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While we still have that game fresh in our memory, I'd like to review some of the game selection factors directly from the manual. I have come to believe that playing the right game may well be the most important aspect of winning play. Um hence our motto, never play a bad game. Okay, I'm reading directly off of page 67 in the manual, the heading is Game Selection Factors. What to look for before getting in the game? Number one, the number of players in the game. Okay, why? The fewer players there are in the game, the more our brand of play influence the g influences the game and dealer breaking. We know we know that NBJ has a tendency to break the dealer more. We know that NBJ has a tendency to increase our hands one percentage. Well, if we are if there are seven players in the game, our play, our play only represents one-eighth of the total play in that game. However, if there are uh four players in the game, for instance, our play represents 20% of the play in that game. We have a lot more game control, uh the fewer the players are. Okay, card reading credibility. The fewer players in the game, the fewer cards there will be between our first and second cards. Um you know, we are trying to determine when high cards are coming out. But the idea is for us to get a high card on our first card and a high card on our second card. Oh, sure, we want the dealer to break and so forth, but we want to get a good hand also. When there's seven players in the game, eight uh uh seven additional cards are going to be dealt between our first card and our last card. Uh, that's a lot of cards. The clump that we're in can easily run out. We may have played into and bet into a high card clump, but we'd like to get the second card too. We'd like to get a good card for our second card. The more cards that are dealt out between our first and second card, the less chance we have of getting two good cards together. Therefore, the fewer players, the better off we are. More high ratio rounds. The fewer the players, the more high ratio rounds pursue, the more accurately we can target them and get successful high bets off. Simply put, fewer players makes our job easier and our play more accurate. Remember that other players tend to not hit during low rounds and hit too much during high rounds. The fewer the players are in the game, the more our play influences the game. The more we hit during the low ratio rounds, knowing that the dealer can't break on low cards, the quicker we get through those low ratio rounds, the more we usurp the low cards in the shoe. On the other hand, by standing more in the high ratio rounds, we make the high ratio rounds more plentiful. We make them last longer. Dealer biases. The more players in the game, the more the game favors the dealers. Dealers don't begin to experience the first card 10 phenomenon or seven and eight card hands until there are six or seven players in the game. Well, occasionally we get them with five players too, but we're going to virtually always see strong dealer biases in six and seven player games. The favorability of fewer players in the game is so common that I will sit down on virtually any one, two, or three-player game I come across. But it is not so strong that we can bypass testing the water. It doesn't necessarily mean when you see a one or two or three-player game, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be a good game. It just means that there is a much higher likelihood that it'll be a good game. We still want to test the water. And let's have a word here about the player number sensitivity. Most blackjack games, as far as the player is concerned, most blackjack games play better with a certain number of players. Now that certain number of players can be different for any game. You may find, as we did in that game, it played best with four players. When it went down to three players or up to five players, the game tended to deteriorate. That number can be anything. It can be three, it can be two, it can be five. It's seldom six or seven. We like to know and pay attention to what happens in our game when the player number changes. We like to know what number of hands being played that game plays best at, particularly from our seat. And we like to do everything we can to control the game at that number. Even if it means playing an additional hand, a sacrifice hand, to keep the game at the right, at the optimum number of players. And even if it means discouraging another player from playing two hands, I've even gone so far as to discourage other players from sitting down in the game. And of course, you know, I'll tell them that, well, the last guy that sat there lost his shirt, but be my guest. And and things of that nature. And that's also why I make every attempt to block out the the first chair and the sixth uh and the seventh chair by where I sit down at the table and which spot I play. Okay. Next game selection uh game selection factor, winning activity. Now I'm on page 68 of the manual. This is certainly the next strongest game selection factor and