Betting And Wagering
“Your Best Bet”

Betting Fools

During Operation Iraqi Freedom people placed over $1 Million in bets on the day Saddam Hussein would fall from power (that is a true fact). Most of the bets were in the $5 to $10 range, with the highest bet reported to be around $500 (probably one of Saddam’s close body guards hoping to cash in before finding himself unemployed in Greenland). When we heard the amount that was wagered, we just shook our heads, knowing crazy people out there would bet on just about anything you can imagine. It never ceases to amaze us…the idiotic bets people will make (by the way, congratulations to Steve for picking the “Bunker Buster”, and winning our “How Will Saddam Meet His Maker”, office pool –UPDATE: Hey, we paid Steve prematurely and he had already lost the money playing Blackjack and the casino wouldn’t give it back. Editors Note: Steve should have held out and spent his winnings on buying the Playing 21 Program).

Blackjack is quite possibly a person’s best bet when they opt for some casino action. The exact odds on the game have always been debated. What has never been in debate is the fact that Blackjack is a game of skill. It is a “player’s game” when one compares it to the rest of the ways that casinos offer to take your money. Using proper basic strategy and a decent betting system, anyone could take some extra cash, say winnings from an office pool, and possible do quite well at the casino.

In this section, we share with you a little about betting and wagering, which are synonymous with each other throughout our site. Some of this is our beliefs and theories, like Wager vs. Win and Wager Frequency, which we can prove are very important parts of betting, while the other betting categories are views on those you may have read in books or elsewhere on the net.

Betting At Blackjack

In Blackjack the player is required to make his bet in the appropriate wagering area on the Blackjack table, usually a circle or square right in front of where he is sitting. There are usually 6 or 7 of these areas at the table. The wager must conform to both table minimums and maximum bets, usually posted on a sign to the dealer’s right. When a player makes his wager and the cards have started to be dealt, the player may not alter or touch his wager in any way. Like touching the cards in a face up Blackjack game, touching your wager is prohibited in the casino, for obvious reasons.

Once the round is played, the dealer pays all players’ winning wagers and takes all losing wagers. Any hands that have the same point total as the dealers are considered pushes, and the player neither wins nor loses.

It must be understood that the game Blackjack has such a fine line between winning and losing, that a player must bet properly if they are to walk away from the table with chips in hand. Although many people feel betting is just some lucky hit and miss routine, players who combine knowledge of the game and accurate, disciplined betting strategies know they will do much better in the long run versus the casinos. Players who have little concept of betting are usually those who don’t grasp the game and its beauty to begin with, and are a pleasure for the casino to have around.

More Important Than A Win

Players who want to excel at the game Blackjack must realize that a wager is more important than a win. We call this Wager vs. Win. Basically the concept is very simple, and very real. The fact that a player can vary his wager, like $10 one hand and $50 the next, makes it clear that a player can actually lose more hands than they win at the game, yet leave the casino an overall winner; more money. This is very powerful, and we prove it in the Playing 21 Program, by allowing players to not only count cards, but to wager any amount at any count. The concept is showing a player using any Counting Method they choose, where in the count they are maximizing their wins and losses, so at those points, larger bets can be placed.

The Playing 21 Program even takes this to another level, in a way that has never been shown in any Blackjack program in history. If you do count cards, we will show you a direct correlation between the count, and the frequency with which you receive certain hands. The concept here is in the Hand Breakdown vs. Dealers Up Card, which is the DNA of the game Blackjack…every single possible hand combination a player can start with is broken down, all the way down to 21 different counts and 45 different categories for each count. So lets say you wanted to know how you do each time you have a pair or 8’s and the dealer has a face card, and you split your hand. There is the answer, in just about 4 clicks of the mouse. How simple is that? One of the categories shows you how frequently you had that starting hand vs. that dealer up card, at each count. So now, a player can see how, as the count changes, he receives certain winning or losing starting hands and the frequency of each. It is a truly awesome concept, but we have it all displayed in easy to read reports, like the Win/Loss Report. Once you bring up this information, in just two simple mouse clicks, you can compare results of differing ways to play the same hand. It is really something to experience for yourself. Just be careful when your jaw hits the table!

If you would like to know more about betting, please read through all the links above. We have broken betting down for you in case you are looking for something a little more specific. We recommend you read Wager Variation here. Also Wager vs. Win and Wager Frequency, but we also have links to each of these: Money Management, Progressive Betting, Winning Streaks, The Betting Spread, Playing Two Hands, Systems, The Martingale System, The Matrix System and the D’Alembert.

The Playing 21 Program is the best Blackjack program ever made. It’s the one that exposed the fact that many casinos were misleading their customers. The program did prove any person can physically win at Blackjack, possibly counting as little as just two cards. If you would like to know absolutely every single answer about Blackjack, feel free to check it out here.