Ten and a half is a card game with rules very similar to blackjack. The game is popular in China and is usually used for gambling.

Rules

The rules are very similar to blackjack, with the following exceptions:

• A, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 are worth their face points. J, Q and K are worth half point.
• Players and dealer are dealed one card at the beginning.
• A player is busted when he exceeds 10 and a half point.
• Any player (but not the dealer) who gets five cards without busting immediately wins his bet.
• Any player who gets 10 and a half point in the first two cards immediately wins his bet.
• There is no splitting, doubling or insurance.
• Dealer usually does not have pre-set rule on when he should stop drawing more cards.
• There is no pushing. If the dealer and a player have the same point, dealer wins.
• Winners are usually paid 1:1.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Spanish 21 is an increasingly popular variant of blackjack owned by Masque Publishing, Inc. “Unlicensed” (but equivalent) versions may be called Spanish blackjack.Spanish 21 uses the following rules:

• The game is played with six or eight decks dealt from a shoe. Each deck is a standard poker deck with the tens (but not face cards) removed, hence the name: a traditional Spanish deck consists of four sets of 1 through 9, a Jack, a Knight and a King; there are no tens. All cards have the same values as in blackjack.
• Blackjack pays 3:2.
• Hitting, standing, and splitting all follow the same rules as in blackjack, except drawing to split aces is allowed. Resplitting is also allowed.
• The player may surrender on the first two cards or after doubling down.
• The dealer always checks for blackjack with a face card showing before play continues, as in American blackjack games.
• The player may double down on any total, even after taking hit cards.
• In some casinos, the player may redouble after doubling down.
• A total of 21 always wins for the player. It never pushes against the dealer’s 21.
• A five-card 21 pays 3:2, a six-card 21 pays 2:1, and a 21 with seven or more cards pays 3:1. However, these bonus payouts do not apply if the 21 was the result of doubling.
• 6-7-8 of mixed suits pays 3:2, of the same suit pays 2:1, and of spades pays 3:1.
• Suited 7-7-7 against a dealer 7 pays a large bonus (for example, $1000 for bets $5-24 and $5000 for bets $25 and over). All other players at the table receive a $50 “envy bonus”. This rule does not apply after splitting.
• In most casinos, dealer hits soft 17.

The removal of the tens in each deck favors the dealer, however, the other additional rules all favor the player (except for dealer hitting soft 17), and usually result in a low house edge, often lower than traditional blackjack.

There are no popular card counting methods in Spanish 21, though it would likely generate less scrutiny. Of course, any counting system applied must account for the fewer ten-point cards in the shoe.

Links

• Spanish 21 – the official website
• Wizard of Odds strategies for Spanish 21

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Seven Twenty-Seven is a vying game similar in some respects to poker, and often played as a “dealer’s choice” variant at home poker games. It uses the same equipment and betting system, but the value of hands does not use traditional poker hand rankings, either high or low. Rather, only the sum of the cards is used to calculate the worth of a hand. The game is somewhat of a cross between blackjack hands and poker bluffing.The game play proceeds like this:

• Each player is dealt a downcard and an upcard.
• A betting round begins with the player on the dealer’s left, and proceeds exactly as in poker: all players must either equal the largest bet or drop out.
• After the betting, each player may draw a card, face up, in turn from the dealer’s left. If all players pass on their opportunity to draw, there is one more round of betting, followed by a poker-style showdown. Otherwise the game continues with another betting round (often beginning to the left of the player who began the previous round) and another draw, so there can be as few as two betting rounds in the game, but more often three or four.

Numbered cards are scored at face value; face cards count for one-half a point. Aces count for one and eleven, so a hand with a five and two aces scores 7 and 27 at the same time.

On showdown, the pot is split in half, with the hand(s) valued closest to 7 and the hand(s) valued closest to 27 each winning one half of the pot. If there is a tie where two players are off by the same amount, but in different directions (6 to 8), the lower hand wins. If there is an exact tie, that half-pot is split again among the tied players. Ties are common. The same player may contest for both high and low, usually because of aces. A player with a five and two aces can win the whole pot.