frequently goes hand in hand with player number. Whenever we see a lot of winning player activity, it is not our job to reason why. Our job is to get in the game. Generally, the more winning activity we see, the more the game favors basic strategy. That's because the other players are playing basic strategy usually, and that's what they're winning. Of course, this is not true if you're looking at a table of NBJ players. So winning activity is also a card play decision factor, but we still test the water. Why? Because by getting into the game, we change the player number. This can derail the game, recognize that we don't need to see everyone winning, even one or two winning players is a strong favorable indicator. Nor do we necessarily avoid games with no winners. Why? Because we play different. We will find that we are the only winning player in the game more often than not. But if they can win in their knowledge, we can certainly win in our knowledge. Okay, the next factor, dealer 10 ups. This horrible phenomenon has become so commonplace lately that I use it as a major game selection factor. It's easy to spot, even from the aisle, if the dealer is getting significantly more than her fair share, 4 out of 13, 10 ups, stay away. Increasing the player number only makes it worse. The dealer 10 up phenomenon is a bias that do not yet fully understand. We are working on it, but we understand this much. It becomes more common and more pronounced as the player number increases and can create extreme dealer bias situation. Reducing the player number is the only sure countermeasure measure. It virtually disappears below six players. The next game selection factor, dealer break ratio. And we're going to talk about this dealer break ratio a lot more later in this tape because it's one of the most important aspects of world-class play. We don't need to get a precise reading before getting into the game, but we want to ensure that the dealer is in fact breaking. We also know what up card she is breaking on most for reasons that will become clear. Is she breaking? Basically, what we want to know, is she breaking more with a high card up, especially tens, or is she breaking more with a low card up? Because we're going to use that information later on in play. The number of cards in the dealer's hand, this is important. It gives us a good indication of clumping. This is a critically important new world-class blackjack indicator that can be noted from the aisle or from the seat before playing. We want to see the dealer making her hand and two or three cards. If we see a lot of fat four-card hands and five and six and seven-card hands, we stay away from the game. This is a sure indicator of over-clumping. I've seen nine-card dealer hands several times, and I once saw a ten-card dealer hand that she did not break on. This is a sure indicator of over clumping. Okay, now let's get into uh game departure factors. You're in the game, I'm on page 69 of the manual. You're in the game, what kind of indicators would say, hey, maybe maybe this isn't the right game for me to play. I gotta get out of this game. Class B hand ratio is number one. Remember what we said before. When you're getting Class B hands, no amount of skill can make you win. If you're gonna lose a hand regardless of whether you hit or stand, there's no way to win the hand. If you're getting more than your fair share of Class B hands, you've either got to change your seat in that game or you've got to get out of the game altogether. Okay, number two, a factor that would get us out of the game. The dealer is simply not breaking. If the dealer is only breaking one out of six or less often, depart unless you are winning anyway. Okay. Factor three, dealer making multiple card hands. We just mentioned that. If this starts to occur while you're in the game, if dealer starts making, you know, games can change, of course, while you're playing. But get out of the game if the dealer starts making many five and six and seven card hands. The dealer begins getting ten ups. Okay, you got in the game, things were going well, but now the dealer's getting a ten up all the time. Watch the situation. This game is deteriorating. This is a definite signal to get out of the game. The push ratio. If you're starting to push a lot with a dealer, if you're beginning to push a lot with a dealer, this is a very bad sign, particularly if you're pushing on 20. If you're pushing on two 1020s, you're beginning to use up the your player favorable tens by wasting them on pushes. This is a definite signal that this game is deteriorating, it's becoming overclumped. Pushes are a sign of overclumping. You want to get out of that game unless you're winning in spite of the fact of these pushes. Guessing wrong. Okay, you're in a game, the game's going quite well. Uh, all of a sudden, you just simply start guessing wrong. You hit when you should stand, you stand when you should hit, you double down and it turns out wrong. You don't split and it turns out wrong. When you start guessing wrong, you've got to get out of the game. You don't want to sit there and