Blackjack Articles

Blackjack On The Edge

When playing against the house, without a blackjack team, there are two seats that I prefer to take: The very first or the very last (1st and 3rd base). It doesn’t matter to me how many other people are at that table, I’ll look for those positions every time, given a choice.

When picking a seat, the only thing that matters to me is how confident and competent the dealer is on a particular night. I can count from any position, and 3rd base only gives me a tiny extra bit of penetration and information. Clearly that isn’t why I like to play at the blackjack table’s edge.

1st and 3rd base are the two positions that sloppy dealers give away their gold. I call them the ‘peek’ positions, because there’s no better place to take advantage of cards that are accidentally shown to you.

You see, when a dealer has an up card with a value of 10, he will announce: ‘Checking for Blackjack’. Then the dealer will raise his down card enough to have a look and see if there’s an ace under there. Similarly, if the dealer has an ace showing, he’ll need to peek at his down card after insurance is offered, in order to see if there’s a 10 under there.

Now even in the age of paranoid security and peek mirrors, some dealers are just plain weak. They’ll lift their card sky high, adjust their glasses, and have a good long look. When you find a weak dealer like this, you want to be in a position where you can get a clear look at the hole card. And that means first or third base.

You also need to become very, very tired in the presence of such a dealer. Tired enough to slouch or rest your head on your hands. Of course, if you’re somewhat height-disadvantaged, you just have to pay attention. Either way, you want the right combination of dealer weakness, seating position, available light, and slouch to give you a clear look at the dealer’s card when he peeks at it.

Once you have this information, you can modify your basic strategy, or basic plus counting, based on the exact foreknowledge of the dealer’s total. Knowing you need to hit on a 17 (because the dealer has a 9 in the hole) or stay on a 13 (6 in the hole) is a huge advantage. Use your imagination.

There are other kinds of peeks that are available in a hand dealt game if the dealer only knows how to deal from a shoe. Those are the floated hole card and the thumbed ‘on deck’ card. However: A) Hand dealt games are rare enough and B) Finding a dealer who is bad enough to display these weaknesses is even more rare. Rather than going into these at length, let’s just say that you should always be on the look out for dealer errors, and be in the best position to take advantage of them.

So how long do you want to take advantage of this sort of situation? That depends. I f this is a place that you go to on a regular basis, don’t kill the golden goose. Keep your sessions a reasonable length, and keep your winnings modest and quiet. If you go to this casino once a year, milk the situation for as long as you can. What you’re doing is perfectly legal in most countries, since dealer weakness isn’t considered cheating. Getting ‘caught’ will usually just get the dealer cautioned and replaced, and you might get a stern talking to (which you should look very confused about, but tell the boss that if you ever see bad dealing again, you’ll tell him right away… honest).

By Bill Ricardi
Blackjack Expert