About
Our local Lions Club sponsored an annual “Jamboree” in my village when I was a boy. It included several games of chance scattered around the perimeter of three or four midway rides. There was bingo and a few other carnival games, but they didn’t appeal to me. I knew intuitively that winning at them was more a matter of luck than skill and that the odds were stacked against the player. One game, however, did attract my attention a dice game called Over & Under.
Over & Under was played with two big wooden dice, which rolled down a ramp when the operator pulled up a trap. If you bet that their total would be over 7, or under 7, and you were right, you won even money. If you wagered correctly on their total being exactly 7, you were paid off 3 to 1. Allowable bets ranged from a quarter to $2.
While I was still too young to actually play Over & Under (the posted age requirement was sixteen), I happened upon a “foolproof” method of beating this game. Some of my older chums claimed to have made money at it, so I pried their “strategies” out of them.
“Just wait until two unders’ come up in a row, and then bet on the ‘over’ or vice versa,” one guy suggested. “The law of averages is on your side that way!”
Another big winner (probably boasting a “killing” of $2 or $3 now that I recall it objectively) claimed that he just kept betting a quarter on “over” until he lost it; his next bet would be fifty cents. If he lost that one too, he would bet a dollar on the next roll, and so on. “You have to win eventually this way,” he assured me. “You’d be pretty unlucky to lose four times in a row!”
Their advice seemed reasonable, so I decided that by combining these two winning strategies and adding a little twist of my own for insurance, I would really clean up at Over & Under once I was old enough to play it!
The summer that I turned thirteen, I got a black leather jacket. I figured that I looked much older in it; after all, I was finally a teenager. With my collar turned up, the Over & Under operator that year allowed me to play without hesitation. What a thrill of anticipation I felt after placing my first wager. As I waited for those two dice to finally stop bouncing around, the real world suddenly turned into a slow-motion movie sequence. My heart was in my throat. I broke into a cold sweat and got wobbly in the knees. Even before I realized what total had come up, the attendant was giving me my first “free” quarter from his bulging money-pouch. I had won! Such a rush of excitement swept over me that I almost abandoned my playing strategy and laid down another quarter on the spot. I caught myself just in time.
My plan was this: Watch until three “overs” or “unders” came up in a row, then bet a quarter on the other one. Each time I won, I would wait for three more consecutive results, then bet a quarter on the opposite. When a loss resulted, I would watch until three-in-a-row happened again, then bet just another quarter on the other; therefore, when I won, I would get the quarter that I lost returned to me, and I would break even. However, if I lost that bet too, I would have to wait for three more somethings, then bet fifty cents, $1 and finally $2 if necessary. Using this betting method I would be completely safe for five successive losses. Surely it wouldn’t come up four somethings in a row, for each of those five losses. To get wiped out completely on a final $2 wager, the “over” or “under” would have to come up eight straight times! Highly unlikely; so how could I possibly lose?
By the end of the evening I was up $2. Elated, I walked home scarcely touching the ground. I hadn’t spent a cent elsewhere at the Jamboree that night, since I rarely ventured far from the Over & Under booth. But soon I began to feel guilty about taking the Lions Club’s money; it was, after all, a charitable organization that helped the underprivileged! Suddenly, something my father once told me began to weigh heavily upon my conscience. “Never bet on a sure thing,” he had cautioned me. “It’s the same as stealing.” Since I felt my “system” was invincible, in effect I had stolen the money! Instead of being proud of my achievement, I was ashamed of my behavior and didn’t mention my feat to anyone. I resolved to lose the money back to the Over & Under operator the next night and forget about gambling forever.
Abandoning my “surefire” strategy completely, the next evening I played consecutive rolls of the dice with no regard to previous totals whatsoever, sometimes betting as much as $1 per roll even laying out money on the 7 occasionally. To my amazement, in less than an hour I was up another $2! Later that evening, I spent my entire ill-gotten booty throwing darts at tickets for the Jamboree’s grand prize drawing. I heaved a great sigh of relief as my wad of tickets fell into that drum; I had, in effect, finally succeeded in returning all the money I had won at Over & Under back into the Lions Club’s coffers. But Lady Luck wasn’t through toying with me that night. Likely due to my superabundance of tickets, I won the $25 “attendance prize” that was drawn later that evening.
