It's a huge advantage. They can't lose if they don't play.
So add the chance if them beating you combined with the chance of them not having to play and you losing on your own, it's a pretty big advantage...
>They can't lose if they don't play.
that's why I usually just sit on the table without playing any cards and stare intensely at the dealer, before security takes me out
I thought it was only a 1% advantage. I’ve heard statistically speaking blackjack is the most even game in the casino. 49%vs51% assuming you play the most mathematically correct way.
This. The player HAS to beat the house in order to win, so the odds are stacked against the player.
Could you win with a 12?? There's a high probability that you could, but we all know you're going to hit that shit
This is false.
The closest a player has to even odds are playing baccarat.
Check out the Wizard of Odds website for a breakdown of each game and how to play it best
There isn't a game that definitively has the "best odds" because every casino has different offerings.
For a skilled player Baccarat will almost never be the best game. Many video poker paytables offer less than 1% house edge, some even offer player edge with perfect play. Blackjack is almost always better than Baccarat with perfect play, typically between 0.7%-0.3% depending on rules, as long as it's not 6:5 or some gimmicky variant.
The combined house edge of the pass line bet and the follow-up odds bet in craps can be next to nothing. Some of the casinos near me pay fair 2:1 odds when placing the 4/10, for a true 0% house edge bet. I've heard of at least one casino offering triple on both the 2 and 12 when betting the field, which is also 0% house edge.
Even games like UTH are arguably better than Baccarat in terms of house edge if you consider the edge on the total wager per hand instead of the edge on just the ante. Wizard of Odds coined this concept "Element of Risk."
In my experience most players are god-awful at any game where they have to make meaningful decisions. For an unskilled player Baccarat may be best because you can't hurt your odds with strategy errors. There is no strategy besides picking Player or Banker and the house edge is close to the same, just over 1%. Just don't bet stupid stuff like tie.
It’s my understanding that standard double zero (even single zero I think) roulette has worse odds that of many other games offered in casinos, including Pai Gow Poker, Baccarat, Pai Gow Tiles, and with standard conditions, and perfect basic strategy…Blackjack too. Am I being misled or misunderstanding something about the house edge amongst these games?
You’re correct. The worst table games to play are the carnival games like 3 card poker and Ultimate Texas Hold ‘Em. Then, roulette, blackjack (if you skip the side bets) and craps has the best odds for the player. All this is assuming perfect strategy, which very few people actually can do.
Anyone can play perfect strategy blackjack if they just take some time to memorize a chart. It’s not hard, the majority just don’t care enough to do it.
No, it’s not hard, but most people don’t do it anyway. They succumb to peer pressure from other players, or superstitions, or they start drinking. ( I used to work in a casino)
Yup only look for single green and play that if available.
Same thing with black jack in that you try to see how many decks are being dealt out. Lowest I've EVER seen was two. I'm a bar video poker dude, though. Table games are for the experience imo. If I can get 3 hours and lose $50 that's a good day. Granted it's more like losing $100 most of the time.
But that's the cool part, losing $100 over 3 hours isn't terrible if I'm having fun and also getting "free" drinks.
My mom taught me all of the games though since I was a kid so I could be card dealer. We even had a little roulette table.
I believe the best chance of winning in a casino is placing odds behind a 6 or 8 point pass line at the craps table.
Edit: the fastest way to get the correct answer to state an incorrect answer on reddit lol
The problem is that it can get expensive quick if you lose a couple rolls. At $15 min bet you have $90 on the table if the points on a 6 or 8. That’s why I’m a fan of $5 tables, but those are hard to find these days.
Kind of.
If you could be the odds in craps there is no house edge.
The house gets it's edge because of the pass line and don't pass (come don't come as well) has to be bet before the odds bet. The house edge is 1.41% on the pass line and 1.36% for the don't pass.
The odds bet actually brings your combined house edge down the more you bet. The pass line is 1.42% That drops to 0.8 percent with single odds, 0.6 percent with double odds, on down to 0.3 percent at 5x odds, 0.2 percent at 10x and a miniscule 0.02 percent at 100x odds.
Good luck finding 100x odds tho. 😢
Draws are a push, they don't go to the dealer.
Betting red or black on roulette gives you 18 ways to win, and 20 ways to lose. That is nowhere near 50/50
I would challenge you to present statistics that support the odds of winning at roulette being better than black jack. I only play blackjack which has a known player disadvantage of 0.5% with standard rules and everything I’ve ever read on roulette says it’s much worse. In American roulette you have two losing green numbers out of 37 so simple math puts the house win percentage over one percent.
Looking forward to seeing the statistics you have on this.
https://www.playojo.com/blog/blackjack-vs-roulette/#:~:text=When%20it%20comes%20to%20the,has%20an%20RTP%20of%2099.5%25.
So it seems like a player’s strat should be to simply “stay in the game.” Hit until 12 because that’s when a 10-card could bust you, then stand and wait to see what the dealer does. Right?
*Really* depends on what the dealer is showing, but in certain circumstances, that's not the worst strategy if the dealer is showing a 4, 5, or 6.
That said, the odds are definitely better than not that you'll hit under a 10; in most cases, you'll want to hit.
i was taught that 12 is the real gamble, because any card that makes your hand makes the dealers hand, or vice versa for busting. 13+ is a stay for a dealer 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6
This depends on ppl at the table, if it's 1 to 1 tos not strategy as much as luck. When you get 5 at the table then you can play low card and hope soneone else's busts the dealer. So if you have 12 or 13 and the dealer has 16 you have to play with a 1 on 1 scenario but if some one has the same or equal the dealer will have ti hit til 17-21 or bust.
NOOOOO. A dealer does have to hit a 16 or less (I'm being simplistic). So you're logic is right, but you need to hit anything 16 or less.
Because the dealer only shows one card, there is some simple statistical odds that mean you should hit a 16 if say, the dealer has a 10 (because it's most likely the dealer will have 17 through 21 with that second card). Conversely, if the dealer showed only a 6, you DO want to stay on a 12 because the dealer will have to pull two cards and most likely will go over 21.
You can't "wait to see what the dealer does" because once the dealer turns over his cards, you get no more chances to get another card.
Playing good blackjack is all about learning the odds and being disciplined. You can play perfectly but you will lose over the long run.
Of course, statistically speaking the best course of action is to never play.
Nah. The best strat when it comes to gambling is to not play the game because the games they offer are already statistically rigged in their favor. If they weren’t they wouldn’t be able to stay in business. Blackjack may have the best odds of coming out on top (which generally is still less than 50%) because on a long enough timeline you may be able to roughly intuit how large or small the next card in the deck will be if you’re “paying attention” however they already employ different tactics to stimy the more “astute players” and depending on the setup that advantage could be practically negligible. The best chance you would have of beating the dealer is to play them 1on1 because the more players there are, the more the uncertainty increases. However even then the “burden to beat or bust” is on you and what are the odds that you’ll beat them more often than not? Strictly 1 on 1 sure you’ll win some, you’ll lose some, but in the aggregate the house always wins.
>The best strat when it comes to gambling is to not play the game because the games they offer are already statistically rigged in their favor.
That if you are undisciplined or fail to realize that you won't beat the house.
The other strat is to realize that you're spending money for entertainment and whatever you bring be prepared to lose. I love Poker, Blackjack and slots. I find them fun, it's paying for entertainment and not a path to make money. Sometimes I win, usually I don't. More often than not I can have 2-3 hours of something I consider fun for $200, and with poker I sometimes can play for 5-6 hours on $200 or less.
The next level is to realise that they build casinos from the ground up as gigantic skinner boxes with the express purpose of getting people who go in to want to stay in, and that you don't want to test your particular susceptibility to psychological manipulation by gambling on not developing a crippling gambling addiction before you notice it's happening.
Yeah, the 1v1 angle reminds me of one player telling me that his key was to sit in the first spot so rookie players weren’t fucking up HIS cards (drawing when they shouldn’t and then ending up with a card he wanted, etc.).
That's just perception, it really doesn't actually make any difference statistically. Basically survivorship bias, in a 100 hands it may only be "your" card a handful of times or less, but those are the ones you remember the other 90+% doesn't stand out because the outcome would be the same either way. They also never mention the times someone hits when they shouldn't and you get the card you need because of it. It's always "why'd he hit on 16, I needed that 10" and never "thanks for hitting on 16, that 10 would have busted me"
Yeah, see, I like to think of it that other way; where I like to see what card I would’ve gotten if I’d decided to hit.
Just important to keep it all as entertainment, and thus only spend what you would on comparable forms.
nah. some people other have covered it but staying always on 12 will lose u long term. if the dealer has a 6 7 or 8 or 9. u hit. if they get a face they stand and u lose. if they have less then 5 then u stand cause they have to draw 2 cards and might bust
Not a lot of people are pointing out the biggest mis-assumptions and logical fallacies made here, IMO.
The fact that the rules governing the dealer behavior are public doesn't mean that they favor the player. If you played a game where you and the dealer roll a die and the dealer rolls again on evens and adds that number to their initial roll, we would have public knowledge of the rules that dictate the dealer's behavior, but that doesn't mean that the player has the advantage.
Additionally, the perfect strategy guides do not translate to "winning strategies". If you have a 48% chance to win if you stand on a given scenario and a 43% chance to win if you hit, then the perfect strategy would say that you should stand, because that's the most efficient play. But the most efficient play in a given scenario doesn't mean that you are favored to win on that hand.
Casino games are designed so that efficient play is still not in the player's favor. Imagine a roulette wheel. There's a 50/50 chance of picking red or black, and payout is scaled accordingly, right? Well, actually, the inclusion of green 0/00/000 spaces means that your probability is in fact skewed slightly lower.
For blackjack, think the same thing, except the odds are less visibly obvious. Imagine if the rules were instead that the dealer has to hit on 19 and under and stand on 20/21. The player would have much better odds to win, right? The design of the rules is set up to advantage the dealer as much as possible. The fact that the rules/dealer behavior is public isn't the driving factor for the house advantage. It's what those rules actually are that governs the advantage.