say, Why am I guessing wrong? You've got to get out of the game. When the worm turns, no good game stays good forever. Eventually, the game is going to play itself out. The worm turns. You start seeing all of these negative factors crop up in the game. You're much better off uh leaving that game. Occasionally you're gonna end up leaving a good game or a game that maybe turns back to good after you leave. But you're better off being wrong and leaving the game than being right and staying in. We start making mistakes. Anytime we start making a lot of errors, we've gotta get out of there. The game simply is not working for us. And of course, the bottom line, losing play. If we're not winning in the game, we gotta get out. Never play a bad game, never play a losing game, and never betray your stop loss. Before we get into another game, I'd like to talk to you for a minute about the correlation between your performance bogeys and your table selection. There's a definite parallel here that I want you to understand. I have some callers that call in and say, uh, I'm having a hard time making my bogies at home, but I seem to be able to make them okay in the casino. Well, this is simply because in the casino you have table selection. At home you don't. So there's a certain advantage in the casino if in fact you select the right games. Then I have those that say, I'm not having any trouble making my bogies at home, but I'm having trouble making them in the casino. Well, in all likelihood, this is because these players in the casino are playing the the $5, 6-player, and seven-player games. Recognize that if you insist on playing these games, you're not going to achieve the performance bogeys of the players who play the higher stakes game. You're going to have to resign yourself to the fact of lower performance bogeys. Now, again, I'm not trying to encourage anyone to play over their head. I'm just trying to tell you the realism of the thing. The higher stakes games are going to offer, on the average, better games, games with more integrity than the lower stakes games. Before we get into play decision factors or adapting your play, adapting your play to the game that you are in, I'd like to tell you about another game, another recent game I had, a high-stakes game down in Atlantic City last month, and I'd like you to compare the difference of the mediocre condition games, game that we talked about at uh Oneida, and a game with much better conditions uh in Atlantic City, and I want you to note how I play the two games differently. You know how I played the game in Oneida. Now I'm gonna play first base in Atlantic City, but I want you to note how I play it differently. Okay, this was a Thursday, and I drove down to Atlantic City in the afternoon. It's a five-hour drive, and it's a tough drive down the Garden State Parkway, the most traveled highway in the world. And I arrived at the casino at 6 o'clock. I had an appointment at 6 o'clock with uh a player that we call Voltaire. When I arrived at uh in my hotel room, as soon as I walked in, the phone rang and it was it was Voltaire, and he was downstairs in the Taj, I was staying at the Taj, and he says, Look, he says, never mind the the meeting right now. He said, the tables are good right now. This was just after six o'clock on a Thursday night. Now I don't normally play right after a five-hour drive, but I was still working in some adrenaline, and if the tables are good, the tables are good, and Voltaire would know. So I said, look, I'll be down in 20 minutes. So I threw my clothes in the closet, jumped into a cold shower, put on some fresh clothes, and headed down for the casino where I met Voltaire. In the 20 or 25 minutes since he had called, he said that several of the tables that he'd been looking at, quarter tables, had had filled up to six and seven players since he had called. And I really didn't see any floor games that um looked that good. So I said, well, let's take a visit to the high stakes pits because the whatever happens on the on the uh on the floor, it takes longer for that change to take place in the high stakes pit. So maybe we could find some good conditions there. So we went to the high stakes pits, and sure enough, there were several good games going on. Minimum uh stakes in the high stake pits that day were a hundred dollars. There were some two hundred dollar tables, but the lowest table was a hundred dollars. Well, I looked the situation over, and and one game looked particularly good. There was uh just one player playing the dealer head to head, and he was sitting in at the third base seat, and he seemed to be doing quite well. Uh the dealer seemed to be breaking, the tens seemed to be following tens quite uh quite effectively. I took a look to see if I could uh play the first base system. I just played a couple of imaginary hands in my head, and sure enough, I would have won the high bet. So now the question is timing, timing getting into this game. So I bought into the game for a thousand dollars, but told the dealer to continue playing. And I asked the the fellow at third if he would mind