There are a few variations in rules that complicate things somewhat: first, the rule about ties in different directions varies; also, some players play with a declaration, while others play cards speak.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

MindPlay is a technology designed to monitor blackjack players’ actions while playing in a casino.Monitoring a person’s play traditionally is done visually, by the dealer, floorperson, pitboss, and the eye in the sky (video surveillance). If one of these observers notices something unusual in a person’s play, they will do what they can to either

1. determine if the person is a cheat or a card-counter, or
2. change the game to turn the odds back in favor of the casino, through more frequent card-shuffling or other methods, or
3. casino personnel may bar a player they think is a card counter, even though the practice is legal.

(Cheating by various means is illegal, though, and may result in arrest.)

MindPlay utilizes a specially-designed blackjack tabletop that incorporates many features to monitor players’ actions:

• Specially encoded playing cards, using invisible ink and barcodes.
• 14 tiny cameras built into the dealer’s chip tray (which is now slightly elevated to account for the cameras). These cameras can read every card in play by reading the invisible ink printed on them.
• Special chips, so that sensors embedded in the table can automatically calculate each player’s bet more accurately than a dealer or pitboss could visually.

As MindPlay monitors every card that has been played along with players’ betting habits, it is also counting cards just as a card counter would do while sitting at the table. If MindPlay notices that bets are changing dramatically at the same time that a card counter would typically make those bets, MindPlay will notify casino officials that they may want to investigate further.

MindPlay tables cost around 20,000 USD.

Because MindPlay tends to thwart their efforts to beat a blackjack game, card counters generally avoid casinos which use the system and its competitiors, and often circulate news of such installations on various Internet sites. Some card counters have tried to make the general public aware of the use of these systems, in an effort to convince others not to patronize the games. Indeed, MindPlay has been somewhat slow to spread among American casinos, partly because of the cost (which may be more than what might be lost to a card-counter) and partly because of negative reaction by players.

MindPlay was first released in 2003. Since then, several newer-generation systems have been developed for chip tracking and card tracking.

For instance, RFID for chip tracking is gaining ground with casinos. The advantage of RFID seems to be that it can be used for games other than blackjack and also for more comprehensive tracking of chips throughout the casino. In other games, such technology would normally be used to track a player’s action for rating purposes, to more accurately determine the comps a player may be given.

Two other companies offer automated card recognition capability. Tangam Gaming’s solution tracks cards as well as player decisions using hidden overhead cameras, while ShuffleMaster only tracks cards, using a special electronic shoe.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

The Kelly Criterion or as it is sometimes referred to as the Kelly formula is a formula used to maximize the long-term growth rate of repeated plays of a given gamble that has positive expected value. The formula specifies the percentage of the current bankroll to be bet at each iteration of the game. In addition to maximizing the growth rate in the long run, the formula has the added benefit of having zero risk of ruin, as the formula will never allow a loss of 100% of the bankroll on any bet. An assumption of the formula is that currency and bets are infinitely divisible, though this is met for practical purposes if the bankroll is large enough.The most general statement of the Kelly criterion is that long-term growth rate is maximized by finding the fraction f* of the bankroll that maximizes the expectation of the logarithm of the results. For simple bets with two outcomes, one involving losing the entire amount bet, and the other involving winning the bet amount multiplied by the payoff odds, the following formula can be derived from the general statement:

   f* = (bp - q) / b
   where
   f* = percentage of current bankroll to wager;
   b = odds received on the wager;
   p = probability of winning;
   q = probability of losing = 1 - p.

As an example, if a gamble has a 40% chance of winning (p = 0.40), but the gambler receives 2:1 odds on a winning bet, the gambler should bet 10% of her bankroll at each opportunity, in order to maximize the long-run growth rate of the bankroll.

For even-money bets (i.e. when b = 1), the formula can be simplified to:

   f* = 2p - 1

The Kelly Criterion was originally developed by AT&T Bell Laboratories physicist John Larry Kelly, Jr, based on the work of his colleague Claude Shannon, which applied to noise issues arising over long distance telephone lines. Kelly showed how Shannon’s information theory could be applied to the problem of a gambler who has inside information about a horse race, trying to determine the optimum bet size. The gambler’s inside information need not be perfect (noise-free) in order for him to exploit his edge. Kelly’s formula was later applied by another colleague of Shannon’s, Edward O. Thorp, both in blackjack and in the stock market.