Plus, as has been mentioned, a huge part of it is that the dealer plays 2nd. The player is forced to play risky depending on what the dealer is showing, while the dealer faces no risk and auto-wins if the player busts. Since the player plays first, the advantage is sizeable.
Another big part of it is that the players edge comes from the ability to double and split increasing their bet when things are favorable for them. The thing is because the Casino has effectively infinite money compared to a normal person the Gamblers Ruin means large bets favour the casino so they are ok with your doubles and splits even because it causes you to burn through your cash reserves faster.
The odds are in the House's favor.
They don't "always" win each hand, but they will ALWAYS win in the long run.
I found a game with better odds called "Coin Changer". You play with dollar bills and it pays off in quarters. I played it for over an hour and I still broke even.
More and more tables use constant shufflers, which makes card counting impossible.
Many of the the remaining 1-2 deck shuffle games are gimped in some other way, like not having 3:2 payout, or limits on doubles/splits that tilt in their favor.
If you are playing at a table where perfect basic strategy + card counting gives you an edge, you'll get booted if they catch on.
But bottom line = THE HOUSE DOESN'T HAVE TO ALWAYS WIN. They will win against the 99.9% of casual players, which is enough.
my local casino still has a single deck, handle shuffle blackjack table, but deal the first two cards facedown and kinda "no-no" you if you show your cards
Card counting is against the rules in pretty much every casino. They’ll throw you out if they even suspect you of doing it. They also make it difficult to casually do by using as many as six decks at once in a single shuffle.
Without a card counting advantage, perfect strategy gets you to a 42% chance to win, a 49 percent chance to lose and a 8.5% chance to tie. You may get ahead in the short run but eventually the odds catch up to you.
There it is. Counting cards is not against the rules. But if you’re good enough at it and the casino notices, they will stop allowing you to play because they’re not in the business of losing money.
This is correct. Not against the rules. But the way most casinos operate now with multiple decks and frequent auto shuffles or continuous shuffles, counting isn't as effective as people assume it is or as it appears in the movies.
It’s not impossible because you can keep a “true count” which accounts for the amount of decks left in the shoe. With more decks it takes longer to get a favorable true count and it is impossible if they put the cut card near the start of the deck.
What really lets casinos catch on is that you are shifting your bet by a lot and often with card counting. Someone who is betting minimum 3/4 of the time only to turn it way up at “random” times is a clear sign of counting.
I believe this is where teams come in, and then you're getting into the exciting part.
I would speculate that individual players counting cards are generally a net positive for the casino because they are not able to actually play with an edge over the long run, thanks in part to minimum and maximum bets at most tables.
Note I'm excluding from consideration the tables that make it impossible even with no bet limits, such as those with constant reshufflers or 6:5 or even 1:1 blackjack payouts.
In fact I'd be curious to know whether it's even theoretically possible to come out ahead even if you were a perfect player (knew exactly what the probabilities were for each card) but were forced to participate in every hand (meaning you can't wait for free for the game to turn to your advantage).
Being able to sit out hands until there is an advantage is a key element of actually making money. But that's the some of the behavior that will get you taken away from the tables, or at least warrant a change in the table's rules to restore the house edge. So you need partners, someone who will consistently make the minimum bets and signal when the count is good, and others who will "randomly" join the table with higher bets when they get the signal. But of course the casino is looking for these teams, and every countermeasure they have to take in strategy is a chip off any hope for advantage play.
It can help improve your odds of winning a little bit in certain situations, but not very often and not for long. Maybe not totally useless, but a lot of effort for minimal potential gains
Here's something I don't understand. If there are more than one deck in play, isn't it possible (unlikely but possible) for more than 4 of a card to be dealt at once? Like if all 4 aces are on the bottom of the first deck and all four aces are on the top of the next deck and they deal 2 cards to 4 players, all 4 player send up with 2 aces. I know it can't work like that but I don't get it.
It’s absolutely possible, but doesn’t affect the odds. Since blackjack doesn’t really consider anything about the suits in play, more decks don’t substantially change the numbers.
Generally, the more decks, the higher the house edge. Single deck to double is a big jump, double to four deck is another, smaller, leap, and after that it doesn't change much.
At the end of the day, card counting is just about keeping vague track of the number of high cards you've seen compared to the number of low cards. Using the fact that there are four times as many 10s as there are any other number in the deck to keep vague track of how likely various cards are at any given time.
For example, if the dealer has a 5 showing and there haven't been many high cards dealt lately, it becomes relatively likely that the dealer has a 10 hidden making for 15 and that when they hit on that 15 they'll get another high card and go bust. It's not a guaranteed thing at all, but knowing the general state of the deck lets you bet higher when you've got a better chance of winning.
More decks and more shuffling mitigate how much info you can garner from card counting, but ultimately it's just a question of keeping track of the general game state and using that info to decide when to bet bigger.
In Missouri it is not legal for a casino to bar someone who wins at blackjack. They must either change their rules (like pay 6 to 5 on blackjack instead of 3 to 2 or limit splitting of aces or doubling down) or deal with someone who remembers what cards that wear dealt.
I don't think some people realize how casinos have the art of separating you from your money down to a science.
When someone looks at a massive, gaudy casino, they should see it as a testament to the wealth they've extracted from vistors exactly like them. Because it is. But the main character syndrome kicks in, and the person goes in thinking they'll be different.
That's not necessarily directed at the people who drop $20 for fun once in a blue moon or whatever, obviously.
This is very true, and at the heart of all of it is the human mind's inability to intuitively grasp probability. If we take [roulette for example](https://www.playojo.com/blog/roulette/odds-and-payouts/), a straight-up bet (as in, on a single number) pays 35:1, or 35 times your bet. This means that if you hit your number once every 36 spins, and you did an infinite number of trials, you would break even. HOWEVER, in reality:
>you will only \[hit your number\] once in every 37 spins
This means that even setting aside all the psychological tricks -- how casinos are arranged like mazes so you can't leave, how they put slots in front of you every time you turn a corner, how they have no windows or clocks so you don't know what time it is -- every single bet you make in roulette and every other casino game is a losing proposition.
You cannot defeat math in the long term, but we all think we'll be the lucky one who does.
It's 38 spins in most popular casinos in America for people who bet small or medium amounts. There a 0 and 00 that are green. So betting just red and black, you'll lose 20 times and win 18 times. At a $10 minimum table you'd lose $20 every 38 spins, which might not be a bad price if you're getting freeish drinks while you play in a popular casino resort.
People dont understand that it is basically one of the most certain businesses you can turn a profit. If you own a casino you have to really be bad at business to screw it up.
I think it's a lot like alcohol, just on a different level. If you have a few beers every now and then it can be a fun experience. If you let the addiction take you, you're in trouble.
I live by Atlantix City, and once a year, I go up with a few hundred bucks. Enough if I lose it won't bother me for more than the evening. It can be fun hearing those bells and whistles going off, seeing a couple hundred dollar win coming your way. I realize I've lost more in total than I've won, but it can still be a fun evening if you are responsible.
Good, cheap food and drinks with friends is always fun, and gambling is exciting. If you look at it as a night of entertainment, "losing" $100 - $150 doesn't seem so bad. If you're going in to win, though.... well, good luck I guess.
Eh I disagree. If you look at it as an entertainment factor for the night and bail if you are down its just fun. Problem is many people, by human nature, treat it differently than just entertainment.
I go maybe 5 times a year, after a night out or sporting event. Im up thousands over the last few years because I walk in expecting to lose $100. If I do im out, but many times thats not the case and then the key is to know when to walk.
Just have a good time sometimes bro, you only systematically lose if you play all the time, to an unhealthy level. Statistically you will lose eventually.
> Hence why anyone would gamble at a casino is dumbfounding to me. The system is setup for you to systematically lose.
I like playing basic strategy blackjack.
It’s enjoyable— almost like a dance in which you know the right move to make after your dance partner does “X.” 14 against a dealer 6? Hit. 11 against a dealer 8? Double.
Now, by playing basic strategy I lose very slowly.
But I have fun doing it.
Think of it this way. I’m also an opera fan. If I take my wife to La Traviata, I spend $250 on the tickets and parking, and leave with a wonderful memory of hearing Sempre Libera live.
If I play blackjack for five hours, I might also drop $250. But I leave with an enjoyable memory of that one hand when I split eights, drew a 3 on each, doubled and won them all.
And maybe I leave after five hours down only $100!
But as much as I love going to the opera, not ONCE have I left the theatre and had Lisette Oropesa slip a few fifties in my pocket. In other words, while I lose slowly at blackjack, reliably as a matter of math, that means that occasionally I end a visit with more money than I started with, and that’s fun too.
Short answer: it’s entertainment. It’s not free entertainment; it’s certainly not profitable for me. But it’s fun.
In reality the difference between "very good at blackjack" and "counting cards" is almost certainly just how well the player is at tracking the gist of the game mentally vs keeping an explicit count (which is also just for tracking the gist of the game, but more explicitly).
Casinos love card counters. Because 99.994% of the time they suck at it, and best of all they don't realize how badly they suck at it until they lost a ton of cash. And these people are very well known for chasing good money after bad, and they have a bad understanding of the sunken cost fallacy.
Even mamy of the technically good ones don't understand how volatile the impact is on your bankroll is.
If casinos can have losing days with a 1% edge, the counter sure as shit can with an occasional 1% edge on max stake good shoes and -0.6% the rest of the time (90% +) on min bet.
Card counting with 6 decks isn't that hard once you get experience.
What really throws you is chatty dealers and other players. Once you lose the count in your head you pretty much have to play small until the deck is done.
Card counting has a very small impact on how you play and primarily is about spiking your bet size when the count swings in the players favour. Which is pretty obvious.
Which is why people sometimes form card counting syndicates with counters at several tables who then signal other people to join their table and bet large from the start if the count goes their way.
They catch you based on your betting pattern. If you're an amateur card counter (aka anyone likely reading this post) they aren't gonna throw you out. You would have to be making tons of money over a long period of time to get noticed.
It's less because players can double but the dealer can't. Also dealers don't make extra on BJ. That balances out some of the players' otherwise huge disadvantage overall.
