agree with me on this, and it isn't an easy concept when you have to admit you win at a higher percentage than I do, yet my way is better.  If you do agree, you are set to become a winner.  It is fact, I suggest buying into it if you care to win.  This is first step to being a big winner.  That step includes learning how to properly play every hand you are dealt.  We'll show you! 

One Step Further -- Per Occurrence 

The Playing 21 Program is going to show you results no normal person can explain.  Take the way you played the game in the past and throw it out the window.  You will now make plays that authors of the books that came before us, would cringe at.  It is okay, you are making the correct mathematical play, regardless of what anyone says.  The beauty is you will know it and have the confidence you can’t place any dollar amount on. 

You must believe in what we are saying to win.  If you do not, you will play wrong.  If we both play the same hand One Million times and in the end, no matter how silly it may appear I am playing, if I win more Per Occurrence than you, or lose less Per Occurrence than you, is my way not better?  If you don't agree you need to save yourself some time and not read any further in the site and save yourself some money by not playing Blackjack at all.  I think Doc Holliday could sum this one up the best, "Maybe Blackjack just not your game.  I know!  Let's have a spelling contest!" (back to the pool)

There is only one right answer if I am winning more than you or losing less.  Let me help you, “Yes Scott, your way would be better.”  Exactly right.  See, that is the absolute power of the Playing 21 Program.  It proves shocking things over and over, and it proves ways to play certain hands that no book has ever stated.  These ways are the most correct way to play those hands.  What are they, well, we’ll give you more as we go, but they all depend on many factors.  Each House Rule, the Number of Decks, and your counting method all factor in.  We could go on for years on playing one hand.  We sell the answers to you for every hand, letting you decide those variables and seeing for yourself what is right. 

Prepare To Be Shocked
Prepare To Win

The Playing 21 Program