Cited References

1. American Scientist online: Bettor Math, article and book review by Elwyn Berlekamp

Link

• Original Kelly paper

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Video: Understanding Kelly Criterion

Double Exposure Blackjack is a variant of blackjack in which both the dealer’s cards are revealed to players at the start of the hand. Knowing the dealer’s hand provides significant information, and without rules modifications would be advantageous to the player.The main rules changes to provide the casino with the advantage are even money payouts on blackjack (compared to 3:2 at normal tables) and ties losing (compared to pushing in standard blackjack).

Other rules changes also exist to the detriment of players. Certain tables restrict doubling down and splitting, and do not allow doubles after splits.

The game was invented by Bob Stupak, former owner of Vegas World and Stratosphere casinos.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Video: 21 PRO – iPhone BlackJack

Double Attack Blackjack has very liberal blackjack rules and the option of increasing one’s wager after seeing the dealer’s up card. This game is dealt from a Spanish shoe, and blackjacks pay only even money.

Chinese Blackjack is also known as

Counting cards in blackjack has become substantially more difficult as a result of casino countermeasures. The most common is the use of more decks, which decreases the player’s advantage, but even in the few remaining single- and double-deck games, dealers will often shuffle prematurely or unusually frequently to defeat a suspected card-counter. However, for the casinos there is a downside to frequent shuffling: It reduces the amount of time that the noncounting players are playing and consequently losing money to the house. It has become common for casinos to use automatic shuffling machines to compensate for this. Some models of shuffling machines shuffle one set of cards while another is in play. Others, known as Continuous Shuffle Machines (CSMs) allow the dealer to simply return used cards to a single shoe to allow playing with no interruption. Because CSMs essentially force minimal penetration, they remove almost all possible advantage of traditional counting techniques. As a result, some blackjack players call for a boycott of tables using CSMs. In the case of online casinos, the deck is shuffled at the start of each new round, ensuring the house always has the advantage. However, some online casinos periodically animate the dealer shuffling the cards to give the illusion that the cards are shuffled infrequently.

Unfavorable rules can cut into a player’s advantage, such as no double down after splitting, and having the dealer hit a soft 17 (ace, six which can play as 7 or 17.) Starting around 2004 a number of casinos began offering a 6:5 payoff on player blackjacks instead of the more traditional 3:2 payoff. These games are generally single-deck, inviting unwary card-counters and other players who believe they have an advantage. The inferior payoff substantially increases the house edge and makes the game unbeatable, even by a card-counter who is practicing the most sophisticated system perfectly.

A pitboss who determines that a player is a card-counter might either “back off” the player by inviting him/her to play any game other than blackjack, or will ban him/her from the casino itself. In jurisdictions where this is not legal, such as Atlantic City, a pitboss can require the player to flat-bet and disallow players from entering in the middle of a shoe. Such countermeasures effectively remove any chance of gaining an advantage from card counting in multi-deck games. The player’s name and photo (from surveillance cameras) may also be shared with other casinos and added to a database of card-counters and cheaters run for the benefit of casino operators. One such blacklist was known as the Griffin Book, and was maintained by a company called Griffin Investigations. However, the Griffin Agency was forced into bankruptcy in 2005 after losing a libel lawsuit filed by professional gamblers.

Many casual card counters make small mistakes that cost the advantage they gain by counting. Two or three mistakes per hour may give back all of the counter’s advantage. Even if one can count perfectly when practicing at home, it is much more difficult in an actual casino. The loud, distracting environments of most casinos, and even the availability of complimentary alcoholic beverages, play roles as casino counter-measures.

Casinos look out for known card counters, who may be banned from play depending on regulatory commission rules. They also look for suspicious actions such as a long series of small bets followed by large one. Monitoring player behavior to assist in this identification falls to on-floor casino personnel (“pit bosses”) and casino surveillance personnel who may use video surveillance (“the eye in the sky”) as well as computer analysis to try to spot playing behavior indicative of card counting; early counter-strategies featured the dealer learning to count the cards themselves to recognise the patterns in the players. In addition, many casinos employ the services of various agencies, such as Biometrica, who claim to have a catalog of advantage players. If a player is found to be in such a database, he will almost certainly be stopped from play and asked to leave regardless of his table play. For successful card counters, therefore, skill at “cover” behavior to hide counting and avoid “drawing heat” and possibly being barred, may be just as important as playing skill.

