Multiple Decks

Trend:  More and more casinos are using multiple decks for Blackjack.

Comment:  Multiple Decks are more favorable to Casino odds than to the player.

Surrender

Trend:  The Surrender option seems to be allowed in more and more casinos.

Comment:  This is one for the players.  Surrender at the right time and with the right dealt hand can be the best play for the players.

Soft 17's

Trend:  The Dealers hitting soft-17 counts in Las Vegas has now become commonplace, just as it had been in Lake Tahoe.

Comment:  Particularly in multiple deck Blackjack, the dealer hitting soft-17 counts improves the odds to the casino slightly.

Indian Reservation Gambling

Trend:  Many Indian Reservations are putting in superb casinos complete with multiple restaurants, (7 in some cases) and multiple areas of entertainment.  The atmosphere is classy and reminiscent of some of the finer casinos anywhere.

Comment:  For those who think that Indian Reservation gambling is low budget and austere, a trip to some of the newer casinos may change your mind.  Some information on that is under the favorite casinos section of this website.

Trend:  Several new casinos - particularly California Casinos, and even some of the existing casinos are installing automatic card shufflers that shuffle the cards continuously.

Comment:  This  is being done to discourage card counting.  If the cards have no memory - and are continuously shuffled - then memorizing the last cards on the table will have little meaning.  The makers of at least one of these brands is very clear in their ads that stopping card counting is the goal. 

These automatic card shufflers are very popular in California Casinos, and in perhaps half of Las Vegas casinos at the time of this writing.  Clearly some Vegas casinos are changing some of their existing tables to automatic card shufflers.

Trend:  Several Casinos, in multiple cities, now have signs up disallowing mid-deck entry.  This means that a new Blackjack player cannot begin a game until the cards are again re-shuffled.

Comment:  This  is again to discourage card counters.  Reportedly, a few card counters would watch a table until the deck became favorable, and then would join.

Trend:  A number of casinos, particularly the larger ones, are offering many Blackjack game variations, including Spanish 21, Super Fun Blackjack Single Deck, 6:5 Blackjack, Double Diamond Blackjack and others.

Comment:  The bad news is that these games in general do not give better odds to the player, and in fact favor casino odds.  The good news, is that the difference is just not that dramatic and Blackjack (with some knowledge) is still much better odds than games such as roulette for the player.  However, the real issue is that for some of these game variations, a Blackjack player has to use a different playing strategy.  rpsoft 2000 will be offering more products on this subject.  The rpsoft 2000 Blackjack game also does include hint charts for many of these game variations.

Trend:  At least one casino is burning more than one card at startup.  By burning a card, we mean removing the card from the deck, often without showing its value to the players.

Comment:  This is still another casino technique to discourage card counting.  Since those card values are generally unknown, they will be unknown to the card counters at the table also.

Trend:  The trend in many casinos seems to be to increase Blackjack minimum bets at the table.

Comment:  This is simply a money maker.  In the early days of gambling, the casinos emphasized table games and slot machines were primarily installed to amuse the spouses of the table gamblers.  Now the roles are reversed and slot machines have become the real money maker, making approximately 70% of the casino profits.  With this, casinos continue to look for ways to make the table games a little bit more profitable - either by odds or by increasing the bets and hence increasing the speed of the take.  The overall message here, is some table games, definitely including Blackjack, are pretty good gambling bets - relatively speaking.

Trend:  A number of Casinos are offering single deck blackjack - know to give better odds than multiple deck blackjack, but also speak to a 6:5 blackjack payout

Comment:  This is not a good deal.  True that single deck blackjack is better odds than multiple deck blackjack, but the lowering of blackjack pay from 1.5 to 1.2 (which is 6:5 pay) makes the overall effective odds to the player even worse than a multiple deck blackjack game.  So, unless you enjoy single deck blackjack that much, my suggestion would be to stick to normal blackjack - including multiple deck blackjack - before considering 6:5 blackjack.

Comment:  It pays to check out a casino before you play at it - to ensure that you are only gambling on the game at hand and don't have an additional gamble that you did not intend.  Some suggestions:  (1)  Ensure that the casino is registered in its country of origin (2) Ensure that you are allowed by your own country and that it is therefore legal to partake in that casino (3) Ensure that the casino is audited by a third party that you trust and (4) Ensure that the new casino is known to pay off winnings rapidly. (more here)

Yes, most of us would make an assumption that a large resort casino for example in Monte Carlo, a Puerto Rico Hotel or the Las Vegas strip would certainly be known of by its government and also be audited.  But for smaller casinos or newer casinos -whether physical or online - some checking is perhaps a good idea.  Please do not assume that link partners of rpsoft2000 have been checked out by us.  The requirements for our link partners are different than the four requirements above.