Posted by Johnnymac 4:00 PM
Blackjack Also Ain’t Gambling (but it’s close than poker is)

Today’s been a rather slow-moving day for me – I got in late last night from a weekend excursion to Lake Tahoe with my fiancée. It was a nice trip and the scenery is absolutely beautiful, but the flight home was a killer with almost four hours in the air, a two hour layover, and adding two more hours for the time change. We flew out of Reno at 2:45 yesterday afternoon and landed in Houston around 10:45. I didn’t get to bed until almost 1:00am and the alarm came way too soon this morning.

A few people have asked me about the poker there and I have to say that I didn’t pay much attention. I was there with my future wife and thus I was more interested in spending time with her and poker wasn’t really on the agenda. And from what I saw there was mainly just LL holdem and stud in a couple of small rooms, anyway, and those types of games don’t interest me these days.

That’s not to say that I didn’t partake in some gambling: Fiancée had never spent time in a casino before and she was curious to check it out and maybe play a little bit. I was happy to show her around and we spent a couple of hours watching a craps game and playing nickel and quarter slots before we finally settled down and played some blackjack. Before we sat down I asked her if she was familiar with Basic Strategy and she said she was. But once she got the mechanics of the game figured out (ie tapping the table and not shouting “Hit Me!” before each card) and after watching her play for a few minutes I can confidently answer that she most certainly is not familiar with Basic Strategy. I cringed every time she hit her own 13 or 14 against a showing dealer bust card but her explanation that “we’re going to end up losing anyway” was perfectly satisfactory for me because it’s the right answer. And it was fine too because this was the first time she’s ever played, anyway. (next time I’ll let her play with her own money, though…)

Naturally, as any of you who are familiar with casinos can attest, the other players at the table started getting angry at her when she made “dumb” plays because they felt that her poor play was influencing their own chances of success. This is dumb beyond words because any freshman sitting in Statistics 101 can tell you that with a properly shuffled deck the cards are completely random and each card is completely independent of any other card. For every “bust card” that she “took away” from the dealer she also took a low card. I am not a statistician so I can’t mathematically prove this point – I’ll let others do it for me – but I shouldn’t have to. Intuitively it makes sense to realize that if the cards are shuffled and dealt completely randomly there is no way that any decision to hit or stand can have any effect on what the next card will be. The only way that Fiancée could influence whether the dealer busts or not would be if she knew the next card and acted appropriately and I doubt that any of those people would have been willing to make that assertion.

In other words, no matter what Fiancée did, it had no influence on anyone else’s success… Anyone else’s success that is, but her own, because while she could not control whether the dealer was going to bust, she absolutely could control whether or not she busts herself. That’s the allure of blackjack – that there is an element of control to the game and not just some random payout based on the whim of a computer chip or pair of dice.

I had a difficult time trying to explain this to her, that she was right in ignoring the used-up casino wench at the end of the table but wrong in blithely taking cards whenever she felt like it, and I realized that this concept is the essence of why poker (and thus blackjack to a lesser degree) isn’t necessarily gambling.

You have a choice.

In blackjack, the player can lose in two different ways: by exceeding 21 (“busting”); or losing to a higher hand held by the dealer. Conversely, if the player loses, then the house wins, so then the house can win in two different ways. The rub, however, is also where the house edge comes from: the player can only win in one way, by beating the dealer,* and the house can only lose in that same way – by getting beat by the player. But if the house busts after the player busts, the player still loses – he doesn’t get his money back. That’s the house edge right there – because the player has to go first and thus can lose in a way that, theoretically, should be a push because both parties have the same result.

So what the hell does this have to do with poker? Easy – deciding whether or not to hit or to stay is a decision that can be solved mathematically based on the probability of a specific outcome. In certain situations Basic Strategy dictates that you try to win by drawing to a high number and in others it tells you to avoid the risk of busting and instead hope that the dealer busts instead. In all situations the strategy is based on the probability of what is most likely to happen. Therefore, if both the player’s and the dealer’s hands are so high that they both risk busting with the next card (assuming the dealer will be required to hit) then it’s always proper to stand and thus transfer that risk to the dealer. As I (somewhat futilely) tried to explain to Fiancée on Saturday, it’s true that the player may lose if the dealer draws and ends up with a higher total than player’s but it’s also true that the player will lose if he busts and then in that case it doesn’t matter whether the dealer busts or not. The point of standing on a lower is to transfer the risk if you can.

This is getting long-winded so I will get to my point: many people who follow Basic Strategy at blackjack are oftentimes the same people whose poker strategy is little more than the usual “any two cards” junk. They’ll get in and gamble with no thought to the strength of their hand before the flop and don’t seem to realize that premium starting hands are designated as such because of the cumulative probability of being the winning hand relative to others, taking into account one’s position and the action that has already taken place. Just like Basic Strategy tells you exactly what to do in blackjack that has the greatest chance of winning, a proper understanding and application of starting hand strategy tells you exactly what to do in any specific form of poker. Calling a raise with 85s from early position is just like hitting 18 in blackjack – the odds of winning are very low – you have the worst of it – and thus you are making the wrong decision. True, the flop may come 679s in holdem and you might draw that 3 in blackjack but more often than it’s gonna be AK3 rainbow and you’ll draw and bust. In both situations you’ve simply upped your chances of losing by not adhering to a pre-determined strategy.

Just as in blackjack you can choose to hit or stand, you can choose whether or not to get involved in a hand of poker. Stick to a strategy that has the best of it and you’ll be on your way to winning.

*(Even though the payoff is higher getting dealt a blackjack still fits this definition because it’s still just only push if the dealer has blackjack, too… think about it, the blackjack still has to beat the dealer to get paid)

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