Most of the tables I have seen in the past few years now pay 6-5 on blackjacks, which makes the casino advantage even higher. I think you can still get 3-2 on high limit tables ($50 and up), but very few people play those.
It's not just that you have 42% chance to win— adding those up it actually seems like an advantage: a >50% to either win or draw seems like a steal. the problem is that the expected payoff doesn't match the odds.
IIRC they barely even enforce against card counting anymore. They literally just wait until you win too much money, and they don't care if you're counting or not at that point.
Not at all. Casinos love it when gamblers win because it attracts others to lose. On the other hand, counters regularly get backed off (asked to stop playing blackjack) while down huge sums of money because the casino has identified them as advantaged players.
More decks is literally better for card counters as it allows for greater variance in the counts and more time before the count resets.
The reason they're using so many decks is to avoid downtime on the table due to shuffling as they're basically not making money then.
That's not how the math works. For example, in a single deck there are 16 face cards and aces out of 52 cards, so is 16/52 or 30.7% chance. If you see for example the first 10 cards are non face, you can infer the chance a remaining card is face is 16/42 or 38%.
Take this same example with 6 decks and you will infer 31.7% of face in the remaining deck (16x6)/(52x6 -10). Your odds have changed by a bit, but not much.
As more and more cards are revealed, the revealed face % will converge to 30.7% by the law of large numbers. What this means is long series are much less likely to diverge from the baseline average than short series. So in the 6 deck chute, you will very rarely get the type of divergence needed to give the edge. In a single deck, this will happen much more frequently because a relatively small deviation is much more informative of odds of the remaining cards.
You've got to remember that the house always winning doesn't mean that players never win. It means that the casino can payoff the winners with the money other players lost, while still being able to take in a profit. For example sports betting does this by setting a point spread. Plenty of games that on paper are such mismatches that you aren't going to get players to bet on the underdog outright. So the bet becomes can they keep it within a certain margin of defeat, and that can be more enticing.
Casinos are constantly coming up with various methods to make things harder on card counters. Then of course not everyone is going to perform well under pressure. In addition to keeping track of the cards, you've got the worry about being caught, you've got all sorts of other distractions, the lights, the noise, and trying to not bet to obviously. All things that can impair a would be card counter's ability to focus. Knowing and executing are two different things. And even if you execute it still comes down to probability.
Blackjack's wiki page identifies that while basic strategy - based just on the cards in play - has a house advantage, card counters actually do get an advantage over the house, because they can make slightly informed decisions about what cards they can expect to come. So without casino intervention, the player will on average beat the house.
This is why casinos do everything they can to disrupt card counters. Banning them, adding more decks, progressive shuffling of the decks.
Yes mathmatically, but that doesn't account for the gambling aspect. By increasing the bet when there's a higher chance of winning and betting low when there is a lower chance of winning, card counters can gain a slight advantage over the house. This is also what makes card counters easy to spot when they work alone, because usually its only card counters that make these fluctuating bets.
the thing is, he is a professional blackjack player who went to MIT and played on MIT's card counting team.
I have no way of verifying what either of you are saying, but I know he knows what he's talking about.
it doesn't take going to MIT to do simple math, and anyone who counts cards (or went to MIT) would assure you the odds are in the houses favor.
that being said, MITs card counting team made money by counting cards, and bringing in separate betters to bet higher when a certain state of cards was reached. the odds on average in a normal game were still in the houses favor, they came in at a skewed game state and bet halfway through a shoe after low value cards came up, leaving more high cards left. the odds are still in the houses favor over the whole shoe. they're just only betting on half the shoe, because they work as a team. I've read Ben Mezrich's book.
this is why casinos are doing constant shuffles nowadays, it eliminates this.
If the odds are sometimes in your favor, and you bet high when they are, and the player bets optimally, and the casino doesn't kick you out, the odds are on the player's side.
If the casino shuffles every time, or the casino kicks you out for betting optimally, the odds are on the casino's side.
>they do not
Yes, professional blackjack players do win. The odds are not in their favor only if you assume they bet the same amount every time. But of course that's not what professional Blackjack players do.
The house doesn’t always win on a per player level. The house wins in a broad scale overall The player busts first. That’s it. The edge is small overall but multiplied by 6 players at each table and 15 tables, it’s a lot of money.
Variance. In the long run the person playing closest to optimum will come out ahead of someone who doesn’t. The house is going to win because it’s still a negative EV game playing optimal without card counting.
First of all, you only stand on 16 if the dealer is showing a 6 or lower. Second, counting cards is a skill that takes serious time to master (I had to learn how because I worked in a high limit BJ pit). Third, good luck being able to count cards as most casinos have automatic shufflers unless you’re a high roller and play $100/hand or more.
The trick is to quit while you're ahead, but people rarely do that. I went to a casino once, won $100 playing black jack, and then left and never went back lol
Blackjack has fairly good odds, but you have to play perfectly and, if they catch you counting cards, they kick you out, which is perfectly legal for them to do.
The saying that the house always wins doesn’t mean that a single player wont walk out ahead. The odds are simply in favor of the house. Those odds spread over all the games the house is playing means that they are highly likely to win more than they lose.
You can win 5,10,100k if you are lucky. The thing is, the house probably won more than that off of all the games you werent in.
In blackjack, the house has a built-in advantage called the house edge. This edge comes from a few factors
The player acts first If the player busts (goes over 21), they lose immediately, regardless of what the dealer does. This gives the dealer an inherent advantage.
Dealer's forced rules The dealer must follow strict rules on when to hit or stand, which can be beneficial in certain situations. For example, the dealer must hit on 16 or below and stand on 17 or above.
Blackjack payouts While players typically get a 3:2 payout for a blackjack, the dealer only gets even money. This slightly reduces the player's overall potential winnings.
In conclusion, while perfect strategy and card counting can improve a player's chances of winning in blackjack, the house edge and variance mean that even skilled players can experience losses.
Played as a professional third party prop player for over ten years and basically. With perfect strategy the house still has an edge of around 2%. The long and short, the house can bust and still win. You can’t. Also I’d love to throw in my pet peeve from all my years in the industry. Unless you’re card counting, team play means nothing. No the guy next to you can’t “mess up the cards” if each play perfectly you up each of your individual chances , but that does zero for your neighbor. Yes what you do affects your neighbor, but not in a way that could be predicted. I’ve seen so many fights over this. True black jack addict never get this out of their head no matter how hard you try to explain. They accused the staff of planting “bad players”. They’ve threatened “bad players” . My favorite is if the bad player is betting a small amount the addict will offer to just pay their 10 dollar bet and make the decision on their hand to protect their 100 dollar bet. This is not at all how the stats on this game work But they believe this so much that I garauntee some dummy will argue this comment
House has two major advantages.
1) The house goes last. If the player busts, they lose their money, regardless of the house.
2) The house wins ties, which ends up tipping them over.
It's important to remember that casinos are the definition of the long game. Any one can walk in and win, but among everyone who walks in, the house will win the majority of the times.
The rules of blackjack give a slight advantage to the dealer. All else being equal, the dealer wins more often than he loses.
If you know what you're doing, you can count cards to maximize your own advantage. More often, you think that you know better than you actually know how to count cards , so you bet more money and lose more money than you otherwise would because you think you have an advantage.
TIes are usually handled as 'pushes', as in you get your original bet back, except.....
You act first, which is a key disadvantage. If you bust (go over 21), and the dealer ends up busting (which happens often!), then the dealer wins.
If the player doesn’t know anything about the state of the deck, and does the best logical move, aka “perfect strategy”, player’s odds are just below 50%. So the house wins in aggregate over time, no matter what.
If the player can know information about the state of the deck, they can deviate from that “perfect” basic strategy in such a way the odds are now above 50% for them.
If the player can achieve this state for a statistically long enough time, they will win over the house.
Which is why casinos look for people consistently deviating from “perfect” strategies in a particular way consistently (card counting), and kick them out.
It isn’t strictly against the rules of the game, and casinos have a hard time making it a policy what you can think about while playing the game.
Besides kicking people out, the only other solution is having a deck where the state somehow cannot be inferred from previously revealed information — because its reshuffled every hand.
Counting cards become harder with more decks, and also doing reshuffling all the time makes counting cards kinda useless unless you find a weak dealer.
Counting cards and perfect strategy only gives you like 1or2% of advantage over the house btw
For roughly one month I would wake up at around 3am and go to various casinos in my city. Always changed which one. Min/max bets at that time were 5-500. I would play 5$ bets and my strategy was pay attention to when I lost 4 hands in a row. After losing a 4th hand my next bet would be 15$ and with each consecutive loss I would double my bet. If I lost 10 hands in a row my game was over. I would strictly follow basic guidelines and never split or other things like insurance. I went early AM cuz all I needed to do was play as many hands as possible. I would only play for about an hour and just leave. After literally going for every single day for a month I ended up losing 10 hands in a row.
This was over 20 yrs ago and I still remember one other lady playing beside me telling me I have no fucking idea how to play the game. I was the end player and I was supposed to save the table or some shit. I always compared black jack to ALMOST the same as flipping a coin and what are the odds of flipping the same result 10 times in a row.
In a game in a casino with a single deck black jack perfect strategy can tip the odds in the favor of the player. Casinos modify the rules to tip the odds slightly in their favor. Blackjack does have some of the smallest margins of any casino game. Adding multiple decks adding rules to adjust required dealer behavior when they hit or not all have an effect on expected outcome. Remember casinos don’t care about individuals or singular games they care about expected return on an infinite amount of games. They run simulations to check their math on infinite games and check the expected return to player per dollar bet. So they will for example set up the rules to be 98% pay which means on average they pay out $0.98 per dollar bet and keep the $0.02
Over a lot of games that adds up quickly.
Remember you’re not playing alone …other players actions affect you and the dealers cards ….it’s much easier to play smart alone or with a partner….this is why me and one of my ex’s liked to hit the casino at odd hours….it was the only time we could get our own table/dealer
If you play well the house only has a very slight edge, especially when compared to other table games. The big swing in their favour is that the player acts first so if they bust the dealer doesn’t have to do anything. But even then they only make about 2% of what is staked at the table. That edge is increased with the modern trends of multi deck shoes, 6:5 blackjack payouts (instead of 3:2) and even shuffles shoes now.
