Online Casino

When it comes to casino games, most require little in the way of skill and players rely almost entirely on luck to win. However, this is not true of blackjack which is one of the few casino games that requires a level of skill in order to vastly improve your chances of beating the house. Only poker requires greater skill and player technique and concentration order to win. So what is it which enables one blackjack player to be so successful when most seem to be almost entirely at the mercy of the luck of the draw?

It all comes down to having a good understanding of the game and its strategy and being able to accurately reproduce every aspect of that strategy again and again. In other words, once you have discovered the strategy that works best, you stick to it no matter what. Yet there is still more to consistently winning at blackjack that transcends even a firm knowledge of the strategies and techniques and the ability to remain faithful to them. There is a certain psychology to playing blackjack that, once understood and utilised, gives a player that certain edge lacking in the majority of blackjack players.

That psychology has much to do with emotions and the ability to keep them under control in tense or exciting game situations. It’s about remaining calm, or staying cool when the stakes are high and the potential rewards are at their greatest. It’s about not allowing an emotional outburst to cause rash decisions to be made whilst under duress.

It can otherwise be referred to as keeping your head while those around you are losing theirs.

When you are next at a real world casino and have the chance to watch an expert blackjack player in action, observe closely their manner, behaviour and their apparent lack of emotion. You will notice them win time and time again. They will make conservative bets in situations where others would not and retain an intense mental discipline and level of concentration that would soon evaporate in a novice player. They will always quit while they’re ahead where others would continue and quickly lose everything they’d previously won. If you can take in all the psychology of a winner and then use it to your own advantage, then it will be a lesson well learned. By perfecting your own physical behavioural patterns and psychological mental state, you will become the master of your emotions and eliminate many of the destructive tendencies which bring about the downfall of many players.

Yet even experienced players can go off track at times, especially when they hit a losing streak and this is compounded by sharing the table with a complete novice. Then it is all too often the case that the experienced player will lose their cool and start making rash gambles whilst blaming it on the novice seated next to them. They can forget the golden rule that luck can go both ways in gambling and use the novice as a scapegoat for their own bad play.

For the rest of us, it would be well to remember that we should never gamble under certain circumstances, such as we’ll see in the next paragraphs.

It is prudent to avoid gambling when there is a financial situation in our personal lives which necessitates having to win. This is asking for disaster to strike, because the problems associated with our personal circumstances will be uppermost in our minds causing a lack of concentration, lack of focus and a surrendering to our emotional state. This causes a fear of losing and will naturally lead to rash betting strategies that will soon deplete our bankroll, further exacerbating our personal financial situation and creating a downward spiral of bad bets and bigger losses.

Other fears can cloud our judgement, such as the fear of busting. Despite being fully aware of the right strategy, fear can cause us to stand on a weak hand which a more focused player would hit. Equally important is being able to avoid becoming entrenched in the gambler’s fallacy that a run of bad hands will inevitably be followed by a run of good ones, or vice versa. When we are focused and emotionally under control, we would never allow ourselves to be duped by this reasoning. However, when emotions are allowed free reign, we can easily succumb to this mode of thinking, which can cause our imminent downfall.

At the other end of the emotional spectrum is overconfidence, which can deplete a bankroll just as surely and rapidly as playing in fear. Nowhere is this situation more obvious than when an experienced player finds themselves up against someone they want to impress, such as another well known experienced player, or work colleague, or attractive person of the opposite sex. Then that lack of emotional stability will result in rash bets, foolhardiness and a rapidly receding bankroll. Similarly, allowing strong emotions such as anger or frustration creep into our playing will have a similar effect.

All this goes to prove that in blackjack we must ensure that our head rules our hearts and keep all strong emotions in check if we want to emulate the consistent winners at the game.