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Counting Cards: How to Cheat At Blackjack

I don’t gamble much. I’ve got this boring kind of luck that let’s me gamble for a really long time on not much money, without ever winning big.

For example, when my wife was very pregnant with our first monster, we took a trip to visit my parents. It’s a 2 hour drive, and she needed a break halfway there. In the truck stop, we bought $5 worth of scratch-offs to pass some time. We turned in the winning tickets for more scratch-offs. And again. And again. Two hours later, we were out of winners, but had never accumulated more than $10.

Another time, we went to the casino to play slots. It took nearly 8 hours to spend $20. That sounds boring, but we had good conversation while we were playing.

I’ve never had a big win or a big loss from gambling, so I’ve always been kind of bored with the idea.

Now, cheating at blackjack, that’s a different matter. Pulling one over on the casino without getting caught…they make movies about that kind of stuff.

To be clear: counting cards in your head isn’t cheating. Legally, the worst that can happen is you can be asked to leave. To get a Hollywood-I-cheated-the-casino-and-got-caught-and-beat-by-the-mob kind of beating, you need to win a lot.

A lot.

To get started, there are a few things you need to know. One of those things is how to play blackjack, but I’m not going to get into the basics. If you don’t know how to hit, stand, or count to 21 without taking your clothes off, this guide may be too advanced for you. Come back later.

Super Basic Strategy

You don’t need to count cards to use this strategy. You will do better than most players if you follow along.

1. The dealer must hit, or take another card, if he has 16 points. If he has 17, he stands.

2. The hole card–the card you can’t see–is always worth 10. Of course, it’s not, but for the purposes of your strategy, assume it is.

That means, when the dealer is showing a 2, you’ll assume he’s got 12 points and will hit. If he’s showing a 7, you’ll assume he’s going to stand. If he’s showing an 8, your goal is to beat 18, not push for 21.

That’s it. If you do that, you’ll come within a couple of points of even odds against the house. Google “blackjack basic strategy” if you want to improve this.

Even odds isn’t good enough.

Card Counting

Counting cards sounds tough. Rain Man tough.

It’s not, but you’ll want to practice at home a bit before you try it in the really real world.

The rules are simple:

1. Cards 2-6 are worth 1 point.

2. The 10, jack, queen, king, and ace are worth -1.

3. For every card that is played, keep track of that score. This is a running score across multiple hands until the deck is replaced or shuffled, so don’t stop at a new deal.

4. Divide the running score by the number of decks remaining in the shoe. If there are approximated 150 cards in the dealer-thingy, that’s 3 decks, so divide by 3. If your running score is 18, that means the number your playing against is 6. If the casino is using a continuous-shuffling thingy, forget counting the cards.

That’s it. You’re never adding or subtracting more than a one, and you’re doing that against a number that tends to stay pretty low.

How do you use that, you ask? Easy.

When the score is up, bet higher. If it’s low or negative, bet lower. The higher the number, the higher your bets. If you’ve got a 5, a 6, or more, bet as much as you are comfortable with. If your playing score is low or negative, bet close to the table minimum.

Why does this work?

A higher score indicates that the main assumption of the super basic strategy is more likely to be true. When you’ve got a score of 10, you know a lot of lower-value cards have already hit the table, so it’s safer to assume that the dealer’s card is worth 10.

You don’t change anything about the way you play each hand, you just change the way you bet each hand. Counting cards doesn’t tell you specifically what’s going to happen during each hand, it just tackles the statistics of the game. It moves the odds in your favor, by up to 2 or 3 percent. Over one hand, this won’t help, so don’t sweat losing a hand here and there. Over an entire shoe of hands, you should be able to steadily win more than you lose.

And, as Brian Brushwood says, in the course of your life, very few things make a cooler story than getting kicked out of a casino for counting cards.

Do you play in casinos? Ever tried to cheat?

Meditation

Life

Life is crazy.

“Really, Jason, that’s news?”

I spend so much time going in so many different directions.

Cleaning out our inherited hoarding house, managing the remodel, work, side hustles, kids, friends, family, relationships, maintaining our house, maintaining a relationship with my wife, garage sales, school starting, junior high football season, insurance policies, probate, rush hour, insomnia.

Some days, I feel insanely scattered. I can’t focus. I have a hard time making decisions. I waste time.

Those days, I need to clear my head.

That’s where meditation comes in.

I don’t do the money hum. (Om mone padme, Om)

Instead, I have three activities that demand a total focus. They drive out any scattered thoughts or unimportant concerns.

They have to because, quite frankly, they can be dangerous if I don’t concentrate.

