One of the biggest challenges in blackjack is to ramp your action to a level where you can make meaningful money. In this article I am going to give you a demonstration of exactly how to do just that. Let us say that you are playing in a casino with a $2 minimum and a $200 maximum. Usually the dollar and five dollar chips will be of different colour. It is important that you play in the same colour chips.

Therefore I advise starting not at $2 but at $5. What this means is that you are now only having to get a bet spread of 40-1 and not 100-1 like before to reach the maximum. Ideally of course you would prefer to bet the minimum when the casino has the edge but when you start betting $5 at the start of the shoe then you are doing so when the count is zero.

So as long as the count stays around zero then you are only conceding around 0.5% to the house. The player needs the true count to rise to +1 to wipe out the casino edge. As soon as this happens then you start to double your bets after a winning bet by simply letting it ride. This is what normal gamblers do but you have got $10 onto the box without anyone noticing.

If that wins then you simply double up to $20 as long as the count is neutral. The downside of doing what I am about to suggest is that you need a bigger bankroll and the variance will be greater but whoever said professional blackjack was easy. If the bet loses then this is where you need to be somewhat of an actor because now you need to make it appear that you are chasing losses or using a doubling system.

If the count is rising slowly then you need to ramp your bets without it leading to undue suspicion and the way to do this is by slowly ramping your action when the count is mainly neutral or rising slowly. Once you get to $40 then two more double ups and you are not too far short of the maximum.

In casinos with more than one table then you can switch when the count starts out very negative. You do not want to play too many hands at $5 per hand if you can possibly help it. It is possible to jump into another game on another table mid-shoe and treat the count as zero and proceed from there. This is not an optimal situation but it is a better option than staying and playing in negative shoes.

This tactic of course risks losing your seat at the table at a busy game but this isn’t the problem that you may think it is. If you come back to find the table full then you can simply play behind someone else and use their box. You will have to be careful about exceeding the maximum but in my experience, many players will ask you what you would like to do on the box anyway.