Club USA Casino Blackjack is the best bet for practicing blackjack basic strategy without stress and distractions. The game comes in both free play and real money modes and you can play up to three hands on your own table. The rules are favorable and with a house edge of only 0.71%, better than many casinos. The table minimum is $1 per hand and the maximum is $500.

May be the most fascinating book written on blackjack counting teams since the days of Ken Uston (who died in 1987). Written by Ben Mezrich, who gained the trust of a half-dozen MIT students (occupation: blackjack counters), this work covers a four-year period when the 'team' was in its heyday (1994 to 1998), winning big and escaping the clutches of casino management with minimum damage to self and bankrolls. Mezrich must have truly blended in with this group of near-geniuses and sharpies who often communicated in code right at the tables, signaling verbally and non-verbally. But the strength of the book is in his astute observations of how Las Vegas compares to Atlantic City; what the casino mentality is with regard to attracting players and high rollers, including the all-powerful 'whales' (the highest of high rollers), in how surveillance systems are designed to operate, how counters can be threatened, roughed up and warned never to return again.