Reply #36: Your odds of winning your first hand at Blackjack is less than 50%.

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It doesn't matter how good of a player you are (and once you've memorized all the probability matrices, you're about as good as you can get). The key to making money at Blackjack is by counting cards. Counting cards does not increase the odds of you winning any particular hand, but it does allow you to know when you are more likely to win a hand. Once you've discovered that a deck is rich in 10s and face cards, you know that the deck is stacked in your favor. When the deck is stacked in your favor, you know to start increasing your bet. If you're sneaky, you'll generally start increasing your bet very slowly so as not to arise suspicions. Of course, there's nothing illegal about counting cards, but they can kick out anyone they want for any reason that they want, so it's usually best to be as discrete as possible.