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The advantage of playing blackjack on line starts with the speed of the game. Even using speed shufflers there is no way traditional blackjack tables can offer the speed of the games played on line. It takes time to go around and gather in cards, pay the winners and take from the losers. The average blackjack table in Vegas has at least three players sitting and needing the attention of the dealer so you can multiply that down time by three or more. Online casino games have no time spent on other people unless you’ve chosen to play at a multi-player table in which case there is a slight down time allowed per player to make their wagering decision but it is in no way as slow as playing at a game in Vegas.

You always get a fair-odds hand when playing on line because the shoe is shuffled after every hand meaning you’ll never sit down in the middle of a shoe which is heavy with cards that are not benefical to the player. For each deck in a virtual shoe there will be four aces, four kings and so on for every hand played.

While on the subject of fair-odds and shuffling the shoe it should be noted for card counters that they are the only ones which do not stand to benefit from playing blackjack on line other than for sharpening their skills for the next trip to the riverboat or Vegas. The reason that playing on line is not going to work for card counters is because it is impossible to get an edge if the shoe is shuffled after every hand. They cannot get deep enough into the shoe to get an idea whether the game is heavy with cards that are going to hurt the player or cards that help greatly, those being any card worth ten. The rest of the world actually gets the advantage of always starting with a fair-odds shoe and ending it the same way. While it is true that the shoe will never be heavy with beneficial cards it will never be the opposite either and if you are not counting cards then by playing on line you are assuring yourself the first hand is as fair as if you’d just sat down at a table in Vegas with a fresh shoe coming out, and you are assured your last hand will be the same, and not that you might have left a game in mid-shoe that had already endured most of the bad cards and was now rich with good cards … only you’d already left before the good part happened.

The variety of games compared to Vegas or Atlantic City isn’t really a comparison. That’s saying quite a bit considering that those two cities blow away most any place when it comes to gambling. However it is true. Some online casinos powered by Microgaming software offer as many as fifty versions of blackjack including the game called “faces up” where you are shown both dealer’s cards but of course you give up a little to get a little and part of this deal is you don’t get paid time and a half for a blackjack. Most Vegas casinos don’t even have fifty tables open at one time, let alone fifty different versions all with no waiting to get a seat.

One last advantage to playing blackjack on line is the online casinos allow you to play for free which means even those who don’t trust playing on line can still use it as an excellent tool to sharpen their game and not have all that down time of a real table. You might be surprised to find you’ve crossed a line where the thought of driving to the local casino and having to search for a table with your stakes and an open chair … is too much trouble for someone who can sit down at their PC and be playing in seconds. Where you can if having a bad day simply shut down the casino and do something else … which means you also have the option to go back and play when you feel your luck is better … and not have to waste all that time driving and finding a table and waiting for everybody else to change their cash to chips etc, in order to find out if your luck is good or bad.

Its true! Progressive slot games do at times have a positive expectation value on what you are gambling to win them. Many people are unaware of this fact but not everybody. There are actually professional slot machine game players which form into teams and they watch the progressive games for them to reach a level of payout where it becomes a business of spending low to sell high, so to speak. These teams work as packs and they prey on the positive expectation value of a progressive slot game which has few enough individual machines involved in the progressive scheme that they can as a pack attack it from all angles meaning they try to monopolize the games by placing a team member in each seat of every machine involved in the payout.

Progressive games at online casinos have brought the idea of this popular type of games of chance into new levels of payouts. Slot machine games that tie in so many different machines from so many different casinos that these games are actually paying out millions of dollars on a daily or near-daily basis. Many progressive games here at the local riverboats where I am located seem to hover around the five figures neighborhood at best but they admittedly do have many fewer machines contributing than could ever compete with the kind of numbers found at online casinos.

Which means to you as a player that unless you are a member of a professional slot machine team then you have the good news of not only being able to get to a machine to play when there is a positive expectation value (when they reach that level) but also that when you win its going to be for a lot more money … and of course the jackpots pay out a lot more often than do those at land casinos (for the most part, there may be some that do not).

Players of online casino progressive slot games will never be able to monopolize their games the way the professional teams do in Las Vegas or Atlantic City but on the other hand for the majority of us … we are not professional slot teams so that effects us zero percent but now we’re now not going to be pushed out of the opportunity to hit one of these jackpots which is going to be a nice change of pace. Those that play the online progressive slot games with a positive expectation value will just have to hope they get lucky like everyone else because there is no way they are going to monopolize the games. Which by the way the most recent really big win on a progressive online game was on the slot machine called “Mega-Moolah” powered by Microgaming software, the leader in the online gambling industry. This progressive slot game paid a man in Finland an outstanding five and a half million dollars. This is just one of several online progressive slot games to have paid out over one million dollars.

Black Jack has many different game versions and those can even vary in the number of decks used in a shoe. Card counters know the advantage is with the fewest decks in a shoe but many otherwise knowledgeable players, the kind that usually stick to basic strategy and play smart, do not have any idea just what a difference extra decks in the shoe can make.

Regardless of the version of black jack, the fewer the decks in the shoe the more your chances are of hitting a black jack. I will try to demonstrate to you the way I learned and I only wish I could give credit to my teacher but the plain fact is that I have read so many books on gambling that I can’t remember which one it was that covered this aspect. This may not be exactly how it was taught to me since it has been many years now but I do know I can make the point that was made to me.

Lets say you are playing blackjack and it is a single deck game and a deck is made up of any three cards, an ace, a ten and a six. The dealer, who won’t be getting any cards in this game obviously, shuffles the deck and deals an ace to you. That leaves two cards left in the deck. A ten which would give you black jack and a six which of course not be that kind of help. That means there is a fifty-percent chance you will be dealt a black jack.

Now lets make this a two deck game. Of course as before the decks will consist of three cards each. An ace, a ten and a six. Since there are now two decks in the shoe we have a total of six cards. Two aces, two tens and two sixes. The dealer shuffles, loads the shoe and deals you an ace. For purposes of this example, once again the dealer will not be taking any cards. You have an ace and there are two cards in the shoe that can give you a black jack. However there are now three cards in the deck that will not produce a blackjack. an ace and two sixes.

The odds of getting a black jack in our example dropped from fifty-percent (a one in two chance of getting dealt the ten), to two chances out of five which by my math is a 40% chance of getting dealt that ten. A considerable difference but nothing like the jump is going to be when you go from single deck black jack to a shoe holding eight or more decks.

If you ever thought that casinos had switched to the multiple deck black jack shoes to make life more convenient for the players then it is time to reconsider.

Single deck black jack is also much easier to count cards although the same principle is used for single or multiple decks. About the only down side to single deck shoes is the down time on shuffling because most casinos won’t go much past the half mark on single deck nowadays because they are counteracting the card counters.

Single deck black jack is often found at online casinos which as just demonstrated is an advantage to the player. The only drawback about playing online is the deck is shuffled after every hand (no downtime however) and as such makes counting cards an unrealistic endeavor.

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