Each player’s hand at the blackjack table is independent of one another. If the first baseman of the blackjack table fails to hit his fifteen it makes no difference to the rest of the table, statistically speaking. Additionally, if the third baseman takes what the entire world is certain is the dealer’s inevitable bust card, the odds of the dealer drawing to a bust remains unchanged.

If players of blackjack competed head to head, the play of each player would matter more, as players would be in a situation where they were handing chips to other players hand over fist. However, blackjack is a battle of individual versus the evil empire – the casino or house. It should not matter to me how much or how little money the player to my left is handing the house. The only amount that matters is how much I am forking over to the house by way of the blackjack dealer.

When a US online casino player takes a hit and clearly should not, the only figure other than his own bottom line that is impacted is the card count. Whether he hits or stands has no bearing on the statistical likelihood of the dealer owning or paying the rest of the table.

Also worth noting, the bad player’s decisions tend to be far more memorable when he “kills” the table, taking the bust card that allows the dealer to hit to twenty-one. When the horrible blackjack player hits unwisely, yet pulls the dealer’s sure-fire miracle card, the table’s memory is erased. Yet players will complain for hours about the sooner scenario.

When it comes to playing blackjack, the fact of the matter is that a player should only worry about his or her play. Concerning one’s self about how their neighbors play a hand of blackjack matters not, unless of course you are bankrolling the player. If bankrolling the player, speak up. If you have no direct financial interest in the bad player, let him play poorly. Soon enough, his strategy will take care of him and the seat will be open.

Is that possible? I’ve personally never seen a blackjackrat.com dealer pay close enough attention to the cards during the shuffle to even know where they are, nevermind manipulate their placement, but many regulars argue to the contrary. That puts them in somewhat of a predicament…do they call gaming authorities? You couldn’t prove it, plus you’d be a thorn in the side of the casino and a watchful eye would forever cast itself over your shoulder – pretty much eliminating any chance you’d have of trying to count in that or other nearby establishments. An unfair, but likely scenario.

Another burning question is how the dealer would do this in the first place? The likely answer is by selective shuffling. Usually easier in lower deck games, the dealer won’t have a predetermined shuffle spot. The dealer, then, is determining when to shuffle. There is typically more discretion here with one or two-deck games then in six- or eight-deck games. Also, discards are picked up by the dealer and reinserted into the stack in the same order in which they were picked up from the table. A seasoned dealer can keep that order, and therefore stack the deck, as even through a shuffle, the mechanic can avoid separating the stacked cards and work around them. Another common method of hurting the players besides separating cards is grouping middle cards together, such as sixes, sevens and eights. This gives a distinct advantage to the dealer above the already established house odds.

So back to the “what should you do” question…my advice would be if you notice something fishy in the online blackjack world, just get up and walk away, go to another table. You can slip a line for the other players if you want, something like “this dealer doesn’t feel right” or “keep an eye on this guy’s hands” under your breath, but don’t take it any further than that. It’s going to be rare that it happens to begin with, and even then it’s only if you’re watching the dealer intently for a considerable amount of time. You’d probably be better off paying attention to your hand and those of your fellow players, anyway.

Poker as a sport might still be popular to watch and follow on television and the Internet, but the World Poker Tour and Rush Poker are reporting that they are hurting. Some historically popular tournaments are down nearly 50% attendance. It doesn’t matter how much you hike up the buy-in, that translates into fewer dollars for the winning players. And when the pots drop, the big names fade away, too. There’s not much glory in Phil Ivey walking away with a $140,000 grand prize.

But is the economy really to blame? Could poker’s own popularity worldwide be it’s own worst enemy? After all, different countries/continents have their own poker tours now, with winnings promising to be just as lucrative. Not every poker player cares about their two-minute interview on ESPN2.

The odds are a combination of things, including both the aforementioned issues. Smaller prizes and more competition pulling the attention away from the audience both are likely contributing to fewer sponsors, as well. And that’s where the real financial hit shows up. You can bet Full Tilt or another popular poker site isn’t dying to throw money at a tournament where only half the audience will see those baseball hats that did just a year ago. Even in a down economy, advertisers are smart with their decisions.

So what can you do? Not much, short of scrounging up a few thousand for a buy-in…err…donation to the cause. But if you’re like most players, you’re not coming anywhere close to something that’s being filmed by a TV crew, so that’s out of the question. And with people busy working more jobs to get by right now, that means less time to enjoy the FullTilt Poker game on TV.

The game still has the big tournaments and the big faces (although Harrahs had to bail out the WSOP just a few years ago itself). As long as Farha, Ivey, Hellmuth and the gang are making it look easy from across the green felt, there’ll still be money to be made. Just not as much. And people wonder why Ivey spends so much time raking in the dough on side games at the tournament, even when he’s at the final table.

So perhaps the economy isn’t bluffing. It might just be holding all the cards in this one.

How to play against bad players

It happens all the time, and especially in larger field tournaments. There always seems to be a massive amount of bad players at your table. You see them raising from early position with really average hands. They over value any Ace. They will chase a three outer to the river. So what do you do? It is actually very simple. Play simple poker. Raise your big hands and fold your bad. Just do not try anything clever. However, the most important thing to remember is they will make mistakes. Look for the mistakes they make and then take advantage of the errors.

Let them make the mistake

The usual tactics that work against better players at Spade Club do not usually work against weaker players. Against strong opponents, an UTG raise means strength. Weaker players do not usually notice this and will actually call with average hands. This can actually cause you trouble against weaker players.
When you raise UTG with A-A against a weak table, it is not unusual to end up with four to five players left in the hand. This happens because another player in early position has K-J, so he calls, the person next to him has 7-8 suited so he calls, next thing you know everyone else thinks they are getting value, so they call, and you end up with five players going to the flop. It is important to remember what usually works on good players is not necessarily effective on weaker players. Always try to keep it simple and look for areas when your opponents make a mistake.

Where you find bad poker players

You can actually find bad players in any tournament. As a rule though, the smaller the buy-ins – the worse the field. However, that does not mean just because you are playing high stakes buy-ins they are no bad players. Take the Main Event at the World Series of Poker for example. The WSOP and club wpt has a buy-in of $10k, but I guarantee you that it will have a larger field of bad players than any of the smaller buy-in events at the World Series of Poker. So just keep an eye out for those bad players. Play simple poker against them and wait for them to make a mistake, and you can profit from them at your table.