In this bonus video, Justin Vacula of the Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast guides viewers through online blackjack strategies using Borgata Online Casino.
He addresses listener questions, particularly from Mendi Lowe, on basic blackjack strategy and recommended training resources. Justin provides a step-by-step demonstration of how to use a blackjack strategy chart from BlackjackApprenticeship.com, which covers pair splitting, soft totals, hard totals, and late surrender.
The video includes a live play session with detailed explanations of various hands, highlighting when to hit, stand, double, or surrender. Justin also discusses the advantages of playing online versus live casinos, such as playing at your own pace and minimizing distractions.
He emphasizes practicing with training apps before playing for real money and using prepaid cards to gain credit card rewards and rebates to overcome the Blackjack house edge. Despite fluctuations in winning, he encourages viewers to trust the math and strategies presented.
Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction and Video Overview
00:30 Blackjack Strategy Chart for Beginners
03:11 Using Training Apps for Practice
04:51 Differences Between Online and Live Blackjack
05:33 Prepaid Cards and Credit Card Rewards
06:49 Navigating Borgata Online Casino
08:16 Starting the Blackjack Session
10:22 Basic Strategy in Action
22:31 Multi-Hand Blackjack Play
25:38 Session Summary and Conclusion
Show notes:
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Rough Transcript:
[00:00:00] Hello everyone. Justin Vacula here with another bonus YouTube video with the hurdy gurdy travel podcast. Another blackjack video this time on pa. borgataonline. com or Borgata Online Casino in conjunction with Rivers Casino, Philadelphia. I know New Jersey has a Borgata Online site. Maybe it’s available in some other States as well.
So before getting to it here with the example of play and a description for what’s going on. Some listener questions from Mendy Lowe, Mendy says a video suggestion for newbies, a suggested training video in the sense of showing where to find a strategy chart that you’re using, why you like it over some other charts.
So I have in another screen here, I can pull it up. This is the website blackjackapprenticeship. com. This is mostly focusing on card counting and playing in casinos, but if you go up here to [00:01:00] the sandwich menu. You can see blackjack strategy charts. So we’re looking for the chart for basic strategy and we have it right here on the right hand side of the screen.
I also have it saved on my computer. I like this chart. This is a reputable website with blackjack apprenticeship. I followed these guys for a while. I’ve listened to the gambling with an edge podcast and they’re real winners. They actually have played in casinos and won money counting cards. We’re not counting cards, so we don’t need to worry about any of the deviations or some things like that they talk about on the site.
We’re going to ignore that. Mindy, I think, was a little bit confused or wondering about it, so I have this strategy chart saved on my computer right from their site. Basic strategy is what we need. We have a chart for pair splitting, soft totals, hard totals, and late surrender. Here on the left hand side of the screen, you’ll see these are the whole cards that we have.
So if we [00:02:00] have a deuce and a deuce, we look against what the dealer has and make a decision accordingly. There is a key at the bottom here that will say split. Split if double after split is offered. In Pennsylvania we always have the double after split on the better games which we’ll get into. And don’t split the pair.
The soft totals here would be if we had an ace in our hand on the first two cards. We look what we have in what the dealer has and make the decision accordingly here. Double if allowed, otherwise hit. So this can be if there are multi card hands. So if we have something like ace deuce, and then we hit and get a five, we can’t double on the third card.
So this would be an otherwise hit or an otherwise stand. The hard totals are much simpler. This talks about doubling as well. Double if allowed, otherwise hit. So we can only double on the first two cards. Otherwise we’re hitting on this, uh, D with the green. And of course we’re hitting and standing on the other ones.
And surrender means we [00:03:00] forfeit our hand and take half of our money back. So if we have a 15, the dealer showing a 10 or face card, we surrender. If we have a 16, the dealer showing a nine, 10 or ACE. We surrender so that’s the strategy chart that I follow and the strategy chart that I like can resize it here Using a multiple monitor setup, but for purposes of the video I’m going to keep it on the main screen so you can see the strategy chart as I play Resize here and put it on the right hand side so we can look at the strategy chart Which is kind of like our cheat sheet as we play to make things a lot easier for us, and we’re not guessing I would recommend though before playing for real money That you would practice off table with various training apps.