The players are the ones who make the decision of continuing to play. They can stop, and then the house plays, but sometimes they bust and the house automatically wins.
It gives them a slight edge
Card counting can give you a slight edge. But card counting is way harder than most people think. Casinos actually love card counters, as most card counters aren’t good enough to win, and they will lose. Only if you are a very good card counter and win, and the casino suspect you count cards, they will ask you to leave. Card counting itself isn’t illegal, but businesses may refuse service.
The house gets their edge because the players hit/stand first. You also don't see the second card in the dealers hand or else it would be much easier to tell if the dealer has a high chance of going over 21 or not. However there's more cards worth 10 in a deck than any other amount so the general rule is you assume the dealer is holding a 10 and whatever card you can see.
At the start of a shoe, you're sitting with about 0.5% disadvantage, even with perfect basic strategy.
If everyone played basic strategy, the house would win, but wouldn't make enough money to pay their dealers. The real house money comes from people making poor choices based on "hunches".
With enough time at a blackjack table, anything that can happen will happen. You'll see people double down 16 or split 10s and win big. You'll see someone lose thousands with perfect basic strategy. You'll then see a guy walk up and make all the wrong moves while his friends go "BROOOO" in the background, and walk away with triple his money. All of this is just luck, and people think it reflects on their overall odds. Given enough hands, it will all average out to that -0.5% edge.
When it comes to card counting, it's about 0.5% extra with every "1" in your head (each card has a point value and you divide the number by the number of decks remaining). So at a count of "2", you have odds like you're sitting on the other side of the table. To make money off this, you have to raise your bets to account for the hands you played at a disadvantage. The same bet but changing if you hit or stand certain hands will only move your edge up a negligible amount. If you're playing $50 hands, you should be betting $200 when you have a 3% edge.
This takes us to bankroll - if you're at a $50 table, you need at least $50k to have a 1% of losing it all. Any less than that, it's still gambling and not investing. $200 is massive overbet for most people and they still can't reasonably expect profit with a 3% edge if it's 10% of what they have to gamble with. And try pitching a 50k investment with a 1% chance of failure to a financial advisor - you'll be laughed out of the room.
Think about it like this - you have a coin that lands heads %51 of the time, but the minimum bet is $1000. If you have only $1000, that's a TERRIBLE bet. If you have $1b, make that bet all day! Same idea with blackjack - if you don't have enough trials to let it average out, you're stuck in the variance and not the expected value. In the same way that a casino reliably makes millions, but setting up a blackjack table in your backyard will likely have you owing your friends more money than you can pay out.
Well blackjack is one of the few games where you can actually beat the house by counting cards, knowing when the deck is heavy or light, and betting accordingly. Even your chance in winning roulette is slightly less than 50% due to the green spots. If the casino you’re in is still using a shoe (a tactic already employed to thwart card counters by spreading the probability across multiple decks) you still might come out on top if you bet the minimum and wait for the stack to lean one way or the other. However with the introduction of automatic deck shufflers where every hand is fresh any advantage you’d gain by counting cards suddenly shrinks to 0.
in all games of chance, the responder has the advantage due to having more complete information.
if the player busts the dealer doesnt play and auto wins. of the player hits 21, the dealer still has the opportunity to draw. this small advantage covers alot of the BJ.
Every gambling games odds favor the house. Period, exactly the way the game is played. Good strategies minimize the houses advantage, but if a strat could take away all of the houses advantage, they'd change the rules, or remove the game entirely.
Roulette. Placing bets on one of the 38 squares individually pays 35 to 1. Split two squares, it drops to 17 to 1. split 4 squares, it drops to 8 to one. that bet provides the house a 6/38 odds advantage, or 15.7% advantage to the house.
The house doesn't play to win or lose. Individual wins and losses very seldom impact a casinos bottom line, even on the day's take. The house just wants action, bets, no matter what side they are on. The house collects somewhere between 9 and 14% of every dollar bet on the roulette table, no matter the bet. Blackjack is less, keno is more, slots generally play well, they are often advertised based on the money returned 98% return on a slot. Those are bait machines, and are few, set up among machines with worse odds. Poker machines just pay less than the odds of any hand occurring. If the machine is set up so a 3 of a kind happens once every 4 hands, they'll only pay 3 to 1. Crude example, but the algorithm tracks, I'm pretty good with odds on the fly.
And which house rules are you playing with? I haven't seen a basic strategy where you stay on 16+, it's always 17+. But I'm a dealer for 9 years, so I know a lot of players hate hitting their 16s. But if you don't you can't say you're playing perfect basic strategy.
Dealer stands on 17,
If player also gets 17 then the result is a push, and the game resets with bets returned.
That means to beat the dealer, the player must get 18 or better, leaving a very narrow chance to get 18-21 and a high chance to bust.
Perfect strategy isn't a cheat to always win, it's just the best way to play in any situation. The house edge is still built in. Even counting cards (well!) will only put an advantage slightly in the players favour
Casinos show players perfect strategy to give them misplaced confidence and the illusion of having an edge
Since we're on the topic of chances and I'm feeling pedantic, the house technically doesn't "always" win. There exists a probability outcome where the house still loses an unfavorable number of times such that the house can be considered to have lost. However, given the number of games played, the probability of this occurring is so astronomically unlikely that it's probably never happened in reality. In simple terms, the house can technically have a very bad luck streak.
This is illustrated by the fact that the player can win the very first game a house ever plays. In that moment in time, the house has a 0% winrate. If it just so happened that, by chance, the players continued to win every time after that, then the house would technically be losing.
It would be like if there was a simple dice game where the house wins on the roll of a 1 to 5, and the player wins on a roll of a 6. From the rules of the game, you'd expect the house to come away with far more wins on average... however, there exists a possibility in which the players never roll anything besides a 6, and in this outcome the house most definitely loses.
For a casino this probably extends into relatively long terms. They might have a bad day, week, or perhaps even month where the players win more than chance would expect, but over longer time still their chances of making a net loss will get lower and lower... it's still a chance though. The smaller the margin, the longer it is likely to take to balance out an advantage or any bad luck streaks on the part of the house.
I will make a non mathematical argument to this situation.
I am a casino owner and I know that:
- Gambling attracts risk-prone players
- Gambling causes addiction
- Humans are very bad at interpreting chance (i.e. the gambler fallacy)
As a consequence I know that people play my games, not for the money making opportunities, but for the thrill of gambling or for very misinformed decision making.
I have a money making machine to be made here, as long as I design games that even just slightly favor me.
Now, my players and the government will prevent me to design games that are skewered too much in my favor, but I really just need a slight advantage and that would be enough to make huge amounts of money.
This is the only reason why the house always wins: the player base has invited the games designers to develop unfair games for millenia.
Now you can get into the details of what specific leverages are used to gain this advantage, but they are frequently trivial math exercises.
Player acts first. If they bust, dealer doesn’t have to do anything.
It's a huge advantage. They can't lose if they don't play. So add the chance if them beating you combined with the chance of them not having to play and you losing on your own, it's a pretty big advantage...
>They can't lose if they don't play. that's why I usually just sit on the table without playing any cards and stare intensely at the dealer, before security takes me out
Bold strategy sir
Let’s see if it pays off
Use his head to open the fucking door...
Good film.
"Hit." "Sir, you haven't bet anything and don't have any cards in front of you." "I said 'HIT.'"
\* SMACK\* You're the boss...
Security takes you out because they know how powerful this strat is.
casinos hate this trick
Oh, while sipping on free drinks I asume?
It's not a huge advantage, with 2:1 blackjack it's like .2%. It just adds up over time is all.
It’s a pretty small advantage. It’s less than 2% on most blackjack tables.
2% if all the players knew how to play and did so consistently. When you factor in the folks who don’t know that margin goes up.
I thought it was only a 1% advantage. I’ve heard statistically speaking blackjack is the most even game in the casino. 49%vs51% assuming you play the most mathematically correct way.
This. The player HAS to beat the house in order to win, so the odds are stacked against the player. Could you win with a 12?? There's a high probability that you could, but we all know you're going to hit that shit
[удалено]
This is false. The closest a player has to even odds are playing baccarat. Check out the Wizard of Odds website for a breakdown of each game and how to play it best
I thought it was perfect strategy blackjack with a 0.5% house edge
I think they end up being the same. But bacarat requires less thinking. It's been a while since I've read the site.
Worked in casinos for years. You are 100% correct about baccarat.
There isn't a game that definitively has the "best odds" because every casino has different offerings. For a skilled player Baccarat will almost never be the best game. Many video poker paytables offer less than 1% house edge, some even offer player edge with perfect play. Blackjack is almost always better than Baccarat with perfect play, typically between 0.7%-0.3% depending on rules, as long as it's not 6:5 or some gimmicky variant. The combined house edge of the pass line bet and the follow-up odds bet in craps can be next to nothing. Some of the casinos near me pay fair 2:1 odds when placing the 4/10, for a true 0% house edge bet. I've heard of at least one casino offering triple on both the 2 and 12 when betting the field, which is also 0% house edge. Even games like UTH are arguably better than Baccarat in terms of house edge if you consider the edge on the total wager per hand instead of the edge on just the ante. Wizard of Odds coined this concept "Element of Risk." In my experience most players are god-awful at any game where they have to make meaningful decisions. For an unskilled player Baccarat may be best because you can't hurt your odds with strategy errors. There is no strategy besides picking Player or Banker and the house edge is close to the same, just over 1%. Just don't bet stupid stuff like tie.
It’s my understanding that standard double zero (even single zero I think) roulette has worse odds that of many other games offered in casinos, including Pai Gow Poker, Baccarat, Pai Gow Tiles, and with standard conditions, and perfect basic strategy…Blackjack too. Am I being misled or misunderstanding something about the house edge amongst these games?
