I get an interesting question at most of my seminars which is:
What do you do if there’s a bad player at the table? Don’t they louse up the card action?
The first part of my answer goes like this:
I have to laugh. Because, to me, at my level, I perceive most players to be bad players. (Even the ones asking the questions, I’ll find, are in that category.)
So, first: It’s a matter of perspective. If I left every table where I found players who were making bad moves, who were clearly not analyzing the cards properly, I wouldn’t have many tables left at which I could play.
What am I talking about? Every day I see players who:
• Split Aces every time they get them, even when low cards are overdue and likely to fall upon each split Ace in situations where the dealer is likely to achieve a score and not bust.
• Split 8s every time, even when it’s in a vastly losing situation and this assures that they will now lose two or more times their initial investment (few players seem to realize that splitting 8s is a big-time losing move, for instance, versus the dealer’s 9, 10 and Ace)
• Raise their bets into losing situations, while getting bad hand after bad hand (indicating either a bad repeating pattern or bad cards) as the dealer beats most if not all the players round after round (which should set off a red flag) – often with the comment that, “I think my luck is about to change” (not realizing that luck has little to do with it)
• Hit bustable hands when the dealer is highly likely to bust (not knowing how to analyze the cards) – and I’m not talking about the faulty basic strategy idea that the dealer’s low up cards are likely to bust (because, over time, none of them busts more than a maximum 43 percent of the time – meaning the dealer has an overall 3:2 likelihood of scoring against them)
• Have no clue as to how to bet (this is a recipe for disaster)
• Are following the dictates of the highly faulty and ineffective (losing) basic strategy method, not realizing that it’s a proven loser – especially against multi-deck games
• Are playing according to 1963’s Hi-Lo card counting method, not realizing how large an investment that requires if you want to profit even a little from it (the MIT teams of the early 1990s figured it’d take $150,000 per session to make it work, with the assumption that it gave them only a 2 percent edge – that minimum amount would now be $260,720.46 according to the dollartimes.com inflation calculator)
• Are giving themselves away as card counters (are you wearing a baseball hat, glum, talking to no one and intensely looking at all the cards as they’re dealt? – bingo), not realizing this increases their chances of being targeted for countermeasures or being barred
…And so on.
The second part of my answer, though, comes to this:
If a player annoys me for any reason (and it takes a lot to do that), I’ll leave the table. If someone is disturbing your concentration or making you angry, you have no choice but to find a different table. You’ll be unable to think properly and you’ll make costly mistakes.
The other major problem players might pose is if I’m at a pitch game table (single or double deck) where the cards are placed facedown when standing (that is, most of these games) and there’s a player making absolutely irrational moves. Stupid players who are unpredictable will louse up my ability to predict what their facedown cards are. And if I can’t tell what cards are on the table (using my methods to identify the facedown cards), I lose some of my edge on the house. That will cause me to get up and leave a table.
But there are very few totally irrational players – especially at higher stakes tables.
So overall answer: I don’t find the need to leave the table very often due to bad players. And unless you’re using my methods to identify the facedown cards at pitch games where players must place their first two cards facedown on the table when standing, you shouldn’t worry too much (unless, as I say, you’re getting angry, which is clouding your mind).
If bad players loused up the cards, most every blackjack table would have loused up cards.
Have blackjack questions? Send them to rharvey2121@netscape.net. For more info see www.black
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