I haven’t used these training apps in a while, but there was one I found that was simply called Blackjack Strategy Trainer for Android. You might find different things on Apple or apps [00:04:00] on Android. So you would just practice with the chart next to you and using the app. So you can learn what exactly is going on and some of the charts in the apps might be a little bit different than the Blackjack Apprenticeship chart.
So we’re going to default to the blackjack apprenticeship chart when we’re looking at the strategy or when we’re playing so many goes on and says here suggested apps to practice. We just talked about that before you put down money. Yes, when you talk about 3 to 2 dealers standing on all 17 and surrender.
Try to find apps that most closely match FanDuel and BetMGM. Okay, yes, you’d want to find apps that would have those rules, but that might be a little bit tricky to find. You could try using multiple apps that have those very close rules, and I believe Blackjack Apprenticeship also has a basic strategy trainer on their site.
Mendy also says here, how is online different than live table? Why are we not taking these skills to cruise casinos, [00:05:00] for example? So one thing that’s nice about online is you’re playing at your own pace. Hopefully in a quiet area, hopefully in a focused area, where when you’re at the casino, there are all kinds of distractions from drink servers, people passing by, so you have focus here, and I’m almost never playing blackjack in casino, just playing straight up basic strategy, because as this chart says, with the good rules, the house has about a half percent advantage, so I don’t want to play games where I’m giving up edge to the house, the idea with the online blackjack is that we’re loading using various prepaid cards.
Have the game on gift cards here have these blue box master cards that I found from various grocery stores. We have secure spend master cards. I found these at CVS, Acme, and other places, and even FanDuel gift cards for play on FanDuel, various types of prepaid cards that we can buy with credit cards.
We’re getting [00:06:00] credit card rewards. We’re getting category bonuses in some cases. If we’re buying a grocery store, we’re using cards like Amex gold. That’s giving four times points. So we have an edge there. So we’re buying we’re on the acquisition side. We’re earning rewards that are offsetting the half percent house edge.
We’re only loading new money to the sites with the cards. We’re playing through our money one time and we’re withdrawing. So for getting, say four X back at a grocery store, we’re giving up a half percent. If we’re to value points at one cent per point, a conservative estimate, we’re still up 3. 5 percent in the long run.
Of course, this is gambling. There are ups and downs, so we could be down in a particular session. But over the long run, America loves math, the math works out, and we reach expectation. So let’s scroll through here to not time out. When you go to Borgata Online, uh, pa. borgataonline. com, you’ll see all kinds of different games.
You’ll see the deposit page. [00:07:00] And there’s also a poker side to it, arcade here, promotions. Sometimes there are bonuses, but Borgata and Bed and Jam are usually really bad for promotions for Blackjack. So I mostly ignore the promotions. They usually have high playthrough requirements and Blackjack only counts for about 10%.
So you’d have to play through a significant amount to get a bonus, which usually wouldn’t be worth it. Today, I deposited Vanilla Visa gift cards on Borgata Online Casino. They’ve been glitching recently. If you try to deposit 500 at a time, I’ve had cards locked, and then I have to call in and ask for replacements.
So I’ve just been depositing 250 and using two different cards. I got 500 into the site, as of this week. Recording on November 26th, Giant Pennsylvania Grocery Stores, they have a 3x points bonus on Vanilla Visa gift cards. So for buying a 500 vanilla visa gift card, we’re getting 15 in groceries, or we’re getting points that we could use towards gas, we’d get 1500 points, [00:08:00] and that would take 1.
50 off 25 gallons. So with a full fill, we’re getting really good value for gas, and after gas fills, then we’d use them for groceries. And some other redemptions I’ve talked about in a past video with my co host Darren Remsburg. So now setting the table, let’s get into it. It shows top blackjack games.
We’re looking for the game multi hand blackjack surrender. So we scroll over and pick that. This has the best rules. A lot of these other games are gimmicky games where we’re not getting good rules, especially games like free bet blackjack. There’s a whole different strategy to it. And the house has a bigger edge.
So with multi hand blackjack surrender, we’ll try to pop this out. Well, we don’t want to do that. Um, we could try to go to the full screen. I don’t think that’s going to work. So we’ll have to have it in the center here. We’ll zoom this over. This isn’t as friendly to us [00:09:00] for recording purposes. But it’ll make the screen at least somewhat bigger here.
