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Understanding the Casino’s Edge in Blackjack
By Ray Zimmerman
Casino’s don’t spend millions of dollars to provide their customers with entertainment. They are in the business of making money... your money! Everything else is secondary to those who operate casinos. Before they open their doors, they know exactly what percentage of profit they will make for every dollar that is wagered on their tables. If you’re going to gamble with your hard-earned dollars, then you should know what you are up against. Since I have spent eight years dealing blackjack, I know exactly how the casinos calculate their profitability on blackjack, as well as the other games that they have available. For example, if the blackjack tables in a particular casino would stand on a soft 17 (one of the cards being an Ace) and wanted to increase their profitability on those blackjack tables, they could simply change their rules and start to hit on a soft 17. The difference between those two actions amounts to 0.22385 percent. That doesn’t sound like very much, but lets take a look at the bigger picture. If One Billion dollars was wagered on the blackjack tables in the same casino during a one year period, that would amount to an additional $22,385 that the casino would be able to bank. If the total amount wagered was Ten Billion dollars, they would earn a total of $223,850. Now lets take this a step further. If you were playing in a casino that allowed you to surrender your hand (late) and they changed their rules where you could no longer surrender, they would gain .01731 percent. If that same casino allowed you to re-split up to four hands and then changed their rules and would only allow you to re-split up to two hands, they would gain another .04817 percent. I know those amounts seem minuscule, but those three changes add up to 0.28933 percent. The last two insignificant changes just increased the casino’s profits $65,480 a year for a grand total of $289,330. This is not chump change! Up to this point, we have only discussed minor changes to the game of blackjack. Do you ever play single deck blackjack? If you do, you know that the casino generally pays 6 to 5 odds for a blackjack (pays $30 on a $25 bet) instead of 3 to 2 odds (pays $37.50 on a $25 bet). That’s a difference of $7.50 on a $25 bet. The casino is making an additional 1.27706 percent profit by offering 6 to 5 odds. If the casino offered 3 to 2 odds for a blackjack, they would lose $1,277,059 based on the previous calculations. Under no circumstances should you ever play blackjack when the house is paying 6 to 5 odds. It’s simply a bad investment at the blackjack tables. This would be a good time to discuss the possible hands that a dealer might have during your session at the table. A dealer will have a blackjack 4.8 percent of the time and he will have a total of 21, with three or more cards, 7.3% of the time. If you combined those percentages, you will see that the dealer will have made 21, with two or more cards, 12.1 percent of the time. The dealer will have a total of 17 to 20, with two or more cards, 59.2 percent of the time. That being said, the dealer will have 17 or more 71.3 percent of the time and he will bust 28.7 percent of the time. You might give this some thought the next time that you plan to go to the casino to play blackjack. It should be clear to you at this point, that the casinos definitely have an edge on the blackjack tables. If they did not have that advantage, they would not be able to remain open for very long. The percentages that were stated above were based on a player playing a mathematically sound game of blackjack using basic blackjack strategy. There are very few blackjack players that are able to do exactly that. Depending on the number of decks in play and assuming a casino is spreading a blackjack game with average rules, the house will have an approximate advantage of 0.2 - 0.35 percent.
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Contributor's Note
If you would like to play blackjack at a casino that will provide you with the greatest advantage, stop by my website and check out my Blackjack Calculator. You'll be able to quickly determine where you should play blackjack based on the blackjack rules in effect. You'll also find a chart for the newest Blackjack Strategy and some other great information that will definitely improve your chances of winning when playing blackjack.
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This intel was contributed by crawfish
crawfish
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May, 2012
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