SAVING $80,000 Here’s a quick story that I hope will reinforce my point about why it’s so critical and important that you learn the basic playing strategy. Of course, you can do better than losing 50 cents per hundred dollars bet at blackjack and in future chapters I’ll show you how. This is, by far, a less costly game to play when you compare the loss per $100 wager to other casino games:

A half percent house edge in dollars and cents means the casino will win, on average, fifty cents for every $100 you bet. In Chapter 1, I showed you how you can reduce the casinos’ edge in blackjack to about 0.2–0.5% (rule dependent) by knowing the correct playing decisions (i.e., the basic playing strategy). The reason that the game of blackjack is subject to mathematical analysis is because it is, inherently, a mathematical game that is, blackjack has a fixed set of rules. Basic strategy is the mathematically correct way to play every hand because over time it will maximize the amount of money you will win and minimize the amount you will lose.

The basic playing strategy is a set of rules that tells you the optimal way to play every hand dealt to you when the only information you have is your hand and the dealer’s upcard.