Religiously following basic strategy is vital to ensure that blackjack players will play correctly and have a chance of beating the casino. However, the casino can easily catch on when players make perfect plays or play cautiously until the end of the shoe. Players will need to learn blackjack deviations to be able to throw off the casino and make it seem that they’re rookies.
Playing like a rookie and making deliberate mistakes is advisable to make the casino think that a particular player is an amateur and that there’s no chance that they know how to count cards. Of course, playing bad is not enough since blackjack players still need to make money, and they can’t do so if they don’t know when to go back to following basic strategy.
Among some mistakes people can try making are the following:
- Standing on 16 versus a dealer’s 10
- Not hitting a soft 18 when the dealer has a 9, 10, or an ace
- Taking insurance
Deviating from blackjack basic strategy is even more necessary when playing live blackjack online since many online casinos use software to determine whether or not players are counting cards. If a card counter is caught, they can get banned.