Playing Chemin de fer — to Win
If you love the blast and adventure of a perfect card game and the elation of winning and acquiring some cash with the odds in your favour, betting on 21 is for you.
So, how do you beat the house?
Basically when wagering on blackjack you are watching the odds and chances of the cards in relation to:
1. The cards in your hand
2. What cards might be dealt from the shoe
When wagering on blackjack there is statistically a better way to play each hand and this is referred to as basic strategy. If you add card counting that helps you compute the odds of cards being dealt from the deck, then you will be able to increase your action amount when the edge is in your favor and decrease them when the edge is not.
You’re only going to win under half the hands you bet on, so it is important that you adjust action size when the odds are in your favor.
To do this when gambling on blackjack you must use basic strategy and card counting to succeed.
Basic strategy and counting cards
Since mathematicians and academics have been investigating chemin de fer all sorts of complicated schemes have arisen, including "counting cards" but although the idea is complicated counting cards is actually straightforward when you wager on chemin de fer.
If when playing vingt-et-un you count cards reliably (even if the game uses more than one deck), you can tilt the odds to your favor.
Vingt-et-un Basic Strategy
Vingt-et-un basic strategy is centered around a simple system of how you bet based upon the hand you are dealt and is mathematically the strongest hand to play without counting cards. It informs you when playing twenty-one when you should hit or stand.
It’s very simple to do and is soon memorized and up until then you can get complimentary cards on the internet
Using it when you wager on blackjack will bring down the casino’s expectations to near to zero.
Counting cards tilting the expectation in your favour
Card counting works and players use a card counting plan gain an advantage over the gambling hall.
The reason for this is easy.
Low cards favour the dealer in vingt-et-un and high cards favor the player.
Low cards favour the dealer because they help him make winning totals on their hands when she is stiff (has a twelve, thirteen, 14, fifteen, or 16 total on their 1st two cards).
In casino vingt-et-un, you can hold on your stiffs if you choose to, but the dealer can’t.
She has no choice to make, but you do and this is your advantage. The rules of gambling on vingt-et-un require that croupiers hit stiffs no matter how flush the deck is in high cards that will bust her.
The high cards favor the player because they might break the house when he hits his stiffs and also Aces and Tens means blackjack for the gambler.
Although blackjacks are, evenly dispersed between the dealer and the gambler, the fact is that the player gets paid more (3:2) when he receives a blackjack so the player has an advantage.
You don’t have to tally the data of each of the individual card in order to know when you have an edge over the casino.
You just need to know at what point the shoe is loaded or poor in high cards and you can boost your wager when the edge is in your favour.
This is a simple account of why card-counting systems work, but gives you an understanding into why the logic works.
When betting on vingt-et-un over the longer term card counting will help in changing the expectation in your favor by approx 2%.