We are proud to announce today the remodeling of our main site: SuperiorCasino.com.

The Superior Casino team has the vision of creating the internet’s most sophisticated and elegant casino. With this new site, we expect players to recognize the superior quality of our site and software. Not only do we focus on the general appearance of our site, we are also working hard to provide the best Loyalty Program in the industry, offering as well the best casino bonus for every one of your deposits, plus adding extra features such as optimal strategy for Blackjack, Video Poker, Red Dog, Three Card Poker, Let it Ride, Pai Gow Poker and many other casino games at our blog.

All these features can only be found at Superior Casino, regarded by many as the world’s new favorite online casino.

Our new site will soon be accessible in various other languages, so that the fun of Superior Casino will be available not only to English-speaking players but also to the entire world. By the end of this month, our site will be available in French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish and Spanish.

So, now that we have a new site… it’s time to have some fun.

Here’s this week Trivia. To participate you must:

1) Be an active player with at least 1 deposit within the last 2 months
2) Have your account in good standing, with promotions allowed
3) Have NOT received two or more No-Deposit Tokens since your last deposit

Trivia question:

From what part of our new site has the following excerpt been taken:

“Get ready for the countdown celebration, while you spin 5 reels full of champagne glasses, fireworks and party folks”

Answer correctly and you’ll get a $10 FREE TOKEN plus a 65% Trivia bonus up to $65!

To answer correctly the trivia you must write to host@superiorcasino.com addressing our Casino Host: Stephen Vaughn.

Good luck to all of you and enjoy the new Superior Casino site!

Charles Jay’s
BLACKJACK SCHOOL
Designed to help you play a better game

WHAT DO YOU DO?
10 vs. A

THE SETUP: You’re dug in at a multiple deck blackjack game, and the dealer gives you a seven and a three, which comprise a two card total of 10. This isn’t too bad, and you are congratulating yourself for the good luck, not to mention thinking about the kind of money you’ll make by doubling. But wait! the dealer then gives himself (or herself, as the case may be) an Ace, and all of a sudden the anxiety is rushing through your system. Hmmm, you’re saying to yourself, I know I can double against real weak cards when I have a total of ten, but what happens when it looks as if the dealer might actually have an advantage over me? Do I really want to put MORE money on the table?

To perhaps compound your confusion, the dealer then checks underneath, and discovers that there is no two-card blackjack (which would have happened with a ten-value card), so at this point you have to go ahead with the hand. Your choice is basically between hitting and doubling down.

So….

What do you do?

CJ’S WAY: The best percentage play here is to HIT the hand.

WHY WE DO IT: I don’t know if it’s tempting or not, but you may be thinking about the double here, and see some kind of opportunity; since we know the dealer does not have a blackjack, the best he or she can have is a two-card total of 20, and more likely even less than that. If you take a double here, you are going to be getting very close to an even proposition, though it will place you slightly on the negative side. Hitting on the 10 actually produces better results; in fact, you will win about 47.5% of the time, pushing (tying) at a 13.5% clip, and turn up 39% losers. There is obviously value in holding off on that double. The lesson learned here is that even though having 10 normally makes it opportune to double, there is a time and a place to do it, and this is NOT that time and place, not if the object of your game is to turn a negative into a positive, which is exactly what we get the chance to do.

Charles Jay’s
BLACKJACK SCHOOL
Designed to help you play a better game

WHAT DO YOU DO?
10,10 vs. 5

THE SETUP: You’ve sat down and get yourself involved in a multiple deck game where Doubling-down after split (also known as DDAS) is one of the available options. You’re dealt a pair of cards with ten value (either 10, J, Q or K), and the dealer flips over a five, which is commonly known as a “stiff” card. Your eyes pop out of your head. “Wow,” you say to yourself, “Here’s an opportunity to get a lot of money on the table against this horrible card. How could I possibly pass up on that?” You have a real temptation to put the maximum amount of chips on the table, in an effort to capitalize on the situation. Should you?

So…..

What do you do?

CJ’S WAY: Put your eyes back into your head. This is a scenario where you could very easily shoot yourself in the foot by doing the wrong thing. Do not flip the switch. Do not take more chips out. Do not pass “Go.” Do not try to collect $200. Wait a minute, I’m getting carried away with myself……You get the idea. Stay right where you are.

WHY WE DO IT: If you do what I suggest, and hold back from splitting this hand up, you are going to win about 78% of the time, compared to losing 11% of the time. Your positive expectations go way, way down when you vary from that. Even when the DDAS option is open to you, you will suffer 34% losses when you split these cards up. When you stand with 20 you are going to gain approximately 13%. As you should know by now, we are looking for the highest percentage play for each situation. Therefore, there is no plausible reason to do anything else than that which yields the best value.

Splitting tens against a five can be advantageous if you are counting cards and are in a situation where you can implement that practice. However, if you are a Basic Strategy player, you must operate on the principle that breaking up winning hands is not a winning policy. It will not be often that you find relatively opportunities to win hands. When they are laid out before you, you can’t blow the chance!

(Play blackjack, along with dozens and dozens of other casino games, at Superior Casino. It’s a superior experience!)

AVOIDING THOSE PSYCHOLOGICAL PITFALLS
By Charles Jay

Allow me to ask these questions of you, the recreational blackjack player:

- Do you feel worse when you bust than when you lose out to a better hand on the part of the dealer?

- Do you stand on hard totals of 12-16 because you want to hold onto your chances of winning until the dealer plays out his hand?