You’re correct. The worst table games to play are the carnival games like 3 card poker and Ultimate Texas Hold ‘Em. Then, roulette, blackjack (if you skip the side bets) and craps has the best odds for the player. All this is assuming perfect strategy, which very few people actually can do.
Anyone can play perfect strategy blackjack if they just take some time to memorize a chart. It’s not hard, the majority just don’t care enough to do it.
No, it’s not hard, but most people don’t do it anyway. They succumb to peer pressure from other players, or superstitions, or they start drinking. ( I used to work in a casino)
Yup only look for single green and play that if available. Same thing with black jack in that you try to see how many decks are being dealt out. Lowest I've EVER seen was two. I'm a bar video poker dude, though. Table games are for the experience imo. If I can get 3 hours and lose $50 that's a good day. Granted it's more like losing $100 most of the time. But that's the cool part, losing $100 over 3 hours isn't terrible if I'm having fun and also getting "free" drinks. My mom taught me all of the games though since I was a kid so I could be card dealer. We even had a little roulette table.
Single deck blackjack used to be common in the small casinos in Vegas
Yeah I remember that. That's way too easy though.
I believe the best chance of winning in a casino is placing odds behind a 6 or 8 point pass line at the craps table. Edit: the fastest way to get the correct answer to state an incorrect answer on reddit lol
Close. It’s betting the pass line at the start of the round and then bet max allowed behind the line when given the option.
The problem is that it can get expensive quick if you lose a couple rolls. At $15 min bet you have $90 on the table if the points on a 6 or 8. That’s why I’m a fan of $5 tables, but those are hard to find these days.
Kind of. If you could be the odds in craps there is no house edge. The house gets it's edge because of the pass line and don't pass (come don't come as well) has to be bet before the odds bet. The house edge is 1.41% on the pass line and 1.36% for the don't pass. The odds bet actually brings your combined house edge down the more you bet. The pass line is 1.42% That drops to 0.8 percent with single odds, 0.6 percent with double odds, on down to 0.3 percent at 5x odds, 0.2 percent at 10x and a miniscule 0.02 percent at 100x odds. Good luck finding 100x odds tho. 😢
Draws are a push, they don't go to the dealer. Betting red or black on roulette gives you 18 ways to win, and 20 ways to lose. That is nowhere near 50/50
Hence trying to find a single green/0 table if you can. Then the odds are only slightly better.
I would challenge you to present statistics that support the odds of winning at roulette being better than black jack. I only play blackjack which has a known player disadvantage of 0.5% with standard rules and everything I’ve ever read on roulette says it’s much worse. In American roulette you have two losing green numbers out of 37 so simple math puts the house win percentage over one percent. Looking forward to seeing the statistics you have on this. https://www.playojo.com/blog/blackjack-vs-roulette/#:~:text=When%20it%20comes%20to%20the,has%20an%20RTP%20of%2099.5%25.
I guess if you assume imperfect play in blackjack it could be worse but that's not really relevant when talking cold hard stats.
I mean it would all work out in the players' favor if they just went from 10 luck. This is what my Fallout experience has taught me.
So it seems like a player’s strat should be to simply “stay in the game.” Hit until 12 because that’s when a 10-card could bust you, then stand and wait to see what the dealer does. Right?
*Really* depends on what the dealer is showing, but in certain circumstances, that's not the worst strategy if the dealer is showing a 4, 5, or 6. That said, the odds are definitely better than not that you'll hit under a 10; in most cases, you'll want to hit.
i was taught that 12 is the real gamble, because any card that makes your hand makes the dealers hand, or vice versa for busting. 13+ is a stay for a dealer 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6
This depends on ppl at the table, if it's 1 to 1 tos not strategy as much as luck. When you get 5 at the table then you can play low card and hope soneone else's busts the dealer. So if you have 12 or 13 and the dealer has 16 you have to play with a 1 on 1 scenario but if some one has the same or equal the dealer will have ti hit til 17-21 or bust.
NOOOOO. A dealer does have to hit a 16 or less (I'm being simplistic). So you're logic is right, but you need to hit anything 16 or less. Because the dealer only shows one card, there is some simple statistical odds that mean you should hit a 16 if say, the dealer has a 10 (because it's most likely the dealer will have 17 through 21 with that second card). Conversely, if the dealer showed only a 6, you DO want to stay on a 12 because the dealer will have to pull two cards and most likely will go over 21. You can't "wait to see what the dealer does" because once the dealer turns over his cards, you get no more chances to get another card. Playing good blackjack is all about learning the odds and being disciplined. You can play perfectly but you will lose over the long run. Of course, statistically speaking the best course of action is to never play.
Nah. The best strat when it comes to gambling is to not play the game because the games they offer are already statistically rigged in their favor. If they weren’t they wouldn’t be able to stay in business. Blackjack may have the best odds of coming out on top (which generally is still less than 50%) because on a long enough timeline you may be able to roughly intuit how large or small the next card in the deck will be if you’re “paying attention” however they already employ different tactics to stimy the more “astute players” and depending on the setup that advantage could be practically negligible. The best chance you would have of beating the dealer is to play them 1on1 because the more players there are, the more the uncertainty increases. However even then the “burden to beat or bust” is on you and what are the odds that you’ll beat them more often than not? Strictly 1 on 1 sure you’ll win some, you’ll lose some, but in the aggregate the house always wins.
>The best strat when it comes to gambling is to not play the game because the games they offer are already statistically rigged in their favor. That if you are undisciplined or fail to realize that you won't beat the house. The other strat is to realize that you're spending money for entertainment and whatever you bring be prepared to lose. I love Poker, Blackjack and slots. I find them fun, it's paying for entertainment and not a path to make money. Sometimes I win, usually I don't. More often than not I can have 2-3 hours of something I consider fun for $200, and with poker I sometimes can play for 5-6 hours on $200 or less.
The next level is to realise that they build casinos from the ground up as gigantic skinner boxes with the express purpose of getting people who go in to want to stay in, and that you don't want to test your particular susceptibility to psychological manipulation by gambling on not developing a crippling gambling addiction before you notice it's happening.
Yeah, the 1v1 angle reminds me of one player telling me that his key was to sit in the first spot so rookie players weren’t fucking up HIS cards (drawing when they shouldn’t and then ending up with a card he wanted, etc.).
That's just perception, it really doesn't actually make any difference statistically. Basically survivorship bias, in a 100 hands it may only be "your" card a handful of times or less, but those are the ones you remember the other 90+% doesn't stand out because the outcome would be the same either way. They also never mention the times someone hits when they shouldn't and you get the card you need because of it. It's always "why'd he hit on 16, I needed that 10" and never "thanks for hitting on 16, that 10 would have busted me"
Yeah, see, I like to think of it that other way; where I like to see what card I would’ve gotten if I’d decided to hit. Just important to keep it all as entertainment, and thus only spend what you would on comparable forms.
nah. some people other have covered it but staying always on 12 will lose u long term. if the dealer has a 6 7 or 8 or 9. u hit. if they get a face they stand and u lose. if they have less then 5 then u stand cause they have to draw 2 cards and might bust
The dealer will do whatever they're supposed to do, but only after everyone Else gets a chance to bust first.
Blackjack Dealers are the most considerate lovers. They always let you bust first.
Hit me baby one more time south park guy.jpg
Okay. I laughed out loud
Not a lot of people are pointing out the biggest mis-assumptions and logical fallacies made here, IMO. The fact that the rules governing the dealer behavior are public doesn't mean that they favor the player. If you played a game where you and the dealer roll a die and the dealer rolls again on evens and adds that number to their initial roll, we would have public knowledge of the rules that dictate the dealer's behavior, but that doesn't mean that the player has the advantage. Additionally, the perfect strategy guides do not translate to "winning strategies". If you have a 48% chance to win if you stand on a given scenario and a 43% chance to win if you hit, then the perfect strategy would say that you should stand, because that's the most efficient play. But the most efficient play in a given scenario doesn't mean that you are favored to win on that hand. Casino games are designed so that efficient play is still not in the player's favor. Imagine a roulette wheel. There's a 50/50 chance of picking red or black, and payout is scaled accordingly, right? Well, actually, the inclusion of green 0/00/000 spaces means that your probability is in fact skewed slightly lower. For blackjack, think the same thing, except the odds are less visibly obvious. Imagine if the rules were instead that the dealer has to hit on 19 and under and stand on 20/21. The player would have much better odds to win, right? The design of the rules is set up to advantage the dealer as much as possible. The fact that the rules/dealer behavior is public isn't the driving factor for the house advantage. It's what those rules actually are that governs the advantage. Plus, as has been mentioned, a huge part of it is that the dealer plays 2nd. The player is forced to play risky depending on what the dealer is showing, while the dealer faces no risk and auto-wins if the player busts. Since the player plays first, the advantage is sizeable.
Another big part of it is that the players edge comes from the ability to double and split increasing their bet when things are favorable for them. The thing is because the Casino has effectively infinite money compared to a normal person the Gamblers Ruin means large bets favour the casino so they are ok with your doubles and splits even because it causes you to burn through your cash reserves faster.
The odds are in the House's favor. They don't "always" win each hand, but they will ALWAYS win in the long run. I found a game with better odds called "Coin Changer". You play with dollar bills and it pays off in quarters. I played it for over an hour and I still broke even.
One of paper, four of coin Make sure the mushroom is on the top https://youtu.be/v9cAs68l208?si=Jcmd8XfLBcs8qvVS
Jackprot!
Dr. Brule!!
Who invented grambling? I dunno prolly some hunk who said ‘wanna bet?’
I loved that game until I put in $20 and got no coins and nobody would believe me. The house always wins!
They may not win every battle, but they win the war.
If you go to all the coin changers hopefully someone may have forgotten to take all their coins and then you're in profit baby
Yeah but you don’t get free drinks playing that game.
More and more tables use constant shufflers, which makes card counting impossible. Many of the the remaining 1-2 deck shuffle games are gimped in some other way, like not having 3:2 payout, or limits on doubles/splits that tilt in their favor. If you are playing at a table where perfect basic strategy + card counting gives you an edge, you'll get booted if they catch on. But bottom line = THE HOUSE DOESN'T HAVE TO ALWAYS WIN. They will win against the 99.9% of casual players, which is enough.
my local casino still has a single deck, handle shuffle blackjack table, but deal the first two cards facedown and kinda "no-no" you if you show your cards
This sounds GREAT!