Casinos may alter the game’s dynamic against card counters by raising the minimum or lowering the limit on a table with a suspected counter, or by reshuffling sooner than the normal end of the shoe if they think that the player is offering a large bet on a positive count.

There have been some high-profile lawsuits involving whether the casino is allowed to bar card-counters. Essentially, card-counting, if done in your head and with no outside assistance from devices such as blackjack computers, is not illegal, as making calculations within one’s own mind is not an arrestable offence. Using an outside device or aid, however, was found illegal in a court case in Nevada involving Keith Taft, a professional gambler known for his innovations in blackjack computers and other gambling technology. In this case, two members of Keith Taft’s team were convicted of cheating for using a video device to gain knowledge of a blackjack dealer’s hole card. At the time of the Taft team trial, however, there was no anti-device law in Nevada, and the law that was written after this case is considered by many attorneys to be unconstitutionally vague. Still, the law has been adopted by most other states with casinos, and no player has yet tried the constitutionality of the law.

Casinos don’t tolerate card counters or practitioners of other legal professional gambling techniques willingly and, if permitted by their jurisdiction, may ban counters from their casinos; in Nevada, where the casinos are ruled to be private places, the only prerequisite to a ban is the full reading of the Trespass Act to ban a player for a year. Some skilled counters try to disguise their identities and playing habits; however, some casinos have claimed that facial recognition software can often match a camouflaged face with a banned one. In the experience of most professional gamblers, this is untrue, and a 2004 book by a Las Vegas casino surveillance director, The Card Counter’s Guide to Casino Surveillance, also declares this assertion to be an overstatement. Approximately 100 casinos in the United States used the Griffin Investigations consulting firm to help them track down and monitor card counters, before the firm’s bankruptcy as a result of a lawsuit for libel filed by professional gamblers.

Other modern technology that has been marketed as an aid in catching card counters includes the MindPlay system and Blackjack Survey Voice software.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

American mathematician Dr. Edward O. Thorp is considered the father of card counting. His 1962 book Beat the Dealer (ISBN 0394703103) outlined various betting and playing strategies for optimal blackjack play. Although mathematically sound, some of the techniques described no longer apply as casinos took counter-measures (such as no longer dealing to the very last card). Also, the counting system described (10-count) is harder to use and less profitable than the point-count systems that have been developed since. A history of how counting developed can be seen in David Layton’s documentary film, “The Hot Shoe.”

Even before the publication of Beat the Dealer, however, a small number of professional card counters were beating blackjack in Las Vegas and casinos elsewhere. One of these early card counters was Jess Marcum, who is described in documents and interviews with professional gamblers of the time as having developed the first full-fledged point count system. Another documented pre-Thorp card counter was a professional gambler named Joe Bernstein, who is described in the 1961 book I Want To Quit Winners, by Reno casino owner Harold Smith, as an ace counter feared throughout the casinos of Nevada. And in the 1957 book, Playing Blackjack to Win, Roger Baldwin, Wilbert Cantey, Herbert Maisel, and James McDermott (known among card counters as “The Four Horsemen”) published the first accurate blackjack basic strategy and a rudimentary card counting system, devised solely with the aid of crude mechanical calculators — what used to be called “adding machines”.

From the early days of card-counting, some players have been hugely successful, including Al Francesco, the inventor of blackjack team play and the man who taught Ken Uston how to count cards, and Tommy Hyland, manager of the longest-running blackjack team in history. Ken Uston, though perhaps the most famous card counter through his 60 Minutes television appearance and his books, tended to overstate his winnings, as documented by players who worked with him, including Al Francesco and team member Darryl Purpose.

In the 1970s and 1980s, as computing power grew, more advanced (and more difficult) card counting systems came into favor. Many card counters agree, however, that a simpler and less advantageous system that can be played flawlessly for hours earns an overall higher return than a more complex system prone to user error.

In the 1970s Ken Uston was the first to write about a tactic of card counting he called the Big Player Team. The book was based on his experiences working as a “big player” (BP) on Al Francesco’s teams. In big player blackjack teams a number of card counters, called “spotters”, are dispatched to tables around a casino, where their responsibility is to keep track of the count and signal to the big player when the count indicates a player advantage. The big player then joins the game at that table, placing maximum bets at a player advantage. When the spotter indicates that the count has dropped, he again signals the BP to leave the table. By jumping from table to table as called in by spotters, the BP avoids all play at a disadvantage. In addition, since the BP’s play appears random and irrational, he avoids detection by the casinos.

