Basic Strategy gets you playing the game right, every hand.
Every body wants to count cards, no one wants to learn Basic Strategy.
If you want to count cards for a party trick to impress your friends – like solving a Rubik’s Cube or juggling kittens – then skip this step. But if you’re serious about wanting to pilfer from the casino vault, do not pass go until you’ve mastered Basic Strategy.
Basic Strategy is a list of every optimal playing decision for every possible hand in blackjack. A player who has memorized Basic Strategy backward and forwards is already better equipped than 99.99% of gamblers in a casino.
It reduces the house’s advantage by giving you the best possible response to every hand you might face. And for professional card counters like you and me, it is the foundation of becoming a profitable blackjack player.
I don’t care if you’re the world’s fastest card counter; if you can’t recite Basic Strategy at gunpoint while sleep deprived and doing cartwheels, you aren’t going to beat the dealer.
The good news is that it isn’t much tougher than it was learning multiplication tables in grade school. You memorize it by rote learning. Make it your life until you can repeat it backwards and sideways.
To help, you can download the chart for free here.
I’ll even shoot you an email in a day or two with some tips to memorizing Basic Strategy even faster.