There are some important facts and statistics to consider before I introduce the CORE System. You, the player, in order to keep up with the casino, must be open to new points of view and new strategies. The casinos certainly take this attitude as they successfully search for defenses against sharp players and new systems. There is no “right way” to play blackjack. What’s right at one table may rapidly wipe you out at the next. The game is a fluid, dynamic situation which will inevitably be victorious over anyone who tries to approach it with rigidity.

Some people get around this by sitting only at tables that look like they’ll accommodate their personal method of play. They often spend much time scouting, sometimes finding nothing suitable in a particular online casino. When they family do find the “right” table, they may be limited to only four or five hands before conditions deteriorate and they leave.

While the success rate of these players may look impressive on paper, in reality they are limited to winnings of about one to four hands per “scouting hour” -not very satisfying, unless they’re betting a large amount per hand. They get in very little playing time, endlessly looking for that “Home Run Table”, that big win streak, hoping desperately that they’ll fmd it before their discipline breaks down or their vacation ends.

Many systems players have the complaint that their system, while it works, takes all the fun out of the game. Mathematician Julian Braun, author of one of the ftrst practical computer Basic Strategies, wrote in his book, How To Play Winning Blackjack: “Winning at blackjack demands a game plan. Something you can believe in and be guided by. Basic Strategy is at the foundation of it all. You must adhere to it strictly, deviating not at all. Your moves must be as mechanical as those of the Dealer.”

Does this sound like fun? Something you’d care to spend your vacation doing? The truth is that few people have the will or desire to become a blackjack machine. And so, we will explore the first, and possibly, the most insidious superstition of blackjack.

ME INSIDIOUS MYTII OF BASIC STRATEGY

Games such as craps or roulette are examples of the “Law Of Independent Trials”; whatever number comes up during one play is not going to affect what number appears on the following play. Blackjack does not follow this law; The course taken by a deck or shoe is greatly dependent upon what cards have been previously depleted from it. Add the effects of shuffles, cuts and post play card pick-up techniques, and blackjack begins to look tantalizingly like a game that might somehow be tracked (and stacked).

Tempted by this concept, some mathematicians of the Fifties and Sixties put all of the various player/ dealer hand combinations into a computer and had it play out millions of hands to determine, to the thousandth’s (.001) place, what the “correct,” or most advantageous move is for every situation, given a random deck.

The key phrase here is “given a random deck.” Just what is this random deck? In statistics, the word “random” refers to a set of things, any of which has an equal chance of occurring. The mathematicians knew that the “Basic Strategy” they were offering had limited validity, because any decks possibilities change as soon as some cards are dealt out. And they were quite aware that different casinos had different shuffling techniques, some producing anything but a random deck. Furthermore, a new deck is always set up the same way. Take a look at one-it will show you a lot. At what point does that new deck, chock full of card clumps, become the much touted random deck? It will most likely be replaced by the pit boss hours before it shows any signs of being random.

But this hasn’t stopped veritable armies of players who, for the last three decades, have been barreling on with Basic Strategy, faithfully bulling their way through decks and shoes with consistent play from beginning to end, coolly holding their heads aloft those that hadn’t the “smarts” to follow the seemingly “indisputable” evidence presented by a billion computer-played hands.