If you're a gambler, and you're looking to expand your gambling horizons beyond slot machines and roulette, then I suggest learning how to play blackjack. The venerable game of blackjack is worth learning how to play for a wide variety of reasons, but one of the main reasons is that it offers some of the best odds in the house. It's also a lot of fun.

It's easy to play blackjack. The game is played with standard cards, which are ranked from ace through king. Aces are "semi-wild." That means they count as either 1 or 11. Face cards, the jacks, queens, and kings, are each worth 10 points. And all the other cards are worth whatever number is printed on them.

You get two cards to start with, and so does the dealer. You ONLY play against the dealer, not against the other players. If you're dealt a 21 on your first two cards, then you're in luck, because that's a natural, and it pays out at 3 to 2. If you get a total of less than 21, you have a decision to make--do you want to take another card, or do you want to stand?

Keep in mind that your goal in blackjack IS NOT to come as lose as you can to 21 without going over. It's true that if you go over 21, you'll bust and automatically lose. But your actual goal when you play blackjack is to beat the dealer's hand. Since the dealer has certain restrictions when it comes to playing her hand, you can sometimes get lucky and the dealer will bust.

The dealer has to play her hand with one card face up. Based on knowing what card the dealer has showing, you can make an educated, intelligent decision about whether or not you hit your hand. A blackjack basic strategy chart will show you the correct play for any given hand. Blackjack basic strategy isn't that hard either, so you should be able to memorize how to play correctly without too much trouble.

If you learn how to play blackjack with perfect basic strategy, you can reduce the house edge to 0.5% or even a little bit less. If you take advantage of the comp system, you can actually come out a little bit ahead playing blackjack.

And once you've mastered that, you can learn how to count cards. If you can keep up with the ratio of aces and tens in the deck as compared to the low cards in the deck, you can raise your bets when you're more likely to get a natural. If you get good enough at it, you can have an edge of around 1% over the house. But don't get caught. The casinos love it when you play blackjack, but they hate it when you count cards while you play blackjack. They WILL throw you out and bar you from playing if they think you're counting cards.