1. I shave. I use a double-edged safety razor, so bleeding for the throat is a real concern. For 10 minutes, nothing else in the world matters. It has only recently struck me how valuable this is. That value makes me want to start shaving every day, with a straight razor. More focus, more often.

2. I ride. For the past couple of years, it’s been hard to find time get my motorcycle out. Small children seem to want attention every day. It got to the point where I was ready to sell my bike. This spring, it was seriously misbehaving. Finally, at the end of the summer, a friend got it running better than it ever has. I took it out for a couple of hours and came back feeling more clearheaded than I have in a long time. I won’t be selling my bike until I have its replacement.

3. I shoot. Shooting involves a series of simple actions that require concentration to do well. Load the gun, line up the sights, which eye is dominant, breathe, don’t breathe, squeeze the trigger, hole in the paper. Again, it’s not an activity that’s conducive to worrying about the bills or work. It’s a way to shut out the world for a few minutes.

For me, a few moments or a few hours of shutting down everything except one thing is the way to stay sane and focused.

How do you deal with it when the world comes crashing in from every direction?

Getting Started With Precious Metals

Finance

Precious metals are a fairly reliable investment. The price rises and falls like anything else, but there will always be value. They will never be worthless.

If you have some preparedness tendencies, it’s reassuring to know that you own a form of money that has intrinsic value. In the case of runaway inflation like so many countries–from Argentina to Zimbabwe–have had to deal with, it may be the only thing you can spend to put food on the table.

Unfortunately, we’re close to the top of gold and silver prices. Ten years ago, gold was selling for $320/ounce and silver was $4.76/ounce. At this moment, they are $1572.82 and $27.28, respectively. Those prices can make it hard to break into precious metals as an investment.

But there’s a cheaper way.

It’s called junk silver. Junk silver is the term used when you’re talking about coins with real silver that have no–or very little–collectible value. Their value is based on the silver they contain.

Silver coins used to be the standard. Until 1964, the U.S. made it’s dimes, quarters, half-dollars, and dollar coins out of 90% silver. Our money had real value, then. Now, they are mostly copper, with a bit of nickel to make it the right color.

Since real-money coins have been out of circulation for 50 years, they can be hard to find in the wild, but it is easy to check a pile of change. You don’t have to look at the dates, just stack up the coins and look at the edges.

With real money, the coins are silver the whole way through, like the first picture. With modern “put your faith in the government’s promises” money, you can see the copper shining through. It’s astounding quick to scan through hundreds of coins to yank out the silver.

Is it worth it? How much is an old quarter worth?

A quarter weighs 1/4 of an ounce and the pre-1965 quarters contained 90% silver.

But wait.

That 1/4 of a standard ounce and silver is measured in troy ounces. Crap, what’s the standard-to-troy conversion?

°C x 9/5 + 32 = °F? No.

$a^2 + b^2 = c^2\!\,$ ? No.

E = mc²? No

One dollar of perfect-condition 90% silver coins contains 0.7234 troy ounces of silver. Circulated, they are assumed to contain 0.715 troy ounces of silver, due to wear. The exceptions are Morgan and Peace dollars which contain 0.7736 troy ounces of silver.

Zero point what now?

Don’t worry, you don’t have to remember the numbers. Round it off and keep it simple!

For easy math, $1 of pre-1965 silver money(dimes, quarters, halves, dollars) contains 3/4 of an ounce of silver.

How does that help?

At today’s price($27.28), that $1 of coins is worth $20.46. A silver dime is worth 1/10 of that, so $2.05. A quarter is worth $5.12. Easy.

Where do you buy junk silver? Any coin shop will have it, but I usually shop eBay and APMEX. Expect to pay a bit of a markup from any dealer.

That’s how you make precious metals investing quick, cheap, and easy.

1. Scan your change and pull out anything(except nickels) with a completely silver edge. Score!

2. If you’re shopping for silver, know the price at the time, and do the math. $1 = 3/4 of an ounce of silver.

3. Store the silver until the world as we know it ends, then profit.

Are you ~~hoarding silver~~ investing in precious metals?

The End of Litter

Finance, Life

In honor of Earth Day (a day late), I’m going to talk about ending litter.

kitty toilet training phase 3 — Kryptonite?

Not the stuff you find on the street or throw from your car window. I don’t mind that because, on a long enough timeline, everything is biodegradable. Mother Nature is tougher than I am. She can handle my McDonald’s wrappers.

No, I’m talking about the real scourge: cat litter.

We’ve got four of the things, and let me tell you, they make poop. Everyday. I keep telling my wife that they are going to continue making poop as long as we keep feeding them, but she continues to give them food.

