How to win at Blackjack using an iPhone or an iPod Touch
By Gareth Powell
Using an iPhone or an iPod Touch you can beat the odds at blackjack. Blackjack may be thought to be a game of idiots but there is some logic in it.
What you want to do is to get as near to 21 as possible.
Over and you bust. Under and the dealer can beat you.
If you count the deck of cards you can swing the odds. If a lot of high cards come out early what are left are low cards and you can adjust the odds to your advantage.
Kerry Packer, the Australian publisher, had a genius for remembering cards although he was probably dyslexic.
He once got the MGM in Las Vegas to let he play ten tables on his own for an hour. It is mathematically impossible to remember the fall of so many cards.
He somehow did it and in this, and other sessions, won $25 million (US dollars) at the MGM Grand Casino in Las Vegas where he was later banned for winning too much.
Kerry Packer is famously quoted for an exchange in a poker tournament at the Stratosphere Casino, where a Texan oil investor was attempting to engage him in a game of poker.
Upon the Texan saying, “I’m worth $60 million!” Kerry Packer apparently pulled out a coin and said, ‘Toss you for it.’”
Blackjack is the ONLY gambling game where you can alter the odds by noting the fall of the cards. It is called counting and allowed in Australia (for the moment) but not American casinos.
It is tedious work and you need a very good memory. Or an iPhone or iPod touch.
An Australian-designed program for the iPhone called BlackJack Counter — while perfectly legal — has brought a warning from the powerful Nevada Gaming Control Board.
The program was written by Travis Yates, operator of a small Australian Web-design and software company called Webtopia. It enables blackjack players to keep a count of the cards that have been played. When a particular count is reached (indicating a good betting opportunity), the program makes the phone vibrate.
Nothing technically illegal about that — but the practice is barred in Nevada casinos, since its gives the suckers something like an even break. That is not what casinos are there for.
Casinos in Las Vegas have the right to eject anyone they suspect of using card-counting techniques.
The publicity has done sales of BlackJack Counter no harm at all. Yates said sales have shot up from about 10 copies a day to more than 500 a day in the US alone. The app sells for $4.99.
Related:
Entry was posted
on Wednesday, February 18th, 2009 at 6:53 pm
under 
Print This Post
Read more entries by Gareth Powell.
Stumble It!
