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Blackjack Odds

Before winning at blackjack, it would be vital to know about blackjack odds. Those who succeed at blackjack can manipulate these odds to their favor just by basing their actions and bet sizes on their future expectations. These expectations are based on the information that they have: the cards they see and the deck's overall composition.

Odds and Odds Variations

With the proper basic strategy, blackjack odds can be found out on multiple decks to around .45% of the edge. Basically, you can just expect to say goodbye to 45 cents with every $100 bet that you make. Although this doesn't necessarily mean that you will always lose $0.45 cents from every $100 bet, but as time goes by, this is what will usually happen.

If you do not use the basic strategy of blackjack and just play hunches, the house edge could rise to 5%, if not more. Insurance would be around 7% of the house edge, as well, so this should always be avoided.

Several casinos have different rules from dealers standing with a soft 17 and have them hit on a soft 17 instead. This particular change can boost the casino advantage to around 0.66%. The options of surrender, which let you surrender 50% of your bet, as well as forfeit your hand, offer up quite an advantage with proper use, as well. This will knock down the house advantage to 0.35% for favorable rules to soft 17s and around 0.55% for rules that are less favorable.

Other Things You Need to Know

Other versions of blackjack that appear to provide odds that are more favorable might not actually be very beneficial in the end. A lot of blackjack games which provide better odds and payouts for things like insurance and blackjack put Spanish decks to use. Such decks have 10s removed, though face cards stay. Because decks filled with 10-value cards usually favor players, this counters favorable game odds much more effectively overall.