For those of you who don’t know, most cats use a litter box, which is a fun pan full of a sand-like mixture of diatomaceous earth and bentonite clay, which trains your cat to use the neighbor kid’s sandbox if you let the little potsticker go outside.

Thanks for that.

So, everyday, our four cats crap in a couple of pans full of sand. Until the sand pans get too full of cat crap. Then, they use the couch.

Who decided this was a good system? Is it a conspiracy of Big Couch to force people to buy new furniture on a regular basis, the way Big Oil suppressed the 1000 mile-per-gallon carburetor, Big Pharma suppressed the cure-all hemlock pill, and Big Sword suppressed world peace during the Dark Ages?

There’s got to be a better way.

Right?

Enter the CitiKitty. It’s the miracle cat potty trainer featured on The Shark Tank.

Here’s how it works:

Move the litter box to the bathroom and start using flushable cat litter.
Once the cats are comfortable with that change, put the CitiKitty on the toilet, under the ring and add litter.
In a week or two, when all of the cats are comfortable with the setup, pop out the center ring of the CitiKitty. This gets the cats used to doing their business over water.
Every couple of weeks, pop out another ring until the cats are used to standing on the slippery ring and crapping directly into the water. Praise the cat when it happens, because cats give a crap about your opinion.
Throw the litter box away and brag to your friends.

Because I love testing things to make my life easier, and I hate cat crap, I gave the thing a try.

It worked great until step 3. Apparently, pooping directly into water is similar to trapping a vampire with running water and causes the cats to panic and find somewhere else to poop, never to return to the bathroom.

There’s really nothing better than stumbling into the living room half asleep, turning on the news and flopping onto the couch, only to find a little lump, still warm, under your butt.

Don’t get me wrong, step 2 was a pain in the neck, too. In order to use the toilet, you have to take the stinking sandbox off of the toilet without spilling litter all over the bathroom, find a place to set it that isn’t disgusting, do your business, put the litter pan back on the toilet, and wash your hands really hard. If you’re a friend of my son’s sleeping over, it’s easier just to not notice the litter box sitting there and top it off in the middle of the night.

It’s a heck of an idea. The best execution I’ve seen for getting a cat to crap in the toilet.

But it doesn’t frickin’ work. If you’ve got a cat using the toilet, I’m guessing you had to sacrifice the neighbor kid to some kind of evil Lovecraftian entity to make it happen, because the CitiKitty didn’t do it.

7 Benefits of Investing Internationally

Business

Foreign Currency When it comes to financial investments, it’s always better to go with an informed decision than one that relies merely on chance – besides, gambling only works when luck’s on your side. Fortunately, international investments are a financially secure and reliable form of investing as long as you know your limitations. So, in keeping with the idea of sound financial decisions, here are seven benefits of investing internationally:

Diversification of Your Funds

A diversified financial portfolio gives investors options in terms of economic fluctuations and, by investing internationally, your finances will have alternative sources of stability. In other words, if your money is spread out among various countries, then an economic crash in one country won’t affect other investments.

It goes without saying that with diversification also comes a learned understanding of various global economies and markets, but with the help of a financial adviser or with a little research, you’ll have the ability to make informed global investments, which is always better than the “eggs in one basket” approach.

Investing Abroad Means More Options

Just like there’s diversification with investing internationally, there are also many options when it comes to the way you want to invest your finances. And, with international investing growing in popularity, the investment options available in today’s market are quickly becoming commonplace.

Three of the most popular forms of international investments are mutual funds, exchange traded funds (ETFs), and American depository receipts (ADRs). And, although mutual funds are a common form of investment, ETFs and ADRs trade much like stocks and therefore take a little more financial knowledge to navigate.

International Protection and Confidentiality

If you’re the type of investor that’s worried about financial scares associated with foreclosures and lawsuits, investing internationally has an added advantage of asset protection. With investing abroad, many foreign financial institutions are able to protect your investments from seizure and other threats.

Likewise, investing internationally also comes with confidentiality concerning your finances. International financial institutions are not legally required to divulge your monetary details to anyone. Confidentiality isn’t to say that international investments are exempt from legalities, but they’re entitled to more freedoms.

Investment Growth on an International Level

In terms of household incomes, import/export strengths, younger working populations, and the lean toward free-market economic policies, investing internationally has the potential for more growth than investing in the United States alone, which translates to an increase in return potential in overseas investments.

In fact, according to the International Monetary Fund, the United States is expected to fall below the rest of the world for the next two years when it comes to economic growth. Because of this, companies like Fisher Investments Institutional Group are strategizing toward international investments in strong economic climates across the world.