This was my introduction to the vicissitudes of fortune. If things had gone the other way for me, as they more easily could have done, I might not have felt inclined to pursue any further forays into the world of gaming. I knew that having one of my tickets picked out of the hundreds of others in the drum was just a matter of turning the odds in my favor. Because of my initial success at Over & Under, however, I was captivated by the idea that perhaps “smart” players could, indeed, beat certain gambling games. I began wondering whether it might be possible, by means of intelligent playing (that is, completely understanding the odds involved and using them to one’s advantage), to come out ahead in the long run.
What I didn’t know at the time was that no betting system per se, regardless of its complexity, can ultimately win you money unless the odds are already in your favor. Similarly, other commonly misunderstood aspects mentioned in my personal anecdote related above the psychology of gambling, probability theory, luck versus skill, etc. are all carefully explained in the body of this blog. I have purposely avoided including testimonials of specific successes or other such anecdotal comments in the following pages, because they prove nothing. Other texts are chock full of such “evidence,” which is no more reliable than some woman in a soap commercial extolling the virtues of XYZ detergent. Although they make more interesting reading than dry scientific research, I refuse to waste readers’ time with such “facts.” My primary purpose in this endeavor is to educate rather than to entertain.
Believe it or not, we are all gamblers in the strictest sense. Anyone who buys life, car, or fire insurance is gambling; these are all types of “proposition” bets. Have you ever played bingo? By walking across a busy street we put our lives at risk daily. In short, life itself is one big gamble. Don’t let yourself feel too superior to the poor sap who becomes addicted to gambling could you live without it in one form or another?
The reason I consider myself a nongambler is that I try to engage only in positive enterprises that possess a low level of risk. When I play roulette it is strictly for entertainment; I cannot rationally expect to emerge a winner in the long run. I am seldom interested in such games, because the bottom line is that one does not beat them in the end. As a businessman I prefer investing in real estate rather than the stock market. In good conscience I can rarely bring myself to continue playing financial “Russian roulette” regarding any investment, i.e., betting that I succeed against the odds.
I was always drawn to doing things my way, unconventional as it may have been. The idea of making money primarily by using my head intrigued me. Thanks to implementing my acquired knowledge and skills, I became financially independent and was able to retire comfortably before the age of forty. I’m not bragging; I worked hard, and I had some luck along the way too. The harder I worked, the “luckier” I became. In the intervening years I have lived a life of complete contentment. Before I get out of bed every morning I can think, “Well, what do I want to do today?” If this leisure-filled lifestyle appeals to you, read on; skillful blackjack playing can help make it happen for you too.
Not every reader will be as fortunate as I have been. Blackjack must not be viewed as “easy money” or a “get-rich-quick” scheme of any sort. On the first day of class one of my university professors stated, “Look at the person on your left and then look at the one on your right; only one of you three is apt to pass this course!” Apparently he had been reviewing the failure rates. As it turned out, this gloomy forecast proved quite accurate, but due primarily to his poor teaching rather than our learning abilities or desires to succeed. Unfortunately, I must make a similar prediction: Fewer than one-third of this blog’s readers will actually exert the necessary effort required to become expert blackjack players. The difference between me and my old professor, however, is that in the following pages I have made every effort to guide you to your desired level of achievement.
It is important to realize that if you are a traditional gambler, there is little need for you to read this blog. If you simply enjoy playing games of chance the exhilarating casino atmosphere, the free drinks, the social interaction, etc. regardless of whether you walk out with more money than you had, the information presented herein must be considered truly peripheral. However, if you are more interested in making money from your casino visits, this blog is your ultimate guide to success.