So you can see. And we have 500 in here. So what I do is I pull up a simple calculator. I’m going to divide my current posit of 500 divided by five for 5 a hand for 100. So I go over to this click counter. There are many click counter tools online. I’m going to enter a hundred into the click counter. So I’m going to play through 100 units, not necessarily 100 hands as we’ll see later in the video, we’re going to get splits and doubles.
So some hands we’re going to be wagering more than 5 per hand. I think 5 is a reasonable amount to start with. Maybe you’ll just want to start with 1. We have a chip selector down here, but we’ll get through a hundred units in the video. So I think that’ll give you a good sample of basic strategy and the basics of playing blackjack.[00:10:00]
So we have here for 5, we click on chip selector, click on the betting square into the 5. We check our options. We want to put the speed on sound off safety net on safety net prevents us from misclicking in some circumstances. And insurance off. We’re not playing insurance. It’s a sucker side bet in most situations.
So just ignore that. So here we’re starting at 5 playing our first unit. We’re going to hit deal and adjust the click counter by one. So we have five versus the dealer 10. So we look over here in the basic strategy chart, the hard totals. It only goes down to eight. So for eight or below, we’re never going to stand on eight or below.
We’re always going to hit on eight and below. So five versus dealer ten, no matter what the dealer has here, when we have a five, we’re hitting. So now we have seven and it’s a similar situation. Seven versus ten is going to be a hit and we [00:11:00] have seventeen now versus ten. So look at the hard totals. Hard seventeen always stands.
And as you play, you’re going to get used to the patterns of how basic strategy works. So now we click the click counter again. We’re dealt blackjack. We automatically win this hand. So we’re onto the next one with rebet and deal. The click counter moves by one similar situation here, eight versus 10.
That’s going to be a hit. So now we’re at 14 versus 10. So we look at the chart. 14 versus 10 is a hit. So we hit here and we bust, we lose that hand onto the next one. Click counter down by one. Hard 18 versus 10, meaning we don’t have an ace in our hand. So 17 and above stands, we know that. So we’re standing on 18 onto the next hand.
We’re now at eight versus nine. So this is again, eight is going to be a hit no matter what the dealer has. 12 versus nine. Look at the chart. 12 versus nine is a hit 17, [00:12:00] 17 stands onto the next hand 19. So that’s going to be a stand clicking off this little. Add here 19 will stand hard 17 and above stands next hand next click counter 12 versus four.
Look at the chart. So 12 is going to hit against dealer two and three. It’s going to stand against dealer 456. It’s going to hit against dealer seven through ace. So 12 versus four is a stand. I’m not even paying attention too much to what’s happening on the dealer side. I’m just focused on getting through this money in a low amount of time.
Typically when I play, I’m playing 25 per hand to get through the money faster. But for purposes of the video, we’re just doing 5 units to show you more hand examples. 12 versus 10 is going to be a hit next hand 17. So this is hard 17. It’s going to stand next hand. It’s going to be nine versus [00:13:00] five. So we look at the hard totals.
Nine is going to double against three through six. So with the double, we’re just getting one card in one card only. And we’re putting another unit on the table. So this is 5 initial bet. We hit double and it brings our wager to 10. So we hit the click counter for the doubling onto the next hand. We have 11 versus five, 11 always doubles.
You can look at the chart. 11 is always a double. So we move the click counter again and onto the next hand. Click counter again. 11 is another double. And the next hand, we’re now at 20 versus 10. So our 20 is going to stand, we’re never hitting on 20. We’re definitely not doubling on 20. 20 is going to be a stand hard 17 and above another stand for 20.
So maybe it seems a little bit grindy here is it’s a lot of the same examples, but that’s okay. We’re just looking at getting through this [00:14:00] money 15 versus 10. This is one of the surrender conditions. The only 15 surrender. Is 15 surrendering against dealer 10. So we hit this purple flag. Half our bet is sacrificed.
We end the hand onto the next one. Ace three versus eight. So this is a soft total hand. If we have an ace in the first two. So we see ace three versus dealer eight is going to be a hit 14 versus dealer eight. That’s a hit. We could see here. 14 is going to stand against dealer two through six, but hit against the dealer higher cards.
14 versus eight is a hit and we bust onto the next hand. Seven versus 10 is going to be a hit. 12 versus 10, another hit 16 versus 10. So the first two cards, 16 versus 10 would surrender, but now we’re at the fourth card in this hand. So it’s going to be a hit. We look at the hard totals. 16 versus 10 is a hit 16.
