There are a lot of books published about how to play blackjack. There are also quite a few courses offered, mostly with every intent of delivering an honest product. But the unfortunate fact remains that most people who attempt to learn blackjack either from books or from courses do not become capable of entering a casino and making a reasonable profit. Why is this?

One reason is that many of the courses mislead you into believing that a few hours of study are all you need in order to go into the casinos and win. This is simply not true. Playing profitable blackjack requires skill and patience, determination and discipline. Even the best of players experience statistical variations in win rate. Because of this, many players become frustrated and give up too easily. To win you have to be willing to lose. Learn what to expect and stick it out. What do we do differently? We have set ourselves the goal of doing what we can to help you to teach yourself how to play blackjack profitably. Does this mean we don’t teach you. Yes and no. We do all the things that teachers usually do, and we try to do them very well. But in the last analysis, teaching other people is not very effective, however it is done. The most effective thing a teacher can do for a student is to teach him how to teach himself, and to motivate him to do it.

We have worked very hard to determine what you need to learn and how you can learn it. Learning has three components: remembering, understanding, and performing. If you get too far behind in any one of these three components, the effectiveness of the others will suffer too.

We have determined what you need to memorize and have put it in your course material. When you see some of it, your first reaction may be that you will never learn it. You can learn it. We not only provide you with the material you have to learn but provide you with mnemonic techniques to help you to learn it.

Memorizing the technical material is not enough. You need to have it at your fingertips. When the dealer deals you a card, you must immediately determine what to do next. You have to do all the things you are learning to do accurately. It is theoretically possible to play correctly and precisely by playing like an automaton. It is not a good idea. Understanding what you are doing adds a whole new dimension to your game. We can’t teach you to completely understand the meaning of all the numbers you will have to remember in order to play blackjack properly. Those numbers were generated by fast computers running complicated programs over a relatively long time. But you can develop a general understanding why the numbers are roughly what they are. That kind of understanding at least gives you a feeling that what you are learning makes sense and adds a sense of depth to what would otherwise be a purely mechanical task.

Remembering and understanding are only two of the three components of learning. There is also performing. Mere hours at home studying is not enough for you to learn to perform at the blackjack table. Never mind what the get-rich-quick-courses tell you. You will have to practice what you learn to become proficient at it.

In addition to developing skills and understanding, there are things that you must commit to memory. These include the traditional blackjack subjects such as basic strategy and card-count strategy tables. Besides these things that never change, you must also develop the means to temporarily memorize specific things that are happening at the blackjack table where you are playing. Because the nature of these things is largely numerical and of a type not natural to the working of most human minds, you need to have some artificial mnemonic hooks to attach these facts to. We will provide you with those hooks and help you to learn them.

From this course what you can learn is how to memorize what you must memorize, what it means, how it can be used to play winning blackjack, and how to practice so that you will be able to do all the things you have learned when you need to do them. This course isn’t about mere hours of drills and tests, but rather hours of how to drill and practice on your own and how to test yourself. The key point is that you have to provide the necessary study and practice to become successful.

What does this mean? You will have to study and practice on your own, at home and in the casinos if you hope to become proficient at it. You need to do the work if you want to be able to go into a casino and win more than you lose. We will tell you how to learn but you have to do it. If you don’t learn how to win, it is we who will have failed. We don’t like to fail. We are not used to it—at least not at the blackjack table. We have worked hard to make sure you succeed. Now you work hard so we can succeed.


Be in charge of the game, not at the mercy of it!
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