Advantage Play, in everyday lingo, means seeking chinks in the armor and taking advantage of it. In plain terms, the player takes advantage of some downside or weakness of the dealer or the casino. A player can gain an advantage from slips and laziness on the dealer’s part, and knowledge could give a distinct advantage to the player.
Advantage Play is not cheating which would otherwise land the player in jail. Advantage Play is basic information freely available and utilized by the player for his advantage.
Card Counting
Advantage Play is one of the simplest and most effective forms of advantage play, where an alert player keeps a tab on the card and uses the information to his advantage. The player adjusts his bets according to this information to get maximum benefit,
The basic of card counting entails keeping track of the number of low cards (2-6), the cards which is beneficial to the players, the number of higher cards (10-A) that proved detrimental to the player, or the middle cards (7-9) which has no real effect on the betting.
Card counting is legal in every aspect, even though the casino does not appreciate it, and if detected, the player could be asked to leave. The house can also forge strategies to preempt card counting strategy. The player could be asked to make a flat bet, meaning the player must bet the same amount every hand throughout the shoe. Also, the house could shuffle the card if the player makes a big bet, or the house could reduce the betting spread on the game. For example, if the bet was a $25 – $500 game could be reduced to a $25 to $100 game.
Hole Carding
It entails knowing beforehand the cards are on the bottom of a pack of cards or single cards as they come out of the shuffler or shoe. It is possible in mist table games which are poker based. In games like Three Card Poker, Ultimate Texas Hold’em, Heads Up Holdem, Crazy4Poker, and a few others, the fortune will be shifted towards the player by a large degree.
If a player can see the bottom card of the dealer in each round, he gets an advantage of 3.5%. If the player does not know the bottom card, Q64 or higher should be played, and Q63 or lower should be folded. If the player can see the hole card, which happens to be 2-J, a play bet must be attempted, and if the hole card is a Q, then Q92 or higher should be played. When the hole card is a K, K92 or better should be played. And if the hole card is an Ace, the A92 or better should be played.
