Blackjack Systems

There are a hell of a lot of blackjack systems out there, or systems for gambling in general, that some people claim can help you net a profit at the casino. There’s the Martingale system, probably the most popular, and there’s also now the “Super Martingale Progression” system. From the Paroli system to the Oscar’s Grind system, there are a lot of strategies being played at the casino nowadays by hopeful players.

The question you should ask yourself is this: do they really work? Are there any blackjack systems out there or general gambling systems that can actually help you? You have come to the right place to determine an answer to this question. You might not necessarily like the answer, but hear me out.

We’ll assume you already know that you can decrease the house edge by quite a bit simply by learning basic blackjack strategy, so we won’t go into that here. The truth is, there is no blackjack system that can help you beat the house, apart from card counting and playing basic strategy. The reason for this is that there is nothing that can change the payout odds imposed by the casino that are designed to bring them a profit. The house always has a slight advantage at blackjack, because essentially, they win when you draw. Let’s ignore this fact for a moment, and take a look at the Martingale system as an example of a system that can end up not only not making you any money, but losing you a whole lot of dough.

The Martingale System

As a blackjack system, the martingale system is not very useful. The whole idea of the system – and this seems intuitively simple – is, using basic blackjack strategy, to double your bet every time you lose. If you lose again after that, you double your bet once again, and so on. The idea behind this is that you’ll have to win eventually, and when you do, you’ll get all of your money back, plus a little more.

This may sound all fine and good, until you consider the fact that there’s a table limit. This means that if you start out with a $2 bet, for instance, that can quickly double to $4, $8, $16, $32, $64, $128, $264, and suddenly… you’ve hit the table limit. Any money you made before on your small $2 wins is lost if you get up this far and lose. And the odds are, you will lose eventually. On the last bet of this betting series, you’ll have put down $518, all in an attempt to make 2 measly bucks.

The truth is, all systems are destined to lose. Trying to win with blackjack systems can be compared to trying to get a positive number by adding negative numbers together. Nope, the only blackjack system that will help you is card counting, and that’s a whole other story (see our navigation on the right).