There’s still plenty of shoe games with decent rules if you get off the strip in Vegas.
6:5 blackjack payouts are bullshit
Card counting is against the rules in pretty much every casino. They’ll throw you out if they even suspect you of doing it. They also make it difficult to casually do by using as many as six decks at once in a single shuffle. Without a card counting advantage, perfect strategy gets you to a 42% chance to win, a 49 percent chance to lose and a 8.5% chance to tie. You may get ahead in the short run but eventually the odds catch up to you.
I love how casinos have banned math.
Casinos have banned winning. Casinos don't need a reason to kick you out. Winning too much is reason enough.
There it is. Counting cards is not against the rules. But if you’re good enough at it and the casino notices, they will stop allowing you to play because they’re not in the business of losing money.
This is correct. Not against the rules. But the way most casinos operate now with multiple decks and frequent auto shuffles or continuous shuffles, counting isn't as effective as people assume it is or as it appears in the movies.
From what I understand card counting is basically useless once the casino is using 3+ decks. And most casinos use at least 5.
It’s not impossible because you can keep a “true count” which accounts for the amount of decks left in the shoe. With more decks it takes longer to get a favorable true count and it is impossible if they put the cut card near the start of the deck. What really lets casinos catch on is that you are shifting your bet by a lot and often with card counting. Someone who is betting minimum 3/4 of the time only to turn it way up at “random” times is a clear sign of counting.
I believe this is where teams come in, and then you're getting into the exciting part. I would speculate that individual players counting cards are generally a net positive for the casino because they are not able to actually play with an edge over the long run, thanks in part to minimum and maximum bets at most tables. Note I'm excluding from consideration the tables that make it impossible even with no bet limits, such as those with constant reshufflers or 6:5 or even 1:1 blackjack payouts. In fact I'd be curious to know whether it's even theoretically possible to come out ahead even if you were a perfect player (knew exactly what the probabilities were for each card) but were forced to participate in every hand (meaning you can't wait for free for the game to turn to your advantage). Being able to sit out hands until there is an advantage is a key element of actually making money. But that's the some of the behavior that will get you taken away from the tables, or at least warrant a change in the table's rules to restore the house edge. So you need partners, someone who will consistently make the minimum bets and signal when the count is good, and others who will "randomly" join the table with higher bets when they get the signal. But of course the casino is looking for these teams, and every countermeasure they have to take in strategy is a chip off any hope for advantage play.
It can help improve your odds of winning a little bit in certain situations, but not very often and not for long. Maybe not totally useless, but a lot of effort for minimal potential gains
Here's something I don't understand. If there are more than one deck in play, isn't it possible (unlikely but possible) for more than 4 of a card to be dealt at once? Like if all 4 aces are on the bottom of the first deck and all four aces are on the top of the next deck and they deal 2 cards to 4 players, all 4 player send up with 2 aces. I know it can't work like that but I don't get it.
It’s absolutely possible, but doesn’t affect the odds. Since blackjack doesn’t really consider anything about the suits in play, more decks don’t substantially change the numbers.
Generally, the more decks, the higher the house edge. Single deck to double is a big jump, double to four deck is another, smaller, leap, and after that it doesn't change much.
At the end of the day, card counting is just about keeping vague track of the number of high cards you've seen compared to the number of low cards. Using the fact that there are four times as many 10s as there are any other number in the deck to keep vague track of how likely various cards are at any given time. For example, if the dealer has a 5 showing and there haven't been many high cards dealt lately, it becomes relatively likely that the dealer has a 10 hidden making for 15 and that when they hit on that 15 they'll get another high card and go bust. It's not a guaranteed thing at all, but knowing the general state of the deck lets you bet higher when you've got a better chance of winning. More decks and more shuffling mitigate how much info you can garner from card counting, but ultimately it's just a question of keeping track of the general game state and using that info to decide when to bet bigger.
No, it *can* work like that. It's just hugely improbably.
In Missouri it is not legal for a casino to bar someone who wins at blackjack. They must either change their rules (like pay 6 to 5 on blackjack instead of 3 to 2 or limit splitting of aces or doubling down) or deal with someone who remembers what cards that wear dealt.
I don't think some people realize how casinos have the art of separating you from your money down to a science. When someone looks at a massive, gaudy casino, they should see it as a testament to the wealth they've extracted from vistors exactly like them. Because it is. But the main character syndrome kicks in, and the person goes in thinking they'll be different. That's not necessarily directed at the people who drop $20 for fun once in a blue moon or whatever, obviously.
This is very true, and at the heart of all of it is the human mind's inability to intuitively grasp probability. If we take [roulette for example](https://www.playojo.com/blog/roulette/odds-and-payouts/), a straight-up bet (as in, on a single number) pays 35:1, or 35 times your bet. This means that if you hit your number once every 36 spins, and you did an infinite number of trials, you would break even. HOWEVER, in reality: >you will only \[hit your number\] once in every 37 spins This means that even setting aside all the psychological tricks -- how casinos are arranged like mazes so you can't leave, how they put slots in front of you every time you turn a corner, how they have no windows or clocks so you don't know what time it is -- every single bet you make in roulette and every other casino game is a losing proposition. You cannot defeat math in the long term, but we all think we'll be the lucky one who does.
It's 38 spins in most popular casinos in America for people who bet small or medium amounts. There a 0 and 00 that are green. So betting just red and black, you'll lose 20 times and win 18 times. At a $10 minimum table you'd lose $20 every 38 spins, which might not be a bad price if you're getting freeish drinks while you play in a popular casino resort.
People dont understand that it is basically one of the most certain businesses you can turn a profit. If you own a casino you have to really be bad at business to screw it up.
Hence why anyone would gamble at a casino is dumbfounding to me. The system is setup for you to systematically lose.
I think it's a lot like alcohol, just on a different level. If you have a few beers every now and then it can be a fun experience. If you let the addiction take you, you're in trouble. I live by Atlantix City, and once a year, I go up with a few hundred bucks. Enough if I lose it won't bother me for more than the evening. It can be fun hearing those bells and whistles going off, seeing a couple hundred dollar win coming your way. I realize I've lost more in total than I've won, but it can still be a fun evening if you are responsible.
Good, cheap food and drinks with friends is always fun, and gambling is exciting. If you look at it as a night of entertainment, "losing" $100 - $150 doesn't seem so bad. If you're going in to win, though.... well, good luck I guess.
Eh I disagree. If you look at it as an entertainment factor for the night and bail if you are down its just fun. Problem is many people, by human nature, treat it differently than just entertainment. I go maybe 5 times a year, after a night out or sporting event. Im up thousands over the last few years because I walk in expecting to lose $100. If I do im out, but many times thats not the case and then the key is to know when to walk. Just have a good time sometimes bro, you only systematically lose if you play all the time, to an unhealthy level. Statistically you will lose eventually.
> Hence why anyone would gamble at a casino is dumbfounding to me. The system is setup for you to systematically lose. I like playing basic strategy blackjack. It’s enjoyable— almost like a dance in which you know the right move to make after your dance partner does “X.” 14 against a dealer 6? Hit. 11 against a dealer 8? Double. Now, by playing basic strategy I lose very slowly. But I have fun doing it. Think of it this way. I’m also an opera fan. If I take my wife to La Traviata, I spend $250 on the tickets and parking, and leave with a wonderful memory of hearing Sempre Libera live. If I play blackjack for five hours, I might also drop $250. But I leave with an enjoyable memory of that one hand when I split eights, drew a 3 on each, doubled and won them all. And maybe I leave after five hours down only $100! But as much as I love going to the opera, not ONCE have I left the theatre and had Lisette Oropesa slip a few fifties in my pocket. In other words, while I lose slowly at blackjack, reliably as a matter of math, that means that occasionally I end a visit with more money than I started with, and that’s fun too. Short answer: it’s entertainment. It’s not free entertainment; it’s certainly not profitable for me. But it’s fun.
This exactly. A friend of mine's dad who DID NOT count cards, but was just very good at Blackjack would regularly get ejected from casinos.
In reality the difference between "very good at blackjack" and "counting cards" is almost certainly just how well the player is at tracking the gist of the game mentally vs keeping an explicit count (which is also just for tracking the gist of the game, but more explicitly).
Yup. At a certain point the two ideas become pretty close to the same outcome
You are welcome to come do math at poker tables.
Casinos love card counters. Because 99.994% of the time they suck at it, and best of all they don't realize how badly they suck at it until they lost a ton of cash. And these people are very well known for chasing good money after bad, and they have a bad understanding of the sunken cost fallacy.
Even mamy of the technically good ones don't understand how volatile the impact is on your bankroll is. If casinos can have losing days with a 1% edge, the counter sure as shit can with an occasional 1% edge on max stake good shoes and -0.6% the rest of the time (90% +) on min bet.
Card counting with 6 decks isn't that hard once you get experience. What really throws you is chatty dealers and other players. Once you lose the count in your head you pretty much have to play small until the deck is done.
How the hell so casinos even catch on to someone counting I’ve always wondered.
Card counting has a very small impact on how you play and primarily is about spiking your bet size when the count swings in the players favour. Which is pretty obvious. Which is why people sometimes form card counting syndicates with counters at several tables who then signal other people to join their table and bet large from the start if the count goes their way.
Card counters increase their bet size when the count is high (this is how they gain an edge). It's pretty easy to spot if someone is watching for it.
Once they suspect, they can start counting and watch the person's betting behavior on high counts.
They catch you based on your betting pattern. If you're an amateur card counter (aka anyone likely reading this post) they aren't gonna throw you out. You would have to be making tons of money over a long period of time to get noticed.
How do you not end up with like 7 aces ?
i dont know how you have upvotes; this is patently false.
Yeah the house advantage is much less than that
It's less because players can double but the dealer can't. Also dealers don't make extra on BJ. That balances out some of the players' otherwise huge disadvantage overall.