With this style of play a number of blackjack teams have cleared millions of dollars through the years. Well-known blackjack teams with documented earnings in the millions include those run by Al Francesco, Ken Uston, Tommy Hyland, various groups from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and, most recently, a team called “The Greeks”. Ken Uston wrote entertainingly about blackjack team play in Million Dollar Blackjack (ISBN 0897460685), although many of the experiences he represents as his own in his books actually happened to other players, especially Bill Erb, a BP Uston worked with on Al Francesco’s team. Ben Mezrich also covers team play in his recent book Bringing Down The House (ISBN 0743249992), which describes how MIT students used it with great success. See also the Canadian movie The Last Casino.

The publication of Ken Uston’s books both stimulated the growth of blackjack teams (Hyland’s team and the first MIT team were formed in Atlantic City shortly after the publication of Million Dollar Blackjack) and increased casino awareness of the methods of blackjack teams, making it more difficult for such teams to operate. Hyland and Francesco soon switched to a form of shuffle tracking called “ace sequencing”. This made it more difficult for casinos to detect when team members were playing with an advantage. In 1994, members of the Hyland team were arrested for ace sequencing and blackjack team play at Casino Windsor in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. It was documented in court that Nevada casinos with ownership stakes in the Windsor casino were instrumental in the decision to prosecute team members on cheating charges. However, the judge ruled that the players’ conduct was not cheating, but merely the use of intelligent strategy.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Card counting is a card game strategy used to determine when a player has a probability advantage. The term is used almost exclusively to refer to the tracking of the ratio of high cards to low cards in blackjack, although theoretically card counting can be used in some other card games.

How card counting works in blackjack

Card counting is based on the fact that high cards, and especially aces, are good for the player while low cards are good for the dealer. High cards are good for the player because they increase the chance of a player getting a “blackjack”, which usually pays 3 to 2. High cards also increase the player’s chance of success on his pair splits and double downs. Low cards are good for the dealer because they decrease the chance that the dealer will bust.

Card counters raise their bets when the ratio of high cards to low cards in the deck is skewed in their favor. They also make strategy adjustments based on the ratio of high cards to low cards. These two adjustments to their betting and playing strategy can give players a small mathematical advantage over the house.

Contrary to the popular myth, card counters do not need savant qualities in order to count cards, because they are not tracking and memorizing specific cards. Instead, card counters assign a heuristic point score to each card they see and then track only the total score. (This score is called the “count”.)

Different card counting systems assign different point values to various cards, but one of the most common systems, the Hi-Lo Count, is illustrative. In this system, the cards numbered 2 through 6 are counted as +1 and all tens (which include 10s, jacks, queens and kings) and aces are counted as -1. The cards 7, 8, and 9 are given a count of 0. The Hi-Lo system exemplifies a “level one” counting system; other counting systems also assign +2 and -2 counts to certain cards and are called “level two” systems. Many card counting experts agree that the additional accuracy derived from a “level two” system is offset by the increased difficulty of keeping count and the greater likelihood of making a mistake.

Another commonly used card counting system is the “K-O”, an unbalanced card counting system derived from Arnold Snyder’s unbalanced Red 7 count, published in 1981. The first blackjack researcher to publish an unbalanced card counting system was Jacques Noir, in his 1968 book Casino Holiday. Unbalanced card counting systems eliminate the need to estimate remaining decks to be dealt, a common source of player error in card counting.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Basic strategy

As in all casino games, the house has a statistical advantage over the players that will play itself out in the long run. But because blackjack, unlike other games, has an element of player choice, players can actually reduce the casino advantage to a small percentage by playing what is known as basic strategy. This strategy determines when to hit and when to stand, and also determines when doubling down or splitting is the correct action. Basic strategy is based on the player’s point total and the dealer’s visible card. There are slight variations in basic strategy depending on the exact house rules and the number of decks used. Under the most favorable conditions (single deck, downtown Las Vegas rules), the house advantage over a basic strategy player can be as low as 0.16%. Indeed, casinos offering special rules like surrender and double-after-split may actually be offering a positive expectation to basic strategy players; they are counting on players making mistakes to make money.

