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Many casinos today also offer games that look like blackjack, but are not blackjack, or at least, they are not the traditional game. Some casinos offer a blackjack variation called “Double Exposure” in which both of the dealer’s first two cards are dealt face up, but the dealer wins all ties. This is a relatively rare game, requiring a different strategy from standard blackjack. In one common single-deck variation of blackjack, called “Super Fun 21,” blackjacks pay even money, though there are many other doubling down, splitting, and surrendering options. In another game, called “Spanish 21,” all of the tens have been removed from the eight-deck shoe. That is, the jacks, queens, and kings are all there, but no pip (or numeral) tens. Like Super Fun 21, this game also allows more options than the traditional game. We will describe these games in more detail later, but for now, let’s stick with the traditional game.

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There are some less common rules you may encounter that do not affect the game significantly. A few casinos offer bonuses for certain player hands, such as a holding of three sevens, or 6, 7, and 8 of the same suit .

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Preferential shuffling is the practice of shuffling early during positive decks and dealing deeper or putting off the shuffle during negative decks. What’s importent about online casino blackjack
, sometimes this occurs without the dealer’s even realizing it, as an excess of high or low cards clumped together at any point in the deck may tend to promote this "naturally." For example, if the count goes highly positive it means an excess of low cards has been dealt a blackjack. But because a lot of low cards have been dealt, the dealer is probably a little farther along in the deck than usual - since a lot of low cards are typically involved in hands during which many players draw additional cards. Conversely, a lot of high cards at the beginning of a blackjack odds table result in a highly negative true count - but a lot of pat hands - which means that the dealer probably has more cards remaining in his hand than he normally would at any given point during the deal. Thankfully, the negative effects of natural preferential shuffling are neither large nor continuous.

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The ball lands in number 26, black. Wonderful. Today everyone wins with such casino blackjack rules including the guy with $1,500 on the table. I’m happy for them all, but unfortunately this experience will probably end up fooling at least one of these players into thinking they’ve got a winning system when, in fact, they don’t.

Seven out, line away," the stick man says softly.
I estimate our cowboy just lost about $3,200 on that one roll of the dice, but he doesn’t seem fazed. He gives the blonde a kiss and begins betting again as the stick man prepares for a new shooter. The only comment I offer is that craps and blackjack players are a colorful bunch.

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It looks like casino gambling is here to stay. On May 26,1978, Atlantic City, New Jersey, became the eastern home of legalized casino gambling. And casino gambling outside of Nevada hasn’t stopped expanding since. Speaking of Nevada, have you been to Las Vegas lately? From casinos for blackjack with mountains to virtual reality to Celine Dion, Vegas is (and always will be) the cutting edge. And they’re still building. Wynn Las Vegas, the newest megaresort, recently came in with a price tag of over $2 billion, surpassing the likes of the Venetian, Bellagio, Mandalay Bay, and several other hotel-supermodels lining the world-famous Las Vegas Strip. With that kind of investment going down, you can rest assured Sin City plans to leave the lights on for many years to come.

Indian reservations? There’s another phenomenon. Twenty years ago gaming on Indian reservations was just a gleam in a young tribal chief’s eye. Now casinos are on a multitude of reservations all over the United States. I’m willing to bet that there’s an Indian casino near you.

Riverboat casinos? Need I say anymore?

The point I am making is that casino gambling is everywhere nowadays, and no doubt isn’t going away any time soon. And lots of people are “doing it,” including many of those same people blackjack bonus offers
who frowned on casino gambling years ago. Even if you don’t see yourself sitting at a blackjack table with regularity, that’s all right. Make it a long-term investment—a “life game”—and apply it whenever you do play. In fact, for occasional players there are several inherent advantages to not playing too often, touched on in more detail in Chapter 13.

In conclusion, I know there are many people out there who already play blackjack with great regularity. What’s hard to understand is why anyone would do so and not attempt to take their game to the highest level possible? Serious blackjack for the “regular” player has long ago evolved to a level higher than that of just “Basic Strategy.” For the occasional player, I must wonder at what point or after how many years of play does the amount of hours logged at a blackjack table become large enough such that keeping track of the cards might have been well worth the effort to begin with? A question you, the occasional player, might want to consider with every new trip to Vegas, or foray into Indian country. And finally there are the newbies, for whom blackjack presents a wonderful opportunity to “beat the casinos at their own poker game right from the start. You’re not alone these days. With casino gambling so popular, it’s not surprising that more and more players are becoming informed players—players who gravitate to a game like blackjack because it requires skill and offers a mental challenge, and most important, can be beaten by the player who takes the time to master a winning method.

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These examples are here to demonstrate that success playing slots is not merely that once-in-a-lifetime blind luck event. You can be successful as a slots player each time you play, overall throughout your career as a player of slots, but only if you develop your art of patience. Notice I said “develop,” rather than “acquire.” You already possess that ability, but like the ability to draw, you must practice and learn, and learn from doing, and learn from mistakes. It won’t be easy, but then nothing worthwhile usually is. Developing patience means that you will curb your natural reactions. These are the emotional bursts, such as exuberance when you win, and anger when you lose. Both are the extremes along the scale upon which your slots success is measured.

