Tuna Dave's Blackjack Diary

Blackjack For Suckers

I am working on a set of blackjack rules, to be called Tuna Dave's Blackjack Commandments. While I am working on this list, I would like to share one item that particularly annoys me, as it does all serious blackjack players. That is the issue of single-deck, 6/5 blackjack.

The single-deck game has been disappearing from casinos for some time, since it has the lowest house advantage, is a game that serious blackjack players can beat, and involves lots of dealer time in shuffling, rather than dealing. However, the game is coming back, with a twist. Rather than the traditional 3/2 payoff on a blackjack, the game now only pays 6/5.

Tuna Dave's Blackjack Commandments will contain the following rule: DO NOT, under any circumstances, play any single-deck blackjack game that pays 6/5.

For more information about why this is a sucker bet, check out the recent article from Motley Fool.

Learning Discipline

Stanford Wong's Blackjack21 website has a number of message forums, some free, others private. On one of the forums, a member, in response to one of my postings, wrote the following:

I liked your website Tuna, although I must say to walk away from a positive shoe just because you lost 4 or 5 hands in a row makes no sense.

This is an interesting observation, because it brings up an entire series of postings that I had not yet addressed. That issue is a discussion of blackjack fundamentals. By this, I do not mean the basic rules, such as basic strategy. Rather, by "fundamentals" I mean those rules that should be written in stone regarding how you approach the game of blackjack. These "commandments" would include such things as: play strategy (basic strategy); card counting (if you want to go that route); money management; emotional intelligence; session length; etc.

Over the coming weeks and months, I will address all of these issues, and more. However, to get back to the original point of the comment quoted above, I would like to address the issue of discipline.