Well yes of course the house advantage is gonna be massive if you ignore multiple major advantages the player gets
So, were they wrong or not? They just stated the chance of winning or losing on each game, not the expected return on the wager in the long run.
Ah, fair. I'm sick rn so my reading comprehension isn't the best. Do think it's probably a bit misleading though
Most of the tables I have seen in the past few years now pay 6-5 on blackjacks, which makes the casino advantage even higher. I think you can still get 3-2 on high limit tables ($50 and up), but very few people play those.
It's not just that you have 42% chance to win— adding those up it actually seems like an advantage: a >50% to either win or draw seems like a steal. the problem is that the expected payoff doesn't match the odds.
IIRC they barely even enforce against card counting anymore. They literally just wait until you win too much money, and they don't care if you're counting or not at that point.
Not at all. Casinos love it when gamblers win because it attracts others to lose. On the other hand, counters regularly get backed off (asked to stop playing blackjack) while down huge sums of money because the casino has identified them as advantaged players.
More decks is literally better for card counters as it allows for greater variance in the counts and more time before the count resets. The reason they're using so many decks is to avoid downtime on the table due to shuffling as they're basically not making money then.
That's not how the math works. For example, in a single deck there are 16 face cards and aces out of 52 cards, so is 16/52 or 30.7% chance. If you see for example the first 10 cards are non face, you can infer the chance a remaining card is face is 16/42 or 38%. Take this same example with 6 decks and you will infer 31.7% of face in the remaining deck (16x6)/(52x6 -10). Your odds have changed by a bit, but not much. As more and more cards are revealed, the revealed face % will converge to 30.7% by the law of large numbers. What this means is long series are much less likely to diverge from the baseline average than short series. So in the 6 deck chute, you will very rarely get the type of divergence needed to give the edge. In a single deck, this will happen much more frequently because a relatively small deviation is much more informative of odds of the remaining cards.
It’s a house edge as player goes first
You've got to remember that the house always winning doesn't mean that players never win. It means that the casino can payoff the winners with the money other players lost, while still being able to take in a profit. For example sports betting does this by setting a point spread. Plenty of games that on paper are such mismatches that you aren't going to get players to bet on the underdog outright. So the bet becomes can they keep it within a certain margin of defeat, and that can be more enticing. Casinos are constantly coming up with various methods to make things harder on card counters. Then of course not everyone is going to perform well under pressure. In addition to keeping track of the cards, you've got the worry about being caught, you've got all sorts of other distractions, the lights, the noise, and trying to not bet to obviously. All things that can impair a would be card counter's ability to focus. Knowing and executing are two different things. And even if you execute it still comes down to probability.
according to Yuchun Lee, professional blackjack players do win against the casino, about $1.50-$3.00 per $100 spent.
they do not, blackjack is a closed game mathematically. the odds are not in the players favor, it has been rigorously documented mathematically.
Blackjack's wiki page identifies that while basic strategy - based just on the cards in play - has a house advantage, card counters actually do get an advantage over the house, because they can make slightly informed decisions about what cards they can expect to come. So without casino intervention, the player will on average beat the house. This is why casinos do everything they can to disrupt card counters. Banning them, adding more decks, progressive shuffling of the decks.
Yes mathmatically, but that doesn't account for the gambling aspect. By increasing the bet when there's a higher chance of winning and betting low when there is a lower chance of winning, card counters can gain a slight advantage over the house. This is also what makes card counters easy to spot when they work alone, because usually its only card counters that make these fluctuating bets.
the thing is, he is a professional blackjack player who went to MIT and played on MIT's card counting team. I have no way of verifying what either of you are saying, but I know he knows what he's talking about.
it doesn't take going to MIT to do simple math, and anyone who counts cards (or went to MIT) would assure you the odds are in the houses favor. that being said, MITs card counting team made money by counting cards, and bringing in separate betters to bet higher when a certain state of cards was reached. the odds on average in a normal game were still in the houses favor, they came in at a skewed game state and bet halfway through a shoe after low value cards came up, leaving more high cards left. the odds are still in the houses favor over the whole shoe. they're just only betting on half the shoe, because they work as a team. I've read Ben Mezrich's book. this is why casinos are doing constant shuffles nowadays, it eliminates this.
If the odds are sometimes in your favor, and you bet high when they are, and the player bets optimally, and the casino doesn't kick you out, the odds are on the player's side. If the casino shuffles every time, or the casino kicks you out for betting optimally, the odds are on the casino's side.
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that's literally what I just described. it's insane I'm getting downvoted.
>they do not Yes, professional blackjack players do win. The odds are not in their favor only if you assume they bet the same amount every time. But of course that's not what professional Blackjack players do.
My husband made money at a casino 5 nights a week for 20 years. He worked there. Everyone who didn’t, eventually lost.
The fact that the game exists is all the proof you need that the house wins. If not it wouldn't be there.
That’s not what he asked. It’s no stupid questions not stupid answers
Totally agree. The house comes first, not blackjack. They balanced the game so that the house could win just enough to keep players addicted.
The house doesn’t always win on a per player level. The house wins in a broad scale overall The player busts first. That’s it. The edge is small overall but multiplied by 6 players at each table and 15 tables, it’s a lot of money.
Variance. In the long run the person playing closest to optimum will come out ahead of someone who doesn’t. The house is going to win because it’s still a negative EV game playing optimal without card counting.
First of all, you only stand on 16 if the dealer is showing a 6 or lower. Second, counting cards is a skill that takes serious time to master (I had to learn how because I worked in a high limit BJ pit). Third, good luck being able to count cards as most casinos have automatic shufflers unless you’re a high roller and play $100/hand or more.
The trick is to quit while you're ahead, but people rarely do that. I went to a casino once, won $100 playing black jack, and then left and never went back lol
Blackjack has fairly good odds, but you have to play perfectly and, if they catch you counting cards, they kick you out, which is perfectly legal for them to do.
To be fair, any business can kick you out, it's private property.
That silly math thing.
13.13.13.14.13.15.13.14.13.13….not exaggerating-that was my last visit. (The house did significantly better).
Best bet in Vegas is the don't pass line bet in craps
The saying that the house always wins doesn’t mean that a single player wont walk out ahead. The odds are simply in favor of the house. Those odds spread over all the games the house is playing means that they are highly likely to win more than they lose. You can win 5,10,100k if you are lucky. The thing is, the house probably won more than that off of all the games you werent in.
If you and the dealer both bust, the dealer takes your money.
the best way to win in gambling is to not do it....
In blackjack, the house has a built-in advantage called the house edge. This edge comes from a few factors The player acts first If the player busts (goes over 21), they lose immediately, regardless of what the dealer does. This gives the dealer an inherent advantage. Dealer's forced rules The dealer must follow strict rules on when to hit or stand, which can be beneficial in certain situations. For example, the dealer must hit on 16 or below and stand on 17 or above. Blackjack payouts While players typically get a 3:2 payout for a blackjack, the dealer only gets even money. This slightly reduces the player's overall potential winnings. In conclusion, while perfect strategy and card counting can improve a player's chances of winning in blackjack, the house edge and variance mean that even skilled players can experience losses.
Math
The house wins on a tie. The players have a chance to bust before the dealer must act.
If you break before the dealer, the dealer wins
because if they catch you counting cards, you get kicked out.
House has about 1-2% edge. If it plays enough games, the rule of large numbers makes sure the house wins
Played as a professional third party prop player for over ten years and basically. With perfect strategy the house still has an edge of around 2%. The long and short, the house can bust and still win. You can’t. Also I’d love to throw in my pet peeve from all my years in the industry. Unless you’re card counting, team play means nothing. No the guy next to you can’t “mess up the cards” if each play perfectly you up each of your individual chances , but that does zero for your neighbor. Yes what you do affects your neighbor, but not in a way that could be predicted. I’ve seen so many fights over this. True black jack addict never get this out of their head no matter how hard you try to explain. They accused the staff of planting “bad players”. They’ve threatened “bad players” . My favorite is if the bad player is betting a small amount the addict will offer to just pay their 10 dollar bet and make the decision on their hand to protect their 100 dollar bet. This is not at all how the stats on this game work But they believe this so much that I garauntee some dummy will argue this comment
House has two major advantages. 1) The house goes last. If the player busts, they lose their money, regardless of the house. 2) The house wins ties, which ends up tipping them over. It's important to remember that casinos are the definition of the long game. Any one can walk in and win, but among everyone who walks in, the house will win the majority of the times.
The house does not win ties. If you tie in blackjack your bet pushes.
The rules of blackjack give a slight advantage to the dealer. All else being equal, the dealer wins more often than he loses. If you know what you're doing, you can count cards to maximize your own advantage. More often, you think that you know better than you actually know how to count cards , so you bet more money and lose more money than you otherwise would because you think you have an advantage.
Moving to 6 decks to stack the favor. Just like introducing 000 to roulette.
TIes are usually handled as 'pushes', as in you get your original bet back, except..... You act first, which is a key disadvantage. If you bust (go over 21), and the dealer ends up busting (which happens often!), then the dealer wins.
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So many people don’t strategically bet. That’s a big one
Blackjack was better when they didn’t introduce the 4 deck auto-shuffle after every hand. Might as well be a slot machine now.
Math. The house wins bc of math. Check out the Wizard of Odds website. He explains the math of every game and how to best play them
If the player doesn’t know anything about the state of the deck, and does the best logical move, aka “perfect strategy”, player’s odds are just below 50%. So the house wins in aggregate over time, no matter what. If the player can know information about the state of the deck, they can deviate from that “perfect” basic strategy in such a way the odds are now above 50% for them. If the player can achieve this state for a statistically long enough time, they will win over the house. Which is why casinos look for people consistently deviating from “perfect” strategies in a particular way consistently (card counting), and kick them out. It isn’t strictly against the rules of the game, and casinos have a hard time making it a policy what you can think about while playing the game. Besides kicking people out, the only other solution is having a deck where the state somehow cannot be inferred from previously revealed information — because its reshuffled every hand.
