Blackjack is a game of skill as much as it is a game of luck – there’s no coincidence when saying ‘Blackjack is a skill, not luck’ – and, by focusing your attention into improving the rules of Blackjack, you will be, no doubt, in a better position to beat the house over time, mitigating the house edge as much as you can. There are many advanced Blackjack techniques you can learn, starting with card counting, moving on to shuffle tracking, and lots of highly technical concepts.

Arguably the most fundamental aspect of any blackjack strategy is having solid bankroll management. Veteran gamblers may set aside a certain amount they agree to lose for the night and then stick to their guns.

Managing Variance

Indeed, as anyone who has ever tried card counting will know, with its high level of variance, blackjack can be either a very fine or a very poor thing. That’s without even mentioning the countermeasures that casinos deploy to frustrate such attempts at gain.

Learning how to handle these swings is one of the most difficult things for an advantage player to learn but, assuming the swings are consistent, they’re possible to live with if you’re practised enough and have another important thing: the right bankroll.

As soon as you are comfortable with basic strategy, you can move up to more advanced play techniques, to improve your chances of beating the game. Card counting, an example of this, entails keeping a running count of the remaining cards in a deck or ‘shoe’ to make better decisions. Although it is far more common in the cinematic and television depictions of casino play than in reality, it is still legal and, while it is usually more profitable than basic strategy, it nevertheless requires a high level of skill and discipline.

Exploiting Imperfections

Most importantly, assuming you’ve already learned the basics of blackjack strategy, knowing more sophisticated types of tactics that give you an advantage over other players (such as card counting or shuffle tracking) can help spell the difference.

Here you keep track of what cards you see so that you can make decisions with this knowledge in mind. Again, this approach is extremely maths-heavy, and also dependent on a great deal of work on the brain. But if you can pull it off, it will not only make playing far more fun, but also make it far more likely that you end up winning an awful lot of money.

Learn basic strategy and follow it (and practise it) if you want to be a successful blackjack player, and always make sure that you play at tables with good rules: always doubles after splitting is standard, and the dealer must stand on soft 17. These two features alone can greatly enhance your odds of getting blackjack.

Leveraging Psychological Warfare

The clatter of chips and the swish of shuffling decks are common sounds in casinos, but at their core is an intense psychological contest played out in secret. Those who can master the psychological tricks have an edge that takes them beyond card-playing, and closer to domination.

Shuffled cards cannot compete with opponents’ twitches and glances — tiny tells that reveal a hidden baby card tucked under the other palm or the psyche that retreats with a bowed head when faced with an experienced player. Poker players learn to bluff to maximise value in seemingly unvaluable hands by manipulating impressions of others.

The ability to win the hearts and minds of the enemy might be more important to winning wars in the 21st century than putting tanks on the enemy’s front lawn — or its LAN. For influence to move out of the halls of academia and into operational planning, we must make psychological operations demonstrably ‘effects-based’. That is, whether the target is an opposing armoured battalion’s will to fight, or a competitor’s computer network, the conduct of psychological warfare at the ‘tip of the spear’ remains essentially the same.

Managing Your Bankroll

Although blackjack is a game of chance, skilful players are taught advanced psychological techniques that allow them to manage the luck factors and maximise winning streaks and profits over time. These tips need to be used in conjunction with solid game-play strategies and effective bankroll management to achieve the best possible results.

Good money management is the most fundamental part of any good blackjack strategy. Playing blackjack requires a player to establish a budget for the table limits for the next couple of hours, a risk per hand amount, and split the total bankroll amount in units, each one a certain percentage of total. By following this strategy, seasoned blackjack players will not go home broke from a silly mistake because of bad luck on the tables and thus, will not make snap decisions out of desperation. Blackjack performance should also be tracked so as to prevent costly mistakes – it will also ensure that you will not grow tired of playing blackjack, so that you can start learning and applying important blackjack tricks.