If you like the thrill and excitement of a perfect card game and the anticipation of winning and acquiring some money with the odds in your favour, playing 21 is for you.

So, how do you beat the casino?

Basically when playing 21 you are observing the odds and probabilities of the cards in relation to:

1. The cards in your hand

2. What cards might come from the shoe

When enjoying chemin de fer there is statistically a best way to play every hand and this is called basic strategy. If you add card counting that helps you determine the odds of cards being dealt from the deck, then you will be able to boost your bet size when the odds are in your favor and lower them when the odds are not.

You are only going to succeed at under half the hands you wager on, so it is important that you adjust bet size when the risks are in your favour.

To do this when playing chemin de fer you should use basic strategy and card counting to succeed.

Basic tactics and card counting

Since mathematicians and intellectuals have been studying Blackjack all sorts of abstract schemes have arisen, including "card counting" but even though the theory is complicated card counting is actually straightforward when you play Blackjack.

If when gambling on vingt-et-un you card count correctly (even if the game uses multiple decks), you can shift the odds to your favor.

Vingt-et-un Basic Strategy

Vingt-et-un basic strategy is centralized around an unsophisticated approach of how you bet based upon the cards you receive and is mathematically the strongest hand to play without card counting. It tells you when gambling on blackjack when you need to hit or hold.

It’s remarkably easy to do and is soon memorized and until then you can get complimentary guides on the internet

Using it when you gamble on vingt-et-un will bring down the casino’s expectations to near to even.

Card counting tilting the expectation in your favor

Card counting works and gamblers use a card counting approach gain an advantage over the casino.

The reason this is simple.

Low cards favour the dealer in twenty-one and high cards favour the player.

Low cards favor the dealer because they help them make winning totals on her hands when he is stiff (has a 12, thirteen, fourteen, 15, or 16 total on his first 2 cards).

In casino 21, you can stand on your stiffs if you choose to, but the croupier cannot.

He has no decision to make, but you do and this is your advantage. The rules of wagering on 21 require that croupiers hit stiffs no matter how rich the shoe is in high cards that will bust them.

The high cards favor the gambler because they might break the dealer when he hits his stiffs and also because both tens and Aces mean blackjacks.

Although blackjacks are, equally allocated between the casino and the gambler, the fact is that the gambler gets paid more (3:2) when she gets a blackjack so the gambler has an advantage.

You do not have to compute the data of each of the individual card in order to know when you have an advantage over the croupier.

You just need to know at what point the shoe is rich or depleted in high cards and you can increase your wager when the odds are in your favour.

This is a simple explanation of why card-counting schemes work, but gives you an understanding into how the logic works.

When playing vingt-et-un over an extended time card counting will assist in changing the edge in your favor by approx 2%.