7 Common Blackjack Mistakes That Cost You Money

Blackjack is a fairly simple game, and the truth is that it’s also easy to play it using the best strategy. But most blackjack players tend to make a lot of common mistakes. They make these mistakes because they don’t know any better or because they’re too lazy to play the right way.

It’s not hard to play blackjack in a way that gives you a good chance to win. You just need to know what to do and what to avoid.

Here’s a list of seven blackjack sins or mistakes that most players make. You need to avoid these seven mistakes so you stop giving the casinos extra money.

1 – Playing 6:5 Tables

Most blackjack tables pay either 3:2 or 6:5 for a blackjack. Other rules vary from table to table, and each rule influences how much you win or lose. But none of the other rules are as important as how much you win when you get a blackjack.

The difference between 6:5 and 3:2 doesn’t seem like much. But it adds up quickly, and you miss out on winning money that you can never get back. To make this easy to understand, I’m going to show you an example that shows just how much this costs you.

Let’s say you’re a low limit player and your average wager size is $20. Over the course of a month, you get a blackjack 238 times.

When you get a blackjack that pays 6:5, you win $24. When you get a blackjack that pays 3:2, you win $30. At 6:5, you win $5,712 on the 238 blackjacks. At 3:2 you win $7,140 on the 238 blackjacks. This is a difference of $1,428.

In other words, just because you played at a 6:5 blackjack table, you lost $1,428 more than you had to. This is a huge difference, and it shows why you never want to play 6:5 over 3:2 blackjack.

2 – Taking Even Money Insurance

When the dealer has an ace, he or she asks all of the players if they want even money or insurance. Even money and insurance is the same thing.

Insurance is a wager of half your original wager. When you take insurance and the dealer has a blackjack you lose your original wager and win 2:1 on your insurance wager. This means you break even on the hand.

This looks like a great wager when the dealer has a blackjack. But when the dealer doesn’t have a blackjack you lose the insurance wager and play your original wager as normal.

So, why is taking even money insurance bad?

The first thing you need to understand is that this is just a fancy way of the casino offering a side wager. Whether or not the dealer has a card worth 10 points doesn’t really have anything to do with the main blackjack game. And this is all the even money insurance wager is about.

Now, you need to understand the numbers of the wager. It pays 2:1 when you win, but the odds aren’t as good as 2 to 1. The deck has four cards that are worth 10 points and nine cards that aren’t worth 10 points.

This creates a ratio or odds of 9 to 4. If you break these odds down to something that’s easy to compare, they show 2.25 to 1. For the even money insurance wager to be fair, the odds need to be 2 to 1 and 2.25 to 1 is worse.

This is why it’s a mistake to take even money insurance.

3 – Making Side Wagers

I just covered the most common side wager offered at blackjack tables, but even money insurance isn’t the only side wager you’re going to see.

You can do some research to learn more about available blackjack side wagers if you want, but I can save you quite a bit of time. All blackjack side wagers are bad and should be skipped.

Side wagers are always added to games to get gamblers to risk more and to make more money for the casinos. Side wagers aren’t designed to help you. They’re designed to take more of your money.

It doesn’t matter how good a side wager looks, the best thing to do is not to make a side wager. The casinos make even money insurance look good, but you just learned that it’s not as good as it looks.

4 – Ignoring Comps

When you play blackjack, most casinos offer the opportunity to sign up for a special club. This club is called different names at different casinos, but the purpose of the club is to get you to gamble more.

This might sound like a good reason to avoid the club, but if you use it the right way, it can benefit you. I refer to all of these as players clubs because they’re for designed for players. But you might know them as loyalty programs or anything of that sort.

A players club tracks how much you gamble and gives a small percentage of the money you risk back to you. They call these rewards comps. Comps can be anything from money back to free merchandise or trips or free meals.

The best way to use player’s clubs is to sign up and earn comps for your play, but never play more than you planned because of the club. You need to earn comps on every hand you play to make some of the money you lose back.

5 – Risking Too Much

Unless you figure out a way to turn the tables on the casinos, you’re going to lose playing blackjack. This means that one of the only ways to reduce your losses is to risk less money.

Unless you learn how to count cards, which I cover in the last section on this page, you need to make the smallest wagers available. This means you need to find tables with small minimum bets and stick with the minimum every time you play real money blackjack.

6 – Making Gut Decisions

Did you know that every blackjack hand has one way that you should play it? Many blackjack players simply play their hands based on a gut feeling, and when they do this, it leads to mistakes.

The best way to play each blackjack hand is called blackjack strategy, and it’s easy to learn how to do it.

All you need to do is get a blackjack strategy card. You can buy a card or find a free one online. It doesn’t matter where you get it, the important thing is to get one and use it to practice.

Every time you make a mistake playing blackjack, it costs you a little bit of money. When you use a strategy card, you make sure that you never give a casino a penny more than you need to.

7 – Ignoring Card Counting

Not every blackjack player should learn how to count cards. But if you want to have a chance to win when you play blackjack, you need to learn more about the subject.

Card counting is a special strategy that teaches you how to recognize when you have an advantage so you can bet more.

When you bet more when you have an advantage, you can win more than you lose on other hands. This can get a little tricky, but it’s a real strategy that does work. The thing that stops most blackjack players from using card counting is they either don’t know about it or they think it’s too hard to do.

Now that you know about it, you just need to see if it’s something you can do. The good news is that even if it looks too hard, you can learn how to do it well enough to break even or make a small profit with a little bit of work.

Conclusion

The worst blackjack sin you can commit is playing on a table that pays 6:5 for a blackjack. This costs you so much money that you’re probably better off playing a crappy slot machine. A close second in the blackjack sin department is taking even money insurance.

Other side wagers are also losing propositions and should be avoided. Learn about basic blackjack strategy and use it every time you play.

You should always use your players club card when you play blackjack, and you should use the lowest wager amount available. If you want the chance to win in the long run while playing blackjack, learn how to count cards.