The following rules are beneficial to the player:

1. Doubles are permitted on any two-card hand except a blackjack.
2. Doubles are permitted after splitting.
3. Early surrender; the ability to forfeit half your wager against a face or ace before the dealer checks for blackjack.
4. Normal (aka “late”) surrender.
5. Resplitting Aces.
6. Drawing more than one card against a split Ace.
7. Five or more cards with the total still no more than 21 as an automatic win (a “Charlie”)

The following rules are detrimental to the player:

1. Less than 3:2 payout on blackjacks (6:5 and even 1:1 payouts have become common, especially in single-deck games, in Las Vegas since about 2003)
2. Dealer hits on soft seventeen (ace, six)
3. Splitting a maximum of once (to two hands)
4. Double down restricted to certain totals, such as 9-11 or 10,11
5. Aces may not be resplit
6. No-Peek (European) blackjack—player loses splits and doubles to a dealer blackjack
7. Player losing ties

Basic strategy tables

The above is a basic strategy table for the most common 6- to 8-deck, Las Vegas Strip rules. Specifically: dealer hits on soft 17, double after split allowed, multiple split aces, one card to split aces, blackjack pays 3:2, and (optionally) late surrender. Key:

S = Stand

H = Hit

D = Double

SP = SPlit

Rh = suRrender if allowed, otherwise Hit

Rs = suRrender if allowed, otherwise Stand

Rsp = suRrender if allowed, otherwise SPlit

In some LV Strip casinos you may still be able to find the older version of the multi-deck shoe game, where dealer stands on soft 17; those are usually high minimum ($50 or more) tables. This version is much more advantageous to the player, but requires a slightly modified basic strategy table. Basic strategy for other decks. Interactive strategy tables for each possible card-distribution in the shoe can be generated using a JavaScript based blackjack calculator.

Shuffle tracking

There are well-established techniques other than card counting that can swing the advantage of casino 21 towards the player. All such techniques are based on the value of the cards to the player and the casino, as originally conceived by Edward O. Thorp. One such technique, mainly applicable in multi-deck games (aka shoes), involves tracking groups of cards (aka slugs, clumps, packs) during the play of the shoe, following them through the shuffle and then playing and betting accordingly when those cards come into play from the new shoe. This technique, which is admittedly much more difficult than straight card counting and requires excellent eyesight and powers of visual estimation, has the additional benefit of fooling the casino people who are monitoring the player’s actions and the count, since the shuffle tracker could be, at times, betting and/or playing opposite to how a straightforward card counter would.

Arnold Snyder’s articles in Blackjack Forum magazine were the first to bring shuffle tracking to the general public. His book, The Shuffle Tracker’s Cookbook, was the first to mathematically analyze the player edge available from shuffle tracking based on the actual size of the tracked slug.

Other legal methods of gaining a player advantage at blackjack include a wide variety of techniques for gaining information about the dealer hole-card or the next card to be dealt.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Blackjack hands are scored by their point total. The hand with the highest total wins as long as it doesn’t exceed 21; a hand with a higher total than 21 is said to bust. Cards 2 through 10 are worth their face value, and face cards (jack, queen, king) are also worth 10. An ace’s value is 11 unless this would cause the player to bust, in which case it is worth 1. A hand in which an ace’s value is counted as 11 is called a soft hand, because it cannot be busted if the player draws another card.

The goal of each player is to beat the dealer by having the higher, unbusted hand. Note that if the player busts he loses, even if the dealer also busts. If both the player and the dealer have the same point value, it is called a “push”, and neither player nor dealer wins the hand. Each player has an independent game with the dealer, so it is possible for the dealer to lose to one player, but still beat the other players in the same round.

The minimum bet is printed on a sign on the table and varies from casino to casino, and even table to table. The most common minimum in the U.S. is $5 although these games can be difficult to find on the Strip in Las Vegas. After initial bets are placed, the dealer deals the cards, either from one or two hand-held decks of cards, known as a “pitch” game, or more commonly from a shoe containing four or more decks. The dealer gives two cards to each player, including himself. One of the dealer’s two cards is face-up so all the players can see it, and the other is face down. (The face-down card is known as the “hole card”. In European blackjack, the hole card is not actually dealt until the players all play their hands.) The cards are dealt face up from a shoe, or face down if it is a pitch game.

