Did someone catch the hole-card? |
Imagine
being able to cheat in a casino without really cheating. Sounds like a
pipe-dream, right?
Wrong!
It actually
exists on the blackjack table. And it is the number one from of blackjack cheating by skilled and professional blackjack cheats.
There have been numerous
discussions and debates whether or not hole-carding is actually
cheating, some of which have ended up in state and federal courts. Despite the
fact that there have been arrests of card-cheats for hole-carding blackjack
games, not one has ever been convicted. In fact, there have been cases of false
arrest stemming from these incidents where casinos ended up paying damages to
those they arrested, in effect making them double-victims of the same scam.
The reason
blackjack hole-card cheating is not really cheating is because the hole-carders
are doing nothing to alter the deal and motion of the game. They are simply
taking advantage of a weak dealer when he slides and tucks his hole-card
underneath his up-card.
Even after casinos greatly reduced the number of
handheld blackjack games in which hole-carding was ridiculously easy, skilled
cheats still manage to position themselves around and behind a blackjack table
to get a good line of sight at a portion of the hole-card´s face to determine
its value. Then one cheat (the reader) signals the value of the hole-card to
his partner(s) at the table who use the information to alter their
hand-strategy decisions
How
profitable is blackjack hole-carding?
Well, that of course, depends mainly on
the percentage of hands the reader can glimpse the hole-card. If he is
successful every time, the cheats have a 13% advantage over the casino, which
is huge. In reality, that utopia is never reached, but if the reader manages a
25% accurate read-rate, the advantage is still healthy enough. The key is not
to make mistakes reading. It’s far better for the team to play basic strategy
when the hole-card is not readily defined.
And there
are other ways to enhance the hole-carding edge. Most Skilled blackjack cheats
already have substantial knowledge on card-counting and other legal
advantage-play techniques such as ace-steering and identifying clumps of
ten-valued cards and aces. So when a good team goes up to the blackjack table
with the main hole-carding plan of attack, they have other weapons in their
arsenal to fully take advantage of favorable situations.
So when you take a good look at blackjack hole-carding, you can see why skilled blackjack cheats swear by it.