Archive for January, 2008

  • Surrender

    Monday, January 21st, 2008

    “Surrender” is an option that allows the player to give up, or surrender, after the first two cards are dealt, and in doing so forfeit half of his original wager. There are two varieties of surrender: early surrender and late, or conventional, surrender. The notable difference is that early surrender allows the player to give up his hand before the dealer checks for blackjack - if the dealer’s upcard is an ace or ten. Conventional surrender is the ability to bow out only after the dealer checks for progressive blackjack. Depending largely on both the player’s hand and the dealer’s up card, the option to surrender, when available, can be a very advantageous one. For that reason, the option isn’t always offered, and in fact is lessening in popularity. Surrender will be touched on in more detail in the Chapter Two section titled “Rules Variations.”

  • Hard Hands and Soft Hands

    Sunday, January 20th, 2008

    Because the ace can be worth either 1 or 11 depending on which is more favorable, special terminology is used to describe a hand that distinguishes how it is being used. Hands in which an ace is counted as n are known as “soft hands,” while those hands without an ace or where any number of aces are counted as one are known as “hard hands.” For example, a 17 comprising an ace and a 6 is referred to as a “Soft 17.” Likewise, an ace and a 4 comprise a Soft 15. But what happens if we add a queen to a Soft 15, as might happen in play? With the presence of a queen, the value of the ace must now be counted as 1 - otherwise our total would exceed 21. Counting the ace as 1, our total, now made up of an ace, a 4, and a queen, went from a Soft 15 to a hard hand of the same total.

  • Casinos: Love them or Leave them

    Saturday, January 19th, 2008

    Like it or not, it’s hard to go anywhere in this country, or in the world for that matter, and not be within striking distance of a casino. As touched on in the last chapter, that wasn’t the case ten or fifteen years ago, at least in the United States. But it certainly is now.
    So what are these places really all about? What goes on behind the scenes? And now that you’re going to be part of an elite group of players that actually wins money in the long run, what will you need to know?
    Let’s talk about casinos and game of online blackjack
    - where they are, what’s in them, how you’ll interface, and some other interesting things to know about an environment truly unlike any other.

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