A two-card hand of 21 (an ace plus a ten-value card) is called a “blackjack” or a “natural”, and is an automatic winner. A player with a natural is usually paid 3:2 on his bet. In 2003 some casinos started paying only 6:5 on blackjacks – although this reduced payout has generally been restricted to single-deck games where card counting would otherwise be a more viable strategy, the move was decried by longtime blackjack players.

The play goes as follows:

• If the dealer has blackjack and the player doesn’t, the player automatically loses.
• If the player has blackjack and the dealer doesn’t, the player automatically wins.
• If both the player and dealer have blackjack then it’s a push.
• If neither side has blackjack, then each player plays out his hand, one at a time.
• When all the players have finished the dealer plays his hand.

The player’s options for playing his or her hand are:

• Hit: Take another card.
• Stand: Take no more cards.
• Double down: Double the wager, take exactly one more card, and then stand.
• Split: Double the wager and have each card be the first card in a new hand. This option is available only when both cards have the same value.
• Surrender: Forfeit half the bet and give up the hand. Surrender was common during the early- and mid-20th century, but is no longer offered at most casinos.

The player’s turn is over after deciding to stand, doubling down to take a single card, or busting. If the player busts, he or she loses the bet even if the dealer goes on to bust as well.

After all the players have finished making their decisions, the dealer then reveals his or her hidden hole card and plays the hand. House rules say that the dealer must hit until he or she has at least 17, regardless of what the players have. In most casinos a dealer must also hit a soft 17 (such as an ace and a 6). The felt of the table will indicate whether or not the house hits or stands on a soft 17.

If the dealer busts then all remaining players win. Bets are normally paid out at the odds of 1:1.

Some common rules variations include:

• one card split aces: one card is dealt on each ace, player’s turn is over.
• early surrender: player has the option to surrender before dealer checks for Blackjack.
• late surrender: player has the option to surrender after dealer checks for Blackjack.
• double-down restrictions: double-down allowed only on certain combinations.
• dealer hits a soft seventeen (ace-six, which can play as seven or seventeen)
• European No-Hole-Card Rule: the dealer receives only one card, dealt face-up, and does not receive a second card (and thus does not check for blackjack) until players have acted. This means players lose not only their original bet, but also any additional money invested from splitting and doubling down.

There are more than a few blackjack variations which can be found in the casinos, each has its own set of rules, strategies and odds. It is advised to take a look at the rules of the specific variation before playing.

Insurance

If the dealer’s upcard is an Ace, the player is offered the option of taking Insurance before the dealer checks his ‘hole card’.

The player who wishes to take Insurance can bet an amount up to half his original bet. The Insurance bet is placed separately on a special portion of the table, which usually carries the words “Insurance Pays 2:1″. The player who is taking Insurance is betting that the dealer’s ‘hole card’ is a 10-value card, i.e. a 10, a Jack, a Queen or a King. Because the dealer’s upcard is an Ace, this means that the player who takes Insurance is essentially betting that the dealer was dealt a natural, i.e. a two-card 21 (a blackjack), and this bet by the player pays off 2:1 if it wins.

Example: The player bets $10, the cards are dealt, the player’s hand is 19, and the dealer shows an Ace. The player takes Insurance by betting an additional amount of $5. The dealer checks her hole card and sees that it’s a 10-valued card. The player loses his $10 bet on his blackjack hand, but he wins the insurance bet, so the player gets 2:1 on his $5 Insurance wager and receives $10 (on top of the $5 which is returned to him). Note that the player came out even on that round (i.e. did not lose any money).

Conversely, a player may win his original bet and lose his Insurance bet. Let’s say we have the same situation as above except this time the dealer’s hole card is not a ten, but rather a seven. In this case the player instantly loses his $5 Insurance wager. (All Insurance wagers are settled as soon as the dealer turns over her ‘hole card’, before all else.) But the player wins his $10 bet. Note that the player made a net profit on that round.

Of course, a player may lose both his original bet and his Insurance bet.

