Gambling - Blackjack basic strategy

I realized that all of my posts so far have been about investing or football, and I haven't done one on gambling. Although I would like to focus more on poker in some later posts, I will share something I found online regarding blackjack. This is a basic strategy chart. The top row shows the dealer's upcard. The leftmost column shows what you were dealt.

Some casinos will let you print this out and bring it to the table with you. I've even seen this card in the gift shop. But I've also been to casinos (me at a casino? Shocking.) where the dealer does nothing but roll his/her eyes when someone is staring at this during a hand. Your best choice is to memorize this chart. It really isn't that complicated and will seem like common sense to anyone who has ever played before. If you use this strategy on every hand, the casino has an approximate edge of less than 1%.

I know this is hard, but if you get a little bit ahead, make an attempt to walk away from the table with more money than you started with. I can't count how many times I was doing well and decided to keep playing only to lose back what I won. At that point, I usually leave the table breaking even, but furious at myself.