if I jumped in in the middle of of the shoe, and he said, Thanks for asking. Jump in anytime you feel comfortable. So I waited for the right moment. I waited until the uh round ended in two tens, and I jumped in with a $200 bet. And sure enough, I won the first bet. I sat, I was playing the first base spot. And as the the game wore on, and as I gathered more in information, I realized very quickly that I was in a good game. The first base system was working very well indeed. Tens were following tens with very good reliability, and the dealer was breaking in the high ratio rounds. Now, in this game, unlike the other game, I bet differently. I had noted that single tens, lone tens at the end of the round, the last card of the prior round was a single ten, that I was doing well and these hands. There were very few lone tens in this game. So being a hundred dollar game, my base bet was one hundred dollars. If the round ended in a single ten, or if there were two tens anywhere in the last three cards, I bet two hundred dollars. In other words, a final ten or two out of three tens. In the last three cards, I would bet $200. If all three cards were tens, the last three cards were tens, and it was a low ratio round, I would bet three hundred dollars. If three or more of the final cards were tens and it was a high ratio round, I would bet $200. That is the betting method that I settled in on in that game as I watched the game to see what was winning. The game literally told me that that was the best way to bet in that particular game. What I was doing constitutes one of our strongest world-class world-class blackjack systems. I was combining first base with advantage betting. I had noticed in this game that both systems played well. The game was susceptible to both systems, both advantage betting and first base. So I bet high on the strongest first base bets, and I also bet high on the strongest advantage betting bets. This paid off very well indeed in this game. I had also noted that this game was highly susceptible to NBJ, and I was able to get off many classic NBJ plays, hitting a 15 against a four, for instance, because when the low rounds came out, the low rounds came out very, very pure. But when the high rounds came out, they were dotted with single low cards. Therefore, I did not necessarily only bet high when the last card was a ten. The very last card might have been a low card. It might have been a three, for instance. But I would bet high if two out of three of the last cards were ten, and particularly if it was following, if it was in a low ratio round, the prior round was low ratio. Because if it was low ratio, I had a much better opportunity to pick up a good card on my second card. Now this game continued on to three players, and I noticed that the game did not deteriorate significantly with three players. It did deteriorate somewhat. So I called Harvey aside and told him exactly how I was playing the game. And then I went on to have dinner with Voltaire and have our meeting, which of course the casino paid for. The dinner, that is. Well, after dinner, I decided it was getting pretty late and I wanted to get some sleep for the next day of play with Harvey. But I said to Voltaire, let's uh take a swing through the casino and see how Harvey's doing. So sure enough, when we got there, Harvey was still at the uh first base seat where he'd sat down about an hour before. Uh and he was doing very well indeed. And it was the game was still very, very sensitive to that particular playing style. So what I began doing is whenever the game showed the $300 bet where I was making the $300 bet before, I would go ahead and make that $300 bet on Harvey's hand. Uh another peculiar thing that happened, interesting thing that happened in that game, is uh the player next to me had failed to insure a $400 bet when it was quite obvious to me that the dealer had blackjack, so I went ahead and insured his hand. And of course the dealer did in fact have blackjack. So that that was a boost to my pocketbook and my ego. Well, I did quite well playing on Harvey's hand uh also, and by the time I finally did decide to go to bed four hours after arriving at the casino, I was seven thousand dollars ahead. Plus, I'd had a good dinner on the casino with Voltaire. Now you might be sitting there saying, gee, I wish I could look into a situation like that. Well, let me tell you something, it's not all luck. That night required doing several things right. Number one, the conditions were there, the opportunity was there when I arrived at the casino. I had to go and play that opportunity because it was there. Number two, I took the time to do a good table search to find that game. Number three, I took the time to look the game over before jumping in to determine, at least from a starting point, how to best play that game. Number four, I timed my entry correctly into that game and got off to a winning start. I was playing on their money right off the bat so I could play with some amount of authority in that game. Number five, I adapted, I adapted to the conditions at hand. I very quickly