As a Canadian gambler, whether you be a gambling dabbler or an expert, perhaps the most popular game for Canadians to play is blackjack.

Blackjack has been around since the 1700s and with an average house edge of .5 percent or as tiny as .42 percent, and a maximum of about 1.42 percent, blackjack is not only a fairly easy game to learn but one that is easily mastered.

Realize from the start that every casino game, including blackjack, has a house edge. After all, casinos are designed to make a profit. But blackjack far and away is the best casino game for the odds, but there is more to the story than that.

#1. Learn to play perfect basic strategy

This is an extremely important rule to follow, and you can thank four engineers at the

Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland worked it all out in the 1950s.

Using only a simple desk calculator, these four engineers worked out the perfect playing strategy for the game of blackjack, which has been tested by today’s supercomputers and found to be almost flawless.

So when you hear blackjack touted as a game with .42 percent odds, that’s assuming you are playing using basic strategy.

If you don’t play basic strategy but rather stick to your intuition, you can expect to add at least 2 percent to the house edge to as much as 5 percent or more.

Some players realize that in the game of blackjack, they lose automatically if they bust, (even if the dealer busts too) do their darndest not to bust, but as a consequence, miss many opportunities to draw and better their hand.

There are many basic strategy cards on both the internet and for purchase at a physical casino and the very best advice is to use one of these cards while playing blackjack and to not waver a single bit from their advice.

Yes, sometimes you could even beat the dealer with an extremely low hand such as a total count of 4 or 5, but quite often you will lose. You must check out the list of best blackjack sites at East Bay Express

#2. Sometimes the magic works, and sometimes it doesn’t

Realize that the casino doesn’t really give a hoot if you are winning or losing.

Blackjack is a game of numbers, and with the rare exception that you are winning extraordinary sums of money, the casino couldn’t care whether you are winning or losing.

The house edge operates over extremely large numbers of millions of hands. So naturally, some players are going to win over the short, and more players are going to lose. These are the numbers that really interest a casino.

However, for you the player, what matters the most, besides playing basic strategy, are the limiters you put on your gambling.

Say you play 100 hands of blackjack. Your percentages of wins or losses will be more random than if you play 1000 hands, because the more you play, the closer your cards will emulate the overall odds.

However, if you play just 10 or 15 hands, you have a much better chance of winning money.

To understand more, let’s turn to another casino game, roulette. Many people like to

bet on red or black, which pays 1 to 1, and has the actual odds of 47.4 percent, due to the fact that a roulette table also has zeros and double zeros.

But leaving the zeros out of the equation, one would assume that no matter how few or how many spins of the wheel, the numbers would come out to be 50/50.

However, that is not true at all. Back in 1943 at Las Vegas Casino, red came up an amazing 32 times in a row.

So the truth is, you never can predict when a hot streak will occur, or just as likely, a losing streak.

So what is the best advice? Play as few hands as possible, and in fact, were it not for the fact that the fun of gambling would be over in less than a minute and a half, the very best strategy would be to take your single session gambling limit, whether it be $100 or $500, and bet it on a single hand.

But that’s not fun for most players, so do the next thing and reduce your sessions to the fewest best possible and still enjoy yourself.

#3. Read the rules and play at the right casino

Reading the rules is extremely important. You need to know. You need to know whether the dealer must hit on a soft 17, what are the resplitting rules, and above all, what the payout is for a blackjack?

Traditionally, the payout for getting a blackjack is 3 to 2. So if you bet $5, the casino will pay you $7.50. However, in the late 1999s, many casinos started paying 6 to 5 on blackjack and a few casinos even pay less.

Depending on the casino, on average, if the rules are not favorable, you could pay as much as an additional 2 percent just within the rule changes.

So by all means read the rules. It may change which casino you like to play blackjack at entirely.

#4. Know your playing objectives before you play

This is often a tip that many players ignore to their peril. Say you plan to play with $100 of your hard-earned money and hope that under the best circumstances, you leave with an additional $100 of the casino’s money, and in the worst case, you lose no more than $40.

These are reasonable objectives. However, on winning $100, many players decide to go for $500 in winnings. Or alternatively, they lost their $40 and assume that their losses cannot get any worse.

Don’t be that guy who follows that plan. Create reasonable objectives for gains, and above all, never lose more than you can afford.

If you are winning, sock some of that money away so that you are guaranteed to come home with the casino’s money. After that, if you want to continue to play go ahead, but be sure to pocket some winnings.

#5. Ignore your fellow players

The vast majority of blackjack players are sheep. They gamble recklessly and make poor moves.

Don’t pay attention to a single player but concentrate on following the intelligent rules of playing blackjack.

You can go home a winner, even if 6 other players at your table, whether virtually or at a physical casino, go home losers.