The first trick to developing the art of patience when playing slots is to realize that great and glorious wins will happen and that equally great and horrendous losses will also happen. Both are the extremes along the scale of life’s probabilities. The second trick is to develop the ability to curb your reactions to those extremes. Be happy when you win, but remember that it will not always happen. Remember that the money you don’t lose back today will spend very nicely tomorrow, when you have a cooler head and a clearer perspective. When you lose, curb your reaction equally. Don’t start to question yourself beyond reason. If you feel you have forgotten some part of your knowledge, by all means look it up. See if you were correct, and if not, learn from the experience. Even when you realize that you did everything correctly and still suffered that great and horrendous loss, curb your instinct to blame everything and everybody. Try not to destroy yourself or the solid foundations of your slot playing abilities. Remember that this is just the other end of the scale and that in this instance, the law of probability simply worked against you.

It may take what you consider a long time. The phrase “a long time” means to us, as human beings, something entirely different than to the universal event statistics. What you consider “a long time” may be only a tiny fraction of a microsecond in the overall scope of universal time. For example, I know a professional blackjack player who plays flawlessly every time, and always does everything correctly. He is in his twelth year of a losing streak. I also know several professional poker players. One is in his sixth year of losing, and the other is in his eighteenth year of posting losses. Are those “a long time”?

It depends. The first poker player is starting to win. By the time you read this book, he will be in a positive curve. The other poker player is playing smaller stakes now and has been on an upward swing, booking positive results again. My blackjack player friend gave up and moved out of town.

The point is that it’s all relative. If you play slots for two hours and you don’t reach your win goal, was that losing streak “a long time”? Well, for you, perhaps. But you should be conscious of the fact that the universe doesn’t revolve around your particular perception of reality, or length of time. Patience, therefore, is the art of being able to react to each situation without overreacting to it—and that’s where the greatest benefit lies. You will have to work this out yourself, because no person is identical to any other, and no two people deal with the same set of circumstances in exactly the same way. Therefore, no specific advice is possible. However, a plausible guideline to achieving patience is possible, and that’s why I describe this in such detail. Patience will not only enable you to play slots better, but will also allow you to reach your comfort level far more quickly and with far more positive results. By realizing that patience is a requirement for enjoyment and profit from slot play, you will become far more at ease with the process. This will relax you under a variety of circumstances and situations, and will allow you to take a far more rational, and less emotional, approach to whatever these situations may be, or whatever action you may be required to undertake.

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I am often surprised at how easily people get upset over slot machines. They get upset when they don’t hit. They get upset when they do hit, but they don’t think it’s enough. They get upset if they don’t hit the jackpot. When they hit a secondary jackpot, they get upset that they didn’t hit the top jackpot. And when they hit the top jackpot, unless it’s something in the millions, they get upset because they couldn’t hit it sooner. Are you this kind of player? Does this fit your slot playing profile? If it does, then you aren’t patient. You are hyper. You shouldn’t play slots, at least not without a tranquilizer. Playing slots can be a very prolonged experience, one that will require your utmost patience. Slot wins will happen, and although sometimes you may be lucky and get that good win right away, most of the time it will not be that easy. You will have to work for it for a while. This may require you to do several sessions, and perhaps even visit several casinos. Maybe you will have to make several trips before you achieve that desired win goal. Setting achievable win goals is part of the art of patience.

I call it the “art” of patience because that’s what it is. Patience is not a skill, and it is not a science. It is art. Skills can be learned. Science can be learned. But you must be born with the ability to be patient. You cannot learn to be that way. Fortunately, almost all human beings are born with that ability. The vast majority of us are born with the ability to learn languages, to deal with our environment through our senses, and to find out how to survive. These are all inherent abilities. We also have the ability to be patient. Unfortunately, the pace of our modern world rarely rewards patience, at least visibly. Although most achievements which we see publicly are the result of hard work and a lot of patience, by the time we see these achievements they have already happened. To us, they seem to have happened overnight. The old story among actors who finally gain star status goes something like this: “After thirty years of acting, suddenly I’m an overnight success.” This is also true for many other disciplines. Take the making of a movie. First comes the idea. Then the story. Then the script. Then the producer. Then the studio. Then the money. Then the actors. Then the other details. Then the filming. Then the editing. Then the postproduction. Then the release. Although all of this is much more complex, the example works well for us here. By the time you get to see this film, most of the people involved in it have worked on it for several years. To you this looks as though the success just happened. To them, it’s been a long grind, requiring lots and lots of patience. What about this book? It takes a long time to write a book like this. By the time you read these words, I will have spent two years writing. Even if the actual writing takes less time than that, publishers usually work on a schedule which is eighteen months in advance. This means that even if you were to write your own book, starting right now, the soonest you could expect to see it in print at the local bookstore would be two years from the first moment you wrote the first word. It takes enormous patience, including the fact that you often don’t start to make money on it until three years later. Think about it. What if you went to your job this month, and your employer said: “Great work! Congratulations! We are very pleased. Your paycheck will be sent around June—three years from today.” Would you have that patience? Would you be able to wait?

To be continued…

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