One of the worst hands we can have in [00:15:00] blackjack. We get an ACE. So now we have 17 as the ACE counts for one or 11. Hard 17 we know is a stand. On to the next hand, hard 20 stands. Once you get more used to this, you can do three hands at a time on this particular site. It goes a lot faster, but the variance probably goes up because we’re betting more at a time.
Ace six versus eight, another hard total. It’s going to be a hit. A six versus eight is a hit. Looking at the chart and we have a 16, 16 versus eight is also a hit. 16 is going to stand against dealer two through six and hit against seven and above. And we improved to 19. So that’s going to be a stand onto the next hand, blackjack winner, next hand, click counter 18 stand.
You can get very fast as you know, these patterns, you memorize the chart, you play, you practice blackjack. Another winner, [00:16:00] ace eight. So ace eight is going to stand against everything except for doubling is dealer six. If you look at the chart right here, stand, stand, stand, stand, and only the double against the dealer six.
So ace eight versus four is going to be a stand onto the next hand. Eight versus 10 is going to be a hit 18 stands next hand. It’s going to be 15 versus three hard 15 versus three is a stand. Not a great hand for us. Next hand, next click counter stand 20. That was 10 versus three. So now we have a double opportunity here.
If you look at the hard totals, 10 is going to double against dealer two through nine and hit against dealer 10 and ACE. So double one card, one card only. We move the click counter by one and the next hand ACE five versus 10. Another soft total. Ace five versus 10 is going to be a hit. [00:17:00] Now when we get an ace, we’re going to count this as ace six because the ace is counted as one here.
So ace six versus 10 is going to be a hit. And we got a 10. So now we’re 17 and we stand next hand. Hard 19 will stand next hand 10 versus nine. We went over that one. That’s a double. Next hand. 13 versus 10, similar to what we saw before, is a hit. 14 versus 10 is a hit. We improve to 21, we automatically stand.
17 versus 10, hard 17 stands. Next hand, next click counter. 16 versus 7 is a hit. Look at the hard totals. 16 versus 7 is a hit. And we bust. Next hand. 10 versus 4, so that’s another double. 10 will double dealer deuce [00:18:00] through nine. So one card, one card only, and move the click counter. Next hand 13 versus nine is going to be a hit referred to the chart here, and we bust next hand about halfway there.
Ace deuce versus deuce is going to be a hit. Look at the soft total chart and we improved to 21 auto stand. We have ace eight versus three. It’s a stand. Ace eight is only doubling against the dealer six, standing on everything else. Next hand’s 20 stands. Next hand is going to be ace eight. That’s a stand.
The dealer does not have a six. All right. 13 versus seven is going to be a hit. 14 versus seven’s a hit. We bust next hand. Seven versus four hard totals less than eight. So we hit. 17 will be a stand. Next [00:19:00] hand, we move the counter 14 versus 10 is a hit. We bust next hand 20. We’ll stand hard 20. Next hand 11 always doubles.
Next hand blackjack 21. We win next hand. Ace eight will be a stand dealer as a seven. Ace eight only doubling against dealer six. Pick up the pace here. 12 up dealer blackjack. We lose next hand. 14 versus 10 is a hit. 21 next hand. Next click counter. Ace deuce versus 10 is a hit. Look at the chart here. Ace deuce is going to hit against those high cards.
It’s doubling against dealer five and six. We hit, we improved to 21 next hand. 12 versus 6 is going to be a stand. Look at the hard totals. 12 will hit against dealer 2 and 3. Stand against dealer 4, 5, [00:20:00] 6. Hit against dealer 7 and above. So 12 versus 6 is stand. Dealer’s going to bust a lot on the 6, but this time does not.
12 versus 10, another hit. 13 versus 10 hits. 20 stands. And 8 versus 4, 8 hits. 12 versus 4 is a stand. You’ll be remembering basic strategy in your sleep. 18 will stand next hand 13 versus 10 is a hit 16 versus 10 will hit. If you talk out loud as you play this, maybe that can help you in the learning process.
14 versus 10 dealers, 21. We lose next hand eight versus five heart eight hits 18 will stand next hand. 14 versus three is stand next hand. 13 [00:21:00] versus 10 will hit. We bust again, a little bit of a downswing here. 11 versus 10 will double. So a quick mental note. When we run bad here, um, we doubled, we lost, we lost these other hands.
