is too costly. You can leave the table, or go to the restroom. You can lower the bet, but not all the way to one unit. Or, you can try to make an excuse for dropping all the way. Some players always start with a two-unit bet. There is some penalty to this, discussed later, but not terrible. This is more common in pitch games. If you decide to pull back the bet, you can do this in several ways. You can always pull back all chips during a shuffle — as if you do not want your chips sitting on the table while the dealer is shuffling. Then put back the minimum bet at the end of the shuffle. You can play with the chips during the shuffle, like a fidgety gambler. You can replace the bet with leftover chips saved from a previous Blackjack or previous surrenders. This might make a 1.5  or 0.5 unit bet. From a large bet, you can bet two hands of one unit each, or one unit and two units, and pull back the rest. In all cases, you are trying to look like a gambler. Realize that any compromise has a penalty, and if you play short sessions, you can usually get away without such compromises.

Spread

The ratio between your largest and smallest bet is a large tip-off. Basically, you want to play with the largest spread that you can get away with. However, if you spread 1-20 at a single-deck game, you will find yourself on the street so fast you won’t know how you got there.

There are some ways to increase your spread occasionally without looking as if you are. An example: Earlier I had mentioned that I put chips in my pocket. However, I do not hide the fact that I am doing it. Therefore, the casino knows I have pocketed chips. I can keep only a small number of chips (of varying denominations) on the table. I can then make unusually high or low bets, or substantial jumps in bets, simply because those are the only chips I have on the table at the time, and I am too lazy to go into my pocket. Of course, if I do not have the right chips for the bet, I will go into my pocket.

Another example that applies to the last four subjects of betting, robotic betting, betting after the shuffle and spread. In a phone conversation with Ralph Stricker many years back, we discovered that there was a betting style we had both used. You keep many chips of different denominations in different-sized

 © 2009 Norman Wattenberger