settled in on the combination of first base and advantage play. I very quickly recognized that this was a good NBJ game. I could make the NBJ plays in this game, and I could get my hands-one ratio up there in this game. I quickly recognized that the high ratio areas were dotted with small cards. So I knew that I didn't have to have a 10 on the final as the final card in the prior round. I could use advantage betting and go by the last three cards in the prior round. I also noticed that I was not winning after a high ratio round. So I curtailed my betting to $200 after a high ratio round. This is just adapting to the situation at hand and taking advantage. The last thing I did right is I didn't overplay my physical ability to play. Even though it was a hot game, I knew enough to say, Ellis, you drove five hours, you've been playing for two hours, you're due for a break. And to go ahead and take that break. This is heads up blackjack. This is how winning players win. Now, with that example of adaptation in mind, let's go to the manual on page 71 and look at play decision factors. This page is about adapting to the game you're in. Okay, number one, frequent dealer breaking. What if we get in? What do we do if we get in the game where the dealer is a dealer-breaking game, the dealer is just simply breaking far more than she should be? Not only is she breaking the normal mathematical 28%, she's even breaking more than that. You might find situations where the dealer is breaking one out of three, or occasionally even one out of two. I remember in the Bahamas in our team play effort, we had the dealer breaking every other hand. But what do you do in a situation like this? This is caused by super random distribution of tens. Tens that are distributed throughout the deck even more than random mathematics dictates. What you want to do is you want to favor safe strategy. Don't take risky hits. Rely on this dealer breaking that's going on. Betting, this is a good time to go to negative progression betting. When you're in a dealer-breaking game, it is very, very seldom that you're going to lose three in a row. This is a good time for a 1-4-6 or a 2-3-4 negative progression simply because you're not likely to lose three in a row. What if the opposite thing happens? What if you have infrequent dealer breaking? This is caused by clumping. Favor dealer strategy. If the dealer is not breaking, it's unlikely that you will be breaking. Favor dealer strategy and also favor advantage betting. One exception. You do get in those games where the dealer doesn't seem to be breaking, but every time you hit, you break. Or it seems like every time you hit, you break. You're into a dealer bias, a strong dealer bias. You've got to either change the conditions in that game, change the player number, or get out of the game. Dealer making multiple card hands. You see the dealer up there making five and six card hands frequently. This is caused by clumping. The more the cards in the the more cards there are in the dealer's hand, the more you favor dealer strategy. If it's favorable for you, it's gonna be, if it's favorable for the dealer, rather, it's going to be favorable for you. Play dealer strategy. It's a common goal during the shoe. Follow the rhythm. Favor advantage betting. Frequent pushes and 20. What do you do? It's caused by tight high card clumping. It favors a safe strategy in the sections of the shoe where two 10-20 pushes occur. If you don't get the 20, if you get the 15 or the 16, stand on the 15 or the 16. Don't try to hit it. You're going to break. You're in the area of the shoe where the dealer is most likely to break. And favor dealer strategy in the rest of the shoe and also favor advantage betting. The nice thing about advantage betting is it doesn't rely on our hands-one ratio. Your hands-one ratio can be suffering, and advantage betting can still work because you're not worried about winning more hands than the dealer. You're concerned about winning the right hands, the hands that you had the heavy bets at. You get on tens. This can happen, you know, just like it happens to the dealer, it can happen to you. You can sit there and you just get 10 up after 10 up after 10 up. What do you do? You're getting more than your fair share of 10s and two 1020s. You're on a player bias. Favor basic strategy and positive progressions. That's right. Positive progressions. Up as you win betting. Back off the progs during the low ratio round. This is a strong go-for-the-juggler opportunity. Frequent dealer ten ups. What do you do? Change the player number. Drop out of a couple of hands or play two spots for a while. If that doesn't work, get out of the game. No tens showing. You're playing the game and there just doesn't seem to be tens in this game. You've played games that seem to be all tens. There's way it seems like there's too many tens. You've also played games where the tens just seem to have evaporated. There don't seem to be tens anywhere in the game. What do you do? Play dealer strategy, bet low. You're in a very dangerous situation. You're trying to find the best way to