No Need to Count: A Practical Approach to Casino Blackjack

Leon B. Dubey

I'm no good with numbers on the fly, especially when math is involved. This has kept me from ever playing blackjack in the casino. I've done my damnedest to learn some of the "simple" systems that require card-counting, simply because those are the ones that will still work as you increase the number of decks at the table. And I can't make heads or tails of 'em. Sure, they're fine when I have the book open and I'm puzzling it all out... but put me at the table and I'm dogmeat. So if I find a book offering a supposedly easy system that doesn't require counting, I'm in.

Dubey's book (which is out of print, but can be found relatively cheaply at bookfinder.com [and no mention anywhere of the promised horse racing-related book Dubey hints at in here... ah, well]) sticks with the basics: hit here, double here, stand here, bet this much at this time. There are shadings you can add optionally, but the basic system is simple enough to remember. And despite Dubey's background (statistician and programmer for the department of defense), he keeps it all on layman's terms, which in and of itself kicks this book up half a star. I haven't yet tried it out, but card systems aren't like horseracing; they're not breeding new generations of card decks that can run faster and with more versaility than they did twenty years ago. Also, Dubey doesn't whitewash the advantage you're getting over the house with this system: it ranges between one-tenth and one percent. (One-tenth of one percent, flat-betting, is roughly equivalent to five bucks an hour if you're a five-dollar bettor playing a hundred hands an hour. I like the pay better on the horses.) In other words, this isn't going to enable you to quit your job and move to Vegas, but it'll at least allow you to even up the odds while your spouse is blowing rolls of quarters trying to hit the progressive jackpot on the one-armed bandits. ***