Beginners Black Jack

Estimating your edge is one of the critical components of skilled blackjack play. Back when I played blackjack for a living, this came naturally based on long hours of practice and having perfected this in an actual casino environment where I once worked. The first item to consider is how many decks are in your game.

In England where I played then this tended to deviate between four and six decks depending on the individual casino. But the number of decks does have an impact on what kind of edge the casino has against you. Before I go any further, talking about “edge” in this way is nothing to do with card counting at this stage. I am merely explaining how much of an edge certain casinos will have over you if you play nothing but basic strategy based on how many decks they use.

In England with their four or six deck games then the house edge varies between around 0.47% for the house with four deck and 0.52% with six deck. There are slight differences with these figures based on individual rules variations but the benchmark figure of around 0.50% house edge holds true.

As the decks diminish then so does the house edge until a single deck game with good rules is playing close to even money. These figures are merely starting points as individual house rules do have an impact on these percentages. For example, if you are allowed to double down after splitting like you can in England then this adds roughly 0.14% to the players expectation or reduces the casino edge by 0.14% whichever way you want to look at it.

This is a good rule for the player but only being allowed to double nine through eleven is a bad rule that offsets most of the gain from the previous one. Only being allowed to double nine through eleven adds roughly 0.08% to the dealers edge against you. Another negative rule for the player is when you lose all doubles and splits against a dealer natural which costs the player a further 0.11%.

All these percentages of course apply to the very first hand after the shuffle only and the subsequent card distribution will further impact these percentages. This is when card counting becomes effective because once you have correctly ascertained what the house edge is just by using basic strategy then the next step is to track the cards so you can ascertain if you have a mid-shoe edge and if so…..how much of an edge.

What you will tend to find with most casino rules is that the positive rules variations tend to offset the negative ones so that the original benchmark figure of roughly a 0.50% casino edge at four and six deck still applies.

Using the correct basic strategy is also another issue and once again the casino rules impact on what is correct basic. Usually though most of the generic basics that are in common use and can be researched on many websites would suffice most of the time as most of the strategy decisions tend to be straight forward.

Being able to surrender is also another good positive rule variation if you can find it. Basically surrendering means to give up half of your bet in return for not playing the hand out! Being able to give up your hand can add about 0.10% to your expectation as a player. So before you play blackjack, try to ascertain what the house rules are and how they impact on your likely edge and then adjust accordingly. Blackjack can be one of the most fascinating games in the world when you begin to lift the lid on its wonderfully subtle intricacies.

By Carl “The Dean” Sampson