Currency Diversification Strengthens Portfolios

Much like international investing gives your portfolio safety in numbers as opposed to having all assets invested in one country’s economy, so do currency differences from country to country. In relation to the US dollar, many countries across the world have stronger currencies, which helps boost returns over time.

The flip side of this coin is the idea that fluctuations in currency strengths can just as easily work against your portfolio as they can strengthen it. It’s wise to keep an eye on international currency rates and how they compare to the US dollar, but never invest solely based on rates as a country’s currency can drop in strength overnight.

A Reduction in Taxes

Otherwise known as tax havens, many countries across the world offer attractive tax incentives to foreign investors. These incentives are meant to strengthen other country’s investing environments as well as attract outside wealth.

These tax incentives are particularly attractive to US investors due to the increasingly high taxes in the country. As a result, the United States government is creating more defined restrictions and laws when it comes to international investment tax incentive regulations.

Investment Potential in the United States is Dwindling

Because the United States has both the world’s largest economy and stock market, financial opportunities are almost maxed out due to over-investing. On the other hand, emerging markets in other countries are growing in size and strength, which is quickly resulting in stronger economies and more investment opportunities.

By ignoring the potential of other world markets, you’re also ignoring global economies and stock markets that offer unforeseen investment potential when compared to the United States, which is something every investor should keep in mind.

So, from portfolio diversification to investment growth, investing internationally is a great way to expand your financial horizons.

This is a guest post.

My First Storage Auction

Business

I’ve mentioned before that my wife is unemployed. Please note, this is unemployment, not “stay at home mom”. The differences are simple:

She’s looking for a job
The kids are still in daycare

While she’s looking for work, we’ve decided that it’s a good time to explore some other options for income. Recently, we decided to look into storage auctions.

For the uninitiated, a storage auction is held when someone with a rented storage locker quits paying their bill. Eventually, auctioneers come in and sell the unit–with minimal inspection–to the highest bidder. If you’ve watched Storage Wars or any of the dozen spin-offs or rip-offs, you’ve seen a storage auction.

Yesterday, a local auctioneer ran a circuit of 7 auctions for the different locations of one company. At 10AM, my wife set off for the first one with $1000 of seed money, a flashlight, and a couple of padlocks.

She didn’t get anything at that auction and she skipped the next two because they weren’t in very good neighborhoods. Poor neighborhoods come with safety issues and low-value stuff.

The 4th auction was just 2 miles from our house, so she picked me up. We got there about noon and were told they weren’t expecting the auctioneer until 1. They couldn’t tell us exactly because the auctions take as long as they take. If a lot of people show up, the inspection can take a long time, since everybody has to stand in line to get a minute or two to peer in at the unit up for sale. The auction actually started about 1:30.

There were 3 units up for sale. The listing said 4, but one of the renters ran in at the last minute to pay her bill.

None of the units were anything special. One had two dozen boxes of Grainger catalogs and $50 worth of tools. Another was full of broken box springs, but may have had a dresser in the back. The last had a tub full of (frozen) paint bottles and a box full of kids’ books.

After that, I went back home to work, while she left for her third and final auction of the day. Again, she didn’t get a locker, but she did convince someone to sell her a fancy mirror out of one of the lockers. She paid $60, and after a bit of touch-up, it should sell for $2-300.

We didn’t buy anything, but it was interesting to see the process. Dealing with an auctioneer rattling off numbers isn’t nearly as intimidating as it seems.

The whole setup is pretty simple.

My wife registered at the first auction, so we didn’t have to worry about that at the later auctions. That consisted of reading the rules, writing down her name, and signing the paper.

At each unit that was up for grabs, the door was opened and all of the potential buyers lined up to take a minute to see what they could. We weren’t allowed in the unit, and we couldn’t open any boxes.

Once everyone had a chance to peak, the auction started.

When each unit was sold, the winning bidder stuck a lock on it, and everybody moved to the next unit to repeat the process. The three units were done in 15-20 minutes.

If you’re going to a storage auction, you need to bring cash, a flashlight, and a padlock. Without those three things, you can’t inspect a unit or pay for it if you win.

Finding auctions isn’t intuitive, in any way. The best sites I’ve found are AuctionZip.com and StorageTreasures.com.

My wife also got contact information for the largest storage facility chain in the area and we got on that list so we’ll get the full schedule of their storage auctions each month. Next week, they have auctions in some of the richest suburbs in the area.

My wife is planning on running that circuit at least one day next week.

It’s not “easy” money, but it should be a good way to bring in a little more money. If we can make enough to keep her from having to get a traditional job, that’s gravy.

Have you ever tried out a storage auction? How did it go?

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