- Are you of the belief that luck runs in streaks, and if so, do you usually increase bets after wins and decrease after losses?

- Are you conditioned to playing “hunches”, depending on which cards you’ve previously been dealt?

If you answered “yes” to any of the above questions, read on, because this is of particular interest to you.

One day at the library I was up in the “stacks,” so to speak, and happened to come across a past issue of Psychology Today (Oct. 1985). And I noticed it contained an article dealing with the behavior of players at the blackjack table, and how certain psychological quirks had a tendency to affect their behavior and performance when playing this casino game.

There is a tremendous psychological element to blackjack, and it is important to look at that angle, since customarily players not only have to execute betting decisions but playing decisions as well during the course of a session. A lot of players enjoy blackjack more than roulette, baccarat, or craps in that they feel more of a sense of control (which is not an ‘illusion’ as is referred to in the article), and they have the ability to vary their play using certain options as allowed for in the rules. That indeed is a potential advantage to blackjack, since the house’s edge, or lack of it, is very much dependent on the player’s level of skill. The pitfalls, if one falls into them, have the potential effect of diminishing the skill level of the player, and also serve to put up barriers preventing them from being able to digest the strategy that can ultimately bring the greatest chance for long-term return.

One of the bigger problems happens when it comes to playing the hard totals of 12 through 16. The research that was done for the article indicates that players, even if they know a Basic Strategy, very often fail to hit their hand in accordance with it because they fear busting out before the dealer has an opportunity to play his hand out. There are a couple of principal reasons for this. One is that the player’s mindset is that it is worse to bust than to hold out and lose to the dealer’s better hand, since the dealer’s draw is something that is completely out of the player’s control. And then there is that desire to stand pat in order to keep one’s winning hopes alive for as long as possible, and therefore they do nothing and wait for the dealer to make a move. As you already know from reading any responsible blackjack source, even with the worst upcards possible (5 or 6), the dealer will only bust 42%-43% of the time, so it is patently obvious that doing nothing is not a wise strategy at all.

Here’s another myth – that luck always seems to run in streaks. This idea sometimes leads to the player increasing bets after wins and decreasing after losses. On the other hand, there is a school of thought many people subscribe to which advocates increasing (usually doubling) bets after losing, and decreasing after wins. This is all based on an interpretation of the so-called “law of averages” which theorizes that sooner or later you would have to win. There is a familiar name for this betting strategy – the “Martingale,” and most people can tell you that it can easily lead to ruin, since it’s quite possible to keep losing hands and soon be over the house limit, paralyzing the system and one’s session at the same time.

Don’t get paralyzed. Take note of where the psychological obstacles can be, and do your utmost to overcome them.

Charles Jay on Blackjack
NOT-SO-SWEET SIXTEEN

With the Sweet 16 of the NCAA basketball tournament upon us, it’s a reminder that having a 16 dealt to you at the blackjack table is decidedly not very sweet. In fact, it’s a horrible hand to have, since you can easily “bust” (go over 21) with a hit, and it’s not very advantageous to stand with it.

So if you’re sitting in a game and get a 16, how are you going to handle it?

Suffice it to say that this is a hand which is probably misplayed by a most people. On a psychological level, you may in fact be scared to hit a 16. That’s understandable, since in all likelihood you’re going to break 21. But there is a hard reality, which is that the best way to help yourself here is to hit the hand, that is, against the so-called “pat” upcards that run from the seven through the Ace (it goes without saying, at least we think, that you will stand against anything from a two through six as the dealer’s upcard, because those are generally bad cards for the dealer). If you think about it for a second, the dealer has to play by strict house rules in the casino which require him to hit on a total of 16. And if you notice, he winds up making hands to beat you, to the point where there is a house advantage to blackjack. That is no coincidence, believe me.

You need to operate on that principle too. Hitting hands is the best way you have at your disposal to make hands, and when you are playing against a dealer who is most likely going to make a hand for himself, there’s no way you can preserve your bankroll in this case while employing a “no bust” strategy. Experts also call that a “no-win” strategy.

Let’s take the example where you’re going against the dealer’s weakest “pat” upcard – the seven. If you stand in this situation, you are going to win 26% of the time and lose 74%. If you hit, you’ll win only 27%, which is only a small improvement but an improvement nonetheless. More importantly, you’re going to wind up losing less, to the tune of 67.5% (with the rest being pushes). So by hitting the hand, you are, for the most part, making an attempt to SAVE some of your bankroll.

As an addendum to this discussion, let’s make sure we’re very clear as to what to do in one particular situation – when you have a 16 and the dealer is showing a ten (or ten value card, like a Jack, Queen or King).

That puts you into one of the tougher spots a blackjack player can find him/herself. There is virtually no chance at all to win the hand. The necessary point of focus here is how you’re going to LOSE LESS on the hand. More so than some of the others, this is a very close call. Let’s say you took the posture that you were always going to stand on this hand. That strategy would bring you a defeat 77% of the time, which constitutes roughly the number of times the dealer is going to be pat with a ten showing. Hitting the hand will obviously leave you busting out quite a bit, and you will win 2.7% less. But you will also LOSE 3.1% less, making it a slightly better decision to hit the 16 here. Minimize your losses when you can.

Because it counts for something.

I’ll tell you one instance where you can indeed get a “Sweet 16.” It’s when you are dealt a pair of eights. In this case, they are indeed “Elite Eights,” because you will always split them. It’s a much better opportunity, especially if you can take advantage of doubling down after splitting.

That counts for something too.

Try it for yourself at Superior Casino.