The blame game

When frustration builds, you’re not thinking clearly. Losing clouds your emotions more than a fight with a loved one or a blow call during the playoffs. You should be winning, but you’re not, and it kills you. And you’re looking for someone to blame.

Anyone but yourself, right? Or common sense. It’s never “that’s just the way it goes” when you’re on the losing end of the deal. Usually in blackjack, this mentality rises when the true count is high, and you keep losing hands. You start questioning whether you’re playing correctly, but ultimately you blame the cards, the dealer, the other players. It’s just humane nature. Ya gotta blame somebody.

What’s lost in the heat of fury are the messages that you cannot control the cards that you receive, nor the cards that the dealer receives. And, ultimately, this is still a game of chance and luck we’re talking about, whether you try to take the advantage by counting cards or not. It’s generally accepted that when you’re counting cards, you have up to a 2% advantage (playing from a strategy card gives you a .5% disadvantage or house edge). Other than that, you still need to keep in mind that the remaining 98% falls into the category of chance.

It’s how you risk your money when the odds are in your favor that pays you off – but even then it’s a matter of chance whether that will even happen. It’s never a sure thing. Even during high counts, you still have a 49 percent chance of losing the hand. Even over the course of a hundred hands, there’s not much difference between that and the 51 percent chance you have of losing during low counts.

That’s why you can’t discount the importance of bet spreads, either. Of course, if things don’t go your way, this is another area of blame that seems to catch the players’ wrath. Regular players have sworn off a certain bet spread because of significant losses. Or if switching that strategy up doesn’t work, they blame counting in general, or that the counting guidelines are confusing, etc…

Obviously, the bottom line is that all of us usually have nobody to blame but ourselves. Either we made a poor decision, or an ignorant one. Some of us expect a quick solution to making big money on blackjack, but the reality is you have to dedicate yourself to a great deal of study. Getting the basics of counting and memorizing a few lines on the strategy chart doesn’t qualify you as someone who knows how to win.

Also, if you know the odds from studying, and realize what the likelihood of your situation is each time it falls into a down swing, you’ll be in a better position to accept it and handle it with a little more self-control. If you play poker, as well, you know how important it is to appear in control even when you may not be.

So, yes, you have to study. Don’t blame the messenger.