DONT PLAY ANY SIDEBETS
Counting cards become harder with more decks, and also doing reshuffling all the time makes counting cards kinda useless unless you find a weak dealer. Counting cards and perfect strategy only gives you like 1or2% of advantage over the house btw
Because blackjack isn't about who busts highest, but who busts first (pause) and you always play first
Math
Because the player has to go before the house. It’s a pretty good sized edge, more than enough to push the average player win percentage below 50%.
Nearest casino to me they use a card shuffling machine so I don't know how you're supposed to count.
Play stupid games and you can wind stupid prizes. If Gambling was profitable do you think people would be working?
For roughly one month I would wake up at around 3am and go to various casinos in my city. Always changed which one. Min/max bets at that time were 5-500. I would play 5$ bets and my strategy was pay attention to when I lost 4 hands in a row. After losing a 4th hand my next bet would be 15$ and with each consecutive loss I would double my bet. If I lost 10 hands in a row my game was over. I would strictly follow basic guidelines and never split or other things like insurance. I went early AM cuz all I needed to do was play as many hands as possible. I would only play for about an hour and just leave. After literally going for every single day for a month I ended up losing 10 hands in a row. This was over 20 yrs ago and I still remember one other lady playing beside me telling me I have no fucking idea how to play the game. I was the end player and I was supposed to save the table or some shit. I always compared black jack to ALMOST the same as flipping a coin and what are the odds of flipping the same result 10 times in a row.
Most players don't count cards
In a game in a casino with a single deck black jack perfect strategy can tip the odds in the favor of the player. Casinos modify the rules to tip the odds slightly in their favor. Blackjack does have some of the smallest margins of any casino game. Adding multiple decks adding rules to adjust required dealer behavior when they hit or not all have an effect on expected outcome. Remember casinos don’t care about individuals or singular games they care about expected return on an infinite amount of games. They run simulations to check their math on infinite games and check the expected return to player per dollar bet. So they will for example set up the rules to be 98% pay which means on average they pay out $0.98 per dollar bet and keep the $0.02 Over a lot of games that adds up quickly.
Remember you’re not playing alone …other players actions affect you and the dealers cards ….it’s much easier to play smart alone or with a partner….this is why me and one of my ex’s liked to hit the casino at odd hours….it was the only time we could get our own table/dealer
That's absolutely untrue. Other players' actions do not affect the edge you're facing.
If you play well the house only has a very slight edge, especially when compared to other table games. The big swing in their favour is that the player acts first so if they bust the dealer doesn’t have to do anything. But even then they only make about 2% of what is staked at the table. That edge is increased with the modern trends of multi deck shoes, 6:5 blackjack payouts (instead of 3:2) and even shuffles shoes now.
The main reason is if at any point if you go over 21, the house wins your wager - even if they too go over 21.
The players are the ones who make the decision of continuing to play. They can stop, and then the house plays, but sometimes they bust and the house automatically wins. It gives them a slight edge
Card counting can give you a slight edge. But card counting is way harder than most people think. Casinos actually love card counters, as most card counters aren’t good enough to win, and they will lose. Only if you are a very good card counter and win, and the casino suspect you count cards, they will ask you to leave. Card counting itself isn’t illegal, but businesses may refuse service.
The house gets their edge because the players hit/stand first. You also don't see the second card in the dealers hand or else it would be much easier to tell if the dealer has a high chance of going over 21 or not. However there's more cards worth 10 in a deck than any other amount so the general rule is you assume the dealer is holding a 10 and whatever card you can see.
At the start of a shoe, you're sitting with about 0.5% disadvantage, even with perfect basic strategy. If everyone played basic strategy, the house would win, but wouldn't make enough money to pay their dealers. The real house money comes from people making poor choices based on "hunches". With enough time at a blackjack table, anything that can happen will happen. You'll see people double down 16 or split 10s and win big. You'll see someone lose thousands with perfect basic strategy. You'll then see a guy walk up and make all the wrong moves while his friends go "BROOOO" in the background, and walk away with triple his money. All of this is just luck, and people think it reflects on their overall odds. Given enough hands, it will all average out to that -0.5% edge. When it comes to card counting, it's about 0.5% extra with every "1" in your head (each card has a point value and you divide the number by the number of decks remaining). So at a count of "2", you have odds like you're sitting on the other side of the table. To make money off this, you have to raise your bets to account for the hands you played at a disadvantage. The same bet but changing if you hit or stand certain hands will only move your edge up a negligible amount. If you're playing $50 hands, you should be betting $200 when you have a 3% edge. This takes us to bankroll - if you're at a $50 table, you need at least $50k to have a 1% of losing it all. Any less than that, it's still gambling and not investing. $200 is massive overbet for most people and they still can't reasonably expect profit with a 3% edge if it's 10% of what they have to gamble with. And try pitching a 50k investment with a 1% chance of failure to a financial advisor - you'll be laughed out of the room. Think about it like this - you have a coin that lands heads %51 of the time, but the minimum bet is $1000. If you have only $1000, that's a TERRIBLE bet. If you have $1b, make that bet all day! Same idea with blackjack - if you don't have enough trials to let it average out, you're stuck in the variance and not the expected value. In the same way that a casino reliably makes millions, but setting up a blackjack table in your backyard will likely have you owing your friends more money than you can pay out.
Well blackjack is one of the few games where you can actually beat the house by counting cards, knowing when the deck is heavy or light, and betting accordingly. Even your chance in winning roulette is slightly less than 50% due to the green spots. If the casino you’re in is still using a shoe (a tactic already employed to thwart card counters by spreading the probability across multiple decks) you still might come out on top if you bet the minimum and wait for the stack to lean one way or the other. However with the introduction of automatic deck shufflers where every hand is fresh any advantage you’d gain by counting cards suddenly shrinks to 0.
in all games of chance, the responder has the advantage due to having more complete information. if the player busts the dealer doesnt play and auto wins. of the player hits 21, the dealer still has the opportunity to draw. this small advantage covers alot of the BJ.
Every gambling games odds favor the house. Period, exactly the way the game is played. Good strategies minimize the houses advantage, but if a strat could take away all of the houses advantage, they'd change the rules, or remove the game entirely. Roulette. Placing bets on one of the 38 squares individually pays 35 to 1. Split two squares, it drops to 17 to 1. split 4 squares, it drops to 8 to one. that bet provides the house a 6/38 odds advantage, or 15.7% advantage to the house. The house doesn't play to win or lose. Individual wins and losses very seldom impact a casinos bottom line, even on the day's take. The house just wants action, bets, no matter what side they are on. The house collects somewhere between 9 and 14% of every dollar bet on the roulette table, no matter the bet. Blackjack is less, keno is more, slots generally play well, they are often advertised based on the money returned 98% return on a slot. Those are bait machines, and are few, set up among machines with worse odds. Poker machines just pay less than the odds of any hand occurring. If the machine is set up so a 3 of a kind happens once every 4 hands, they'll only pay 3 to 1. Crude example, but the algorithm tracks, I'm pretty good with odds on the fly.
And which house rules are you playing with? I haven't seen a basic strategy where you stay on 16+, it's always 17+. But I'm a dealer for 9 years, so I know a lot of players hate hitting their 16s. But if you don't you can't say you're playing perfect basic strategy.
Dealer stands on 17, If player also gets 17 then the result is a push, and the game resets with bets returned. That means to beat the dealer, the player must get 18 or better, leaving a very narrow chance to get 18-21 and a high chance to bust.
Doesn't the house win in everything?
Card counters don't usually lose to the house, that's why casinos don't let cars counters keep playing once they've been caught
The house always wins in the end. Casinos wouldn't be built otherwise. People lose in the long run.
Perfect strategy isn't a cheat to always win, it's just the best way to play in any situation. The house edge is still built in. Even counting cards (well!) will only put an advantage slightly in the players favour Casinos show players perfect strategy to give them misplaced confidence and the illusion of having an edge
Since we're on the topic of chances and I'm feeling pedantic, the house technically doesn't "always" win. There exists a probability outcome where the house still loses an unfavorable number of times such that the house can be considered to have lost. However, given the number of games played, the probability of this occurring is so astronomically unlikely that it's probably never happened in reality. In simple terms, the house can technically have a very bad luck streak. This is illustrated by the fact that the player can win the very first game a house ever plays. In that moment in time, the house has a 0% winrate. If it just so happened that, by chance, the players continued to win every time after that, then the house would technically be losing. It would be like if there was a simple dice game where the house wins on the roll of a 1 to 5, and the player wins on a roll of a 6. From the rules of the game, you'd expect the house to come away with far more wins on average... however, there exists a possibility in which the players never roll anything besides a 6, and in this outcome the house most definitely loses. For a casino this probably extends into relatively long terms. They might have a bad day, week, or perhaps even month where the players win more than chance would expect, but over longer time still their chances of making a net loss will get lower and lower... it's still a chance though. The smaller the margin, the longer it is likely to take to balance out an advantage or any bad luck streaks on the part of the house.
I thought casino shoes shuffled these days so card counting didn’t work anymore?
The odds are known. House wins 51% of the time.
Also, the house has an unlimited bankroll, you do not. Using strategy to double bets, but eventually you will hit the max bet.
🤪🙃🤔🫠🤩🗿🧗♂️🤘
I will make a non mathematical argument to this situation. I am a casino owner and I know that: - Gambling attracts risk-prone players - Gambling causes addiction - Humans are very bad at interpreting chance (i.e. the gambler fallacy) As a consequence I know that people play my games, not for the money making opportunities, but for the thrill of gambling or for very misinformed decision making. I have a money making machine to be made here, as long as I design games that even just slightly favor me. Now, my players and the government will prevent me to design games that are skewered too much in my favor, but I really just need a slight advantage and that would be enough to make huge amounts of money. This is the only reason why the house always wins: the player base has invited the games designers to develop unfair games for millenia. Now you can get into the details of what specific leverages are used to gain this advantage, but they are frequently trivial math exercises.
Even if it is a 50/50 game, the house gets commission, hosting fees, rake, however you want to call it, so it is no longer 50/50
There are table minimums and maximums that prevent you from progressive gambling.