How Learning from High Stakes Blackjack Players can Help Your MMORPG Skills

How Learning from High Stakes Blackjack Players can Help Your MMORPG Skills

To win at blackjack at any stakes, you need to put in an almost flawless performance. When it comes to high stakes, it’s even more crucial that you know exactly what you ‘re doing and that you have a plan in place. The very first thing you would need to learn would be the numbers and the maths that go into it. Then it’s about working the rules to your favour. Now while that might get you closer to a winning position, the house would still have the advantage. So how could you put the odds in your favour? There’s only one way to do that and that’s to put pressure on the dealer to make mistakes. While beating the house has been referred to as being mathematically impossible, by looking out for the dealer’s even slightest errors, you give yourself a chance. Let’s take a look at one man, in particular, who did just that and how you can take his lessons and apply them to MMORPG.

The Atlantic City miracle

You can see a number of high stakes blackjack sites on this site to see just what kind of money we’re talking about. When it comes to high-stakes blackjack players, however, one man stands out above all others. Don Johnson (not from Miami Vice fame) took on Atlantic City playing up to three $25,000 hands a round and won $15,000,000 in a single streak. Now, he negotiated a $20% discount on his losses at the casino he played at, as they had success by offering the same deal to players in the past. While you may not be able to do that in MMORPG, you can certainly take note from some of Johnson’s other strategies. 

When it came to playing the game, for instance, he had certain rules: standing on soft 17, doubling down on every opportunity, and splitting hands up to four hands. However, the house still had a tiny percentage. Johnson knew that the only way to win was to beat the dealer. So he decided to try and distract them with the company he kept. Rather than sit at a table where there was a glamorous dealer to distract him, he sat where there was a male dealer in play and had his “friends” distract the dealer. He would even have porn stars sit with him or have women pose as his girlfriends.

Beating the dealer

Stanford Wong wrote in his book Basic Blackjack that when a dealer makes an error that benefits the casino, blackjack players should open their mouths and ensure that it gets corrected. When a dealer makes an error that benefits the player, however, they should turn a blind eye and keep on playing, advised Wong. Johnson obviously thought along the same lines as Wong as whenever he observed a dealer making a mistake in the house’s favour, he would point it out and get a free bet, as is in the rules.

Applying the above to MMORPG

So how does this relate to your MMORPG performance? Well, the way to win at blackjack as described above is the same way to win at MMORPG, whether it be one of the countless Star Wars MMORPG games available or any other game that you’ve been trying to raise your performance in. For example, you need to learn all the patterns, as you do the maths in blackjack. Also, as you need to know what to do in the face of key decisions in blackjack, such as whether you should double down or split, or simply hit or stand, you need to understand which decision you should make in an MMORPG, like which power, speed or character to use when up against a particular opponent or scenario. Then, as in blackjack, you would need to try and force your opponent into making errors by raising the stakes and keeping the pressure on. You can try and distract them, for example, by what you say to them in the chat box. The main takeaway from Don Johnson is that you need a plan and you need to be consistent with that plan. It’s the only way to win at high-stakes blackjack. And it’s certainly the only way to win at MMORPG.