Playing Blackjack Drunk
added 04.01.2012, 5:37PM
You may already be rolling your eyes at the title of this article and saying, "Oh no...not another article on how you should avoid gambling and drinking." And we're not going to lie to you - this is sort of another one of those pieces. However, it's worth stressing even more that drinking and blackjack are not a good fit because of the high degree of strategy involved with casino blackjack.
On every blackjack hand, you'll be faced with several possible choices, and only one choice is the right one in each given situation. This being the case, drinking heavily impairs your ability to make good blackjack decisions, which will in turn cause you to lose more money over the long-term. And this is truer in blackjack than virtually any other casino game.
Now some people may argue the last statement, but think about if you're playing roulette: here, every bet has the same house edge, so the only things you really have to be concerned about are your bankroll and the odds behind each bet. Assuming you were drunk and playing roulette, the biggest potential problem would be going over your bankroll. However, with blackjack, not every decision offered is the correct one in terms of house edge, so you not only have a bankroll to worry about, but also whether or not the choices you're making are smart in terms of house edge.
Taking all of this into account, it's even more important to avoid getting drunk while you're playing blackjack because of all the potential pitfalls. The more drunken blackjack mistakes you make, the more likely you are to lose money to casinos over the long-term. Going further, you could be spotting the house a 2% or higher edge when you make lots of careless mistakes.
Unfortunately, if you play casino blackjack, avoiding drinking isn't always the easiest thing to do because casinos love to bring drinks around to players. Even if you play online blackjack, it's still tempting to grab a drink while doing so. But you have to remember how much of an edge you could lose to casinos by playing blackjack drunk because, sooner or later, you're going to make a bad move. And bad moves add up to lost profits on the blackjack tables!
