Andy Bloch

speaker

350 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 26 Apr

Andy Bloch’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 1.

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This American Life · 466: Blackjack · 26 Apr 2026 podcast

So I can tell you what we learned in like two minutes.

Here's how card counting works.

Please remember this public radio station if it makes you rich.

The basic idea is for lots of reasons that we don't need to get into here, tens and aces are to your advantage as a blackjack player.

So as the cards are dealt, what you want to know is, are there lots of tens and aces left in the deck for you to get?

And by tens, I should say, I just don't mean like the ten of hearts and the ten of spades and all that, but I mean like the face cards that add ten to your hand when you play blackjack.

Okay, so, stay with me.

You want tens and aces, and you count.

And this is important.

You're not going to keep track of the position of every single card.

You're not memorizing the deck.

That would be insane.

They invented something that is way, way easier than that.

You just keep a running tally, very rough one, of tens and aces.

You start your tally at zero.

When a ten or an ace is dealt, you subtract one from the tally.

When a low card comes out, you add one.

That's it.

That's the whole thing.

The running tally, that one number, that's all you need to know.

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