play that game. Bet low, and if things don't work out, get out of the game. With Max 10 showing, play safe strategy. Bet high. One more thing on adaptation. It pays to be creative. Look to see what you need to do in that game to win. What is winning in that game? The same game of blackjack has never been played twice. Every game is an individual game. Be creative. Watch what's going on. Concentrate. What is winning in this game? Very often you can make up your play strategy as you go along. Very often, this is the best way. I can't possibly cover every possible situation in the manual because there is an infinite number of situations that you can get involved in. Anytime you sit down to play, you're playing a game that has never been played before. Watch what's going on in that game. What wins in that particular game? What's the optimum player number? How much can you get away with hitting? How much can you get away with standing with less than 17? When do you have super bat opportunities? What hands do you seem to always be winning? What are the conditions going on in the game when you tend to always be winning the hand? For instance, that situation in the United game where the prior round was ending in 7, 8, 9. A sequential situation that virtually every time ended up in a 10 on the next card. This is just paying attention to what's going on around you. That's what Blackjack is all about. Paying attention, finding out what's going to win in that particular game, and then playing your hands and betting your money accordingly. Be creative, be inventive. If it's working in that game, even if you just invented it, you didn't see it in the manual. I didn't tell you about it, but it's working in that game. Do it. On the other hand, things that are not working in that game, I don't care how many times I may have mentioned it in the manual, if it's not working in that game, it's not working in that game. React to the situation at hand. Play heads up blackjack. Pay attention to what's going on. One thing I'd like to mention to you, and maybe apologize a little bit for, is I do not like to discuss games on tape, or for that matter, to write about games in the newsletter or in the manuals that were unwitnessed by other NBJ players that you know. It's just a matter of professionalism. I like to have all of the games that I talk about backed up by eyewitnesses so that you can have the opportunity to check the validity of everything I say. I don't want to put myself in league with these book writers that write about blackjack and write about games when in fact they don't play the game in the casino. They're writing about what they think should happen mathematically. And the problem is what they think should happen mathematically, and what happens on their computers is a far cry from what really happens in casinos in real games because they just don't understand the depth of the mathematics and the statistics involved. I like to think that we do, and I know for a fact that we certainly do to a much higher degree than they do. I think that we speak in realistic terms. We speak in real-world occurrences. I'd like you to uh understand that uh the game in Oneida that I talked about at the Turning Stone was unwitnessed by other NBJ players. This was really just an accident because I nearly always run into other NBJ players uh in that casino, and they almost always opt to either play with me uh or watch my play. Unfortunately, uh I I probably should have set something up before I left, but it was a spur-of-the-moment idea to go and and play that game uh as a representative of things that we were going to talk about in the manual, but it didn't work out. However, in the in the game at uh the Taj that we just spoke of, uh that game was witnessed by quite a few NBJ players besides Voltaire and uh besides uh Harvey. There were several MBJ players, there must have been uh six or seven players around that game, and some of those players uh actually played in the game with me for a while, so there were many uh witnesses to that game, and that's really the way I like to have it, and that's almost always the case because virtually uh every time I play cards these days, the my games and my play are witnessed by other NBJ players. So I apologize for the for the fact that that wasn't the case in the Turning Stone game, and I ask you to trust me on that one. Okay, next tape just listen to E.

SPEAKER_00 43:28

Clifton Davis speaking on the topic high stakes with Alice. For further information or questions, you may contact Mr. Davis by phone. His number is 518-AP87-9219. In addition to these WCB tapes you are listening to, MBJ also has a broad spectrum of other products available for your use. These include Clifton Davis's quarterly newsletter as well as other products in development. Also available for a wide variety of gaming supplies at discount prices. For further information on gaming supplies, please contact Key Smith at 717-533-7992 or Bill Ray at 717 at 7909729. This ends side A of tape three. Please turn the tape over for side B's topic entitled World Class Card Play. Thank you.