Know What to EXPECT When Playing Blackjack

Surely you have heard in the casino, after a specific hand is dealt, all of a sudden someone yells out, “Can you believe this?” If someone says something like this, he states nothingJay Moore is the author of The Most Powerful Blackjack Manual: A Complete Guide for Both Beginners and Experienced Players.  In the manual, Jay demonstrates how to become a part of the less than 5% of players who leave the casino as winners, and have fun doing it.  Jay is an accomplished math teacher and architect, who has played winning blackjack for over 25 years.  Jay's website is www.blackjackmanual.com  more than, “I don’t know this game!” and, “I don’t know what to expect from this game.” To know a game means to know everything about it – foremost, to know what to expect from the game we play. If you know what to expect, nothing should be able to surprise you and you will never be in the “Can you believe this?” situation.

Let me illustrate the above with a couple of examples: When the dealer shows an Ace or a 10-value card two (or three) times in a row, there always will be a few players at the table who start to complain, “An Ace (or 10 or face) again?” That means that they did not expect it. In one deck there are sixteen 10-value cards + four Aces = 20 cards. This accounts for 38.46% of the total cards (52). In other words, the dealer will show up an Ace or a 10-value card on average almost 2 out of 5 times. Don't be surprised! You have to expect and accept that this is how it will happen. When you hear somebody “complain” you know they don’t know what to expect. They say nothing more than, “We are the losers.” I’m not telling you I’m a happy camper when a dealer shows three Aces in a row but sometimes it will just happen. You cannot stress yourself out after each and every hand. If the dealer shows more face cards after each other than should be expected, and you are not able to tolerate it or think the table has turned, consider leaving the table rather than complaining.

Here is another one: The dealer’s up card is a 5. I double down on 10. I get a King so I am sitting on 20, on a comfortable “winning hand”. I expect to win, but sometimes the dealer’s first card is a King (which is the best way to see the dealer bust), and then…… he gets a 6 — 21! Bingo. I lost. Can you image how our “Can you believe this?” friend will act when this happens to him? It’s really hard to believe when the dealer makes 21 on a bust card (mostly against our 20). We have to know and expect that this is how the game goes sometimes without saying, “Can you believe this?” – simply because this is part of the game.

We have to know what to expect. Otherwise, we won’t be able to handle the game emotionally. If we are not capable emotionally of what is happening to us, then we are losers. Just like a roller coaster. Once up, once down. Big climbs. Big drops.   Blackjack is a very tough game. Blackjack is an emotional game. It is very hard to beat.

We don’t just have to know what to expect in a sense of which cards should be coming up, what the average winning hand is (Yes, my friends, 18 is just an average losing hand in Blackjack!), what the probability of Busting when Hitting is, how many hands we can win, and so on, but also from a sense of what I call the emotional expectations.