Customer Reviews

Risk and Reward: The Science of Casino Blackjack

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This is a wonderful book. Like Richard Werthamer, I have a PhD in physics and worked for many years as a professional research physicist. I grew up playing poker and bridge with my family and friends, and in college became fascinated by casino games and read everything I could find about them. Having a basic knowledge of math it quickly became clear that of all the casino games only blackjack offered the potential for consistent winning. I read Ed Thorp's classic "Beat the Dealer" along with several of the books that came later. I carefully learned and practiced the card counting and playing/betting strategies, and subsequently spent many happy hours playing blackjack in Las Vegas casinos, enjoying the free drinks, admiring the scantily clad cocktail waitresses, and making a small, steady profit. I was not trying to make a fortune, only to enjoy the play itself and especially to enjoy consistently beating the house.

Werthamer's book presents the most thorough analysis I have seen on the game. Happily, it is also clearly written and organized. I enjoyed reading it the first time and have enjoyed going back to it when I wanted to clarify some of its many practical conclusions. He performed the analysis and wrote the book with an obvious passion for the both the theory and the way the game is actually played in the casinos.

I have not played much casino blackjack for years. I have watched sadly as the single deck games (and even 2-deck games) have disappeared, and it gets harder to find games that play by the traditional rules. Also, unsurprisingly, the casinos and dealers have become steadily more intolerant of any play behavior, especially betting pattern, that shows the slightest hint that the player knows how to play and when the cards are in his favor. Despite these unfortunate developments, Werthamer believes that some forms of team play, which he describes, can still be used to beat the casinos today. I'll bet he's right.

If you enjoy card games and appreciate a careful, thorough analysis of the strategies of how to play most successfully, I recommend you read this book. It is a delightful presentation of a thorough mathematical study of blackjack.

For students of probability and statistics this a real fun book. Textbooks always have the simple problems using casino games to illustrate the probability, but it is just a device for instruction. Much like financial engineering books, this is a great study of applied mathematics, and in a fun way.

Blackjack players who are not math geeks will gain alot of knowledge from the author. His analysis covers just about every playing strategy devised for Blackjack.

He takes the generic strategy, which is published in every book on blackjack, and he studies various methods to optimize the generic strategy. Whether it is through counting techniques, which he covers them all, to wagering strategies, it is a complete analysis. He analyzes table entry and exit strategies versus counting and straight up play. Betting and bankroll strategies are covered as well. For the blackjack player, there is alot packed into this book. And some of his conclusions will suprise alot of players. The amount of play, impacts which strategy to use.

His analysis is extensive, and he does not constrain it to strictly the dealing of cards. He covers the requirement for players to camaflouge their play from the casino, who does not appreciate "lucky" players.

The math extends to all areas of probability and even stochastics. The core of the math studies basically are seperated into betting strategies and card stratgies. With a nice combination of both when analyizing the expected return for various betting strategies mixed with card playing techniques. ( card playing techniques include not just counting, but also the type of player and exit and entry strategies ).

It is not a cheap book, but is a great fun book. The author's writing style makes it a fun read as well.

I came to this book knowing nothing about Blackjack except that you were out of the game if your hand went over 21. (In fact as a kid at summer camp, where I played it, we called it Twenty-One.) Fifty pages into this book I knew how the game had started, what all the rules are, why it is not just luck, how to pay attention, and why it is more fun if you do know these things. And despite the author's disclaimer that he isn't so much interested in gambling as in analyzing the mathematics of the game I could see that if you had your wits about you reading this book would enormously increase your chances of making some money in competitive play.

The book is easy to understand; written in a conversational tone and even with a little humor. It is divided into two sections: the first is accessible to anyone with a high school education. It covers the history of Blackjack, basic strategies of play, the fundamentals of betting, and the mathematics of how those two skills - play and betting - are interrelated. Here you also learn what casinos look for when they consider showing you the door with an invitation never to return, and how smart players avoid such situations. You also learn the special lingo of casino play like "back counting" and "table hopping" (both perfectly legal) and the basics of "card counting" (a skill all its own which requires more than just paying attention.)

The second section requires some math at the college level. It goes deeply into the probabilities involved in various strategies and shows how they can be represented as formulas and graphs. In this section Werthamer refers to the ideas of several other Blackjack analyzers; it turns out that this field has been the object of intense study for many years, motivated by the desire to claim reward out of the jaws of risk. You may not have the math to see exactly why the house will in the long run against inexperienced players have the edge, but take it from the author, it will.

Excellent book w/ a good review on the issues of math in blackjack from a different perspective then in the existing literature. Cavil would be that Grosjean's book was not alluded to and that has a lot of the more rigorous math in it.

This book was way over my head, so I sent it to a friend of mine, who is a card counter, for review, haven't heard from him as of yet.