Insurance is a bad bet for the player who has no direct knowledge nor estimation (e.g. through card counting) of the dealer’s ‘hole card’ because Insurance has a negative expected value for the player. Even for the player who has been dealt a natural (a two-card 21) it is unwise to take Insurance. In such a case, the dealer usually asks the player “Even money?” This means that instead of 3:2, the player with the natural accepts to be paid off at 2:2. Thus it is exactly the same thing as buying Insurance, losing the Insurance bet and getting paid 3:2 on the natural. (If the player with the natural refuses the offer of “even money”, and the dealer turns over his hole card to make a natural (a blackjack), it is a tie and the player’s bet is returned to him.)

In casinos where a hole card is dealt, a dealer who is showing a card with a value of Ace or 10 may slide the corner of his or her facedown card over a small mirror or electronic sensor on the tabletop in order to check whether he has a natural. This practice minimises the risk of inadvertently revealing the hole card, which would give the sharp-eyed player a considerable advantage.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Blackjack, also known as twenty-one, is one of the most popular casino card games in the world. Much of blackjack’s popularity is due to the mix of chance with elements of skill, and the publicity that surrounds card counting (keeping track of which cards have been played since the last shuffle). Blackjack’s precursor was vingt-et-un (“twenty-one”), which originated in French casinos around 1700, and did not offer the 3:2 bonus for a two-card 21.

When blackjack was first introduced in the United States it wasn’t very popular, so gambling houses tried offering various bonus payouts to get the players to the tables. One such bonus was a 10-to-1 payout if the player’s hand consisted of the ace of spades and a black Jack (either the Jack of clubs or the Jack of spades). This hand was called a “blackjack” and the name stuck even though the bonus payout was soon abolished.

Blackjack! The face cards (Jack, Queen, and King) count as 10 points, and the Ace counts as 1 or 11.

Variants

Spanish 21 provides players with many liberal blackjack rules, such as doubling down any number of cards (with the option to ‘rescue’, or surrender only one wager to the house), payout bonuses for five or more card 21′s, 6-7-8 21′s, 7-7-7 21′s, late surrender, and player blackjacks always winning and player 21′s always winning, at the cost of having no 10 cards in the deck (though there are jacks, queens, and kings). With correct basic strategy, a Spanish 21 game has a lower house edge than a comparable blackjack game. Another casino game similar to blackjack is Pontoon.

Certain rules changes are employed to create new variant games. These changes, while attracting the novice player, actually increase the house edge in these games. Double Exposure Blackjack is a variant in which the dealer’s cards are both face-up. This game increases house edge by paying even-money on blackjacks and players losing ties. Double Attack Blackjack has very liberal blackjack rules and the option of increasing one’s wager after seeing the dealer’s up card. This game is dealt from a Spanish shoe, and blackjacks only pay even money.

Chinese Blackjack is played by many in Asia, having no splitting of cards, but with other card combination regulations.

References

Blackjack

Beat the Dealer : A Winning Strategy for the Game of Twenty-One, Edward O. Thorp, 1966, ISBN 0394703103
Playing Blackjack as a Business, Lawrence Revere, 1998 (1971), ISBN 0-8184-0064-1
Professional Blackjack, Stanford Wong, 1994 (1975), ISBN 0935926216
The Theory of Blackjack, Peter Griffin, 1996 (1979), ISBN 0929712129
The World’s Greatest Blackjack Book, Lance Humble and Carl Cooper, 1980, ISBN 0-285-15382-1
Blackbelt in Blackjack, Arnold Snyder, 1998 (1980), ISBN 0910575053
Million Dollar Blackjack, Ken Uston, 1994 (1981), ISBN 0-89746-068-5
Ken Uston on Blackjack, Ken Uston, 1986, ISBN 0818404116
Knock-Out Blackjack, Olaf Vancura and Ken Fuchs, 1998, ISBN 0929712315

Mathematics of gambling

The Theory of Gambling and Statistical Logic, Richard A. Epstein, 1977, ISBN 012240761X, 215-251
Luck, Logic, and White Lies: The Mathematics of Games, Joerg Bewersdorff, 2004, ISBN 1568812108, 121-134

Links

• Encyclopaedia of Casino Twenty-One
• Blackjack Mathematics
• Blackjack Stats
• Blackjack Forum
• Blackjack Online Gambling
• Interactive online calculator of probabilities and expectations for each possible card distribution in the shoe

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.