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23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Sorry - this book is of historical interest only, March 27, 2004
I was introduced to this book in 1972 whilst applying for a casino job in Tehran, of all places, and a few years later when I began playing serious BJ myself, I would have given it 4 stars but with some reluctance because, aside from the good parts, it also contains a lot of gamblers superstition and questionable advice. Revere's book was a breakthrough in that it was written for the player who wanted a clear and concise book on "how to win" rather than Thorpe ("Beat the Dealer")desire to demonstate how terribly clever he was. Unlike say Allan Wilsons "Casino Gamblers Guide" (see my review) the text is poorly written but, most importantly and memorably it did have excellent colour-coded strategy charts - it was this feature more than anything else which I believe made the book such a success. On the debit side I would agree with the 2-star reviewer below that LR's agenda was to sell his much-touted "superior strategies", the mastery of which according to him, would double or triple your win-rate. I fell for this sales pitch and sent him another $200 (a lot of money at the time) - plus an extra $50 for the "no-hole card strategy", which consisted of a scrap of typed paper containing half a dozen numbers and no explanatory notes. His so-called "advanced point-count" was highly over-rated and his promised "after-sales service" non-existent. Besides, I soon discovered that going from a simple one-level count to an "advanced" multi-level count produces marginal gain at best, esp in multi-deck games. After expressing my dissatisfaction by letter, LR wrote a curt one-line reply on a businesscard..! Such was his brusque manner. Most of LR's strategies and experience refer to the now rare single-deck game - sure you can still find them but if you bet more than a quarter and appear to know what you are doing you will certainly get "heat" and probably have the deck broken on you. He appeared to have very little if any experience of even 4-deck games let alone the now much more common 6 or more decks. His very conservative bet-spread was also based on a single deck game and would have been useless applied to 4 or more decks, but this fact was glossed over. In Revere's day (the 60's and early `70's), the game was far easier to beat - more and better decision options, much deeper penetration, and much less scrutiny ("heat") for counters than is the case today. In this respect the 5-star review below by the "Las Vegas pit boss of 25 years" is inexplicable and totally unrealistic. LR also virtually ignored the fact (as do most other BJ books written for the US market) that in most of the world the dealer doesn't take a hole card - this apparently "minor" rule change makes a big difference to the basic strategy when playing against a dealers 10 or Ace. I don't doubt that Revere was quite successful at the tables, but nowhere near as much as he makes out. In his day single-deck BJ was (relatively-speaking) easy to beat, there were very few counters, and dealers and pit-bosses weren't as paranoid about counters as they were to become, largely as a result of this book. I would wager that LR made much more money selling his books and strategies than he ever did from playing. I don't know whether Revere's heirs (he died in the late `70's) are still selling their expensive "advanced strategies" but if they are - send me your money instead - I'll give you far better value and advice. Unless newer editions of his book have corrected these deficiencies, then this book is all but useless for the modern "tough" multi-deck casino environment.
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