We’re down to four 60 at the moment. We’ve deposited 500. We know in the long run that gambling is gambling and we will lose certain sessions. But again, in the long run, we’re giving up about a half percent house edge, but we’re getting the rewards on the credit card side. So do not despair, trust the math and continue pushing on.
Next hand 11 always doubles another loser. 10 versus ACE will be a hit and we improved to 21. 21. Blackjack. Next hand. Next click counter. 13 versus 4 is a stand. Alright, we’re starting to win some [00:22:00] hands here. Coming back. 9 versus 8 will be a hit. 12 versus 8 will hit. 17. Hard 17. Stands. Next hand. Blackjack.
Next hand. 11 always doubles. Next hand. 15 versus 9 is going to be a hit. 19 stands. Next hand. 14 versus 10 is going to be a hit. We bust. Let’s mix it up a little bit and do some multi hand to show you how this works in the app. So we go 1, 2, 3 hands and hit the deal button. 1, 2, 3 on the click counter. So it starts from the right and there’s going to be a spotlight effect on the screen.
And we’re done. So you can see here we have 12 versus 3, so that’s going to be a hit, 18 will stand, 16 versus 3 will stand, 13 versus 3 is also a stand, [00:23:00] 1, 2, 3 on the click counter, 7 versus 9 is a hit, and we have 11 versus 9 which usually doubles, but we can’t double because we’re on the third card, so we hit, 15 versus 9, hit.
We bust 17 stands, 18 stands. Next hand, 1, 2, 3 on the click counter. And we start from the right, 16 versus 4 as a stand, 16 versus 4 as a stand, 15 versus 4 as a stand. 1, 2, 3 on the click counter. 17 versus 10 stands. 3, 3 versus 10, so I don’t think we’ve had any split opportunities. This one is not a split, but you can look at the chart.
3 3 versus dealer 10. Do we split? And no. So then we go down to the hard totals, and we have the hard 6, which is below 8. So 6 versus 10 is a hit. 13 [00:24:00] versus 10 is a hit. 17 stands. Next hand, 1 2 3. So this session’s probably going to be a loser. We’re at 400 now. We started with the 500. We’ve had some losses, but in the other videos I’ve recorded, We’ve had some wins, so there are again the ups and downs.
Ace, deuce versus 10 is going to be a hit. We get 21. 8 versus 10 is a hit. 14 versus 10 hits. 20 stands. 1, 2, 3 on the click counter. Ace, 8 up. Dealer is blackjack. All right, so now we’re down to 4 on the click counter, so instead of dealing 3 hands at the same time and overplaying, which might be doubles and splits.
I’ll just go to new bet and just play single hands at this point. Maybe we’ll get a split opportunity once again, that we actually split, but not this hand. This is ACE three versus seven, which is a hit 13 [00:25:00] versus seven will be a hit and we bust next hand 10 versus 10 is a hit. We improved to 21 next hand.
14 versus 10 is a hit 21 and the final unit 13 versus five. So if this were 11, for example, against five, I would still double. It’s still to our advantage to double. Even though we overplay our deposit, we want to take advantages where we have them. But 13 versus five here is going to be a stand. So on the last hand, the dealer wins and we’re at a balance of 405.
So a little bit of run bad in that session as we started with 500 and we ended up down 95 for a total of 405. But again, sometimes this happens. We just have to appreciate this opportunity that we can liquidate our funds through the blackjack websites [00:26:00] in states like Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Michigan, and maybe some others.
So another tutorial about blackjack. If you have any questions about this, Feel free to leave them in the comments, engage with the channel. I’ve now earned the YouTube partnership yesterday, recording here on 1126. So 1125, I’m now a YouTube partner approaching 1000 subscribers. So I appreciate your support, new subscribers, new viewers.
Thank you for tuning in. Stay tuned for more content. I have a podcast episode I’m recording later tonight to be released on 1127. Talking about Weiss rewards program in grocery stores in Pennsylvania and some neighboring States. So we’re going to talk about buying these game on gift cards at Weiss, where we’re getting rebates in the form of grocery rewards, gas discounts, and much more.
So thanks again for listening. Once again, Justin [00:27:00] Vakula here from the hurdy gurdy travel podcast. Stay tuned for more content. Happy Thanksgiving. Have a great day.