How to Choose Your Blackjack Games
If you consider to play Blackjack, the first thing that may come to your mind is probably ‘where to play’ question. Fortunately, nowadays, casinos offer single deck Blackjack, especially amongst online casinos that have automatic card shufflers built into the software. However, only the fact of offering single deck Blackjack is not enough to say whether to play at that online casino or to choose another one. Remember that it is essential to really be familiar with all rules before starting the game. Without a doubt, choosing a single deck to play is more profitable than choosing multiple decks. As far as handicaps are considered, two decks in comparison with one deck raises your disadvantage by .35%. Moreover, playing with 8 decks makes your handicap to raise by almost .6%. Numbers may sound silly, however for anybody who knows Blackjack strategy, every tenth of a percent has some meaning. Here you may wonder, is this small gain worth it? Well, not really in a case that you are getting paid 6:5 for a Blackjack.
Furthermore, a very common trick that casinos like to employ is to offer 6:5 for a Blackjack instead of the standard 3:2. Even if this sound better, the truth is that in terms of payout on a $10 bet, 3:2 would pay $15 while 6:5 would pay only $12. Probably 15$ doesn’t sound like much, but if you consider you your overall odds and the Casinos Edge the difference may be huge. In details, this trick is based on a fact that instead of a reasonable .58% Casinos Edge playing eight-deck blackjack with a 3:2 “natural 21″ payout, a single deck game with a 6:5 payout on a hand of blackjack comes with a 1.4% Casinos Edge, and this is a real huge difference that can be clearly seen.
Thinking about it more, in case that you would like to play 60 hands per hour (a low estimate when playing at an online casino), the predictable loss on the 3:2 eight-deck game using the perfect strategy would be about $3.50/hour, on the other hand, $8.35/hour on the 6:5 single-deck game. This couples of examples should definitely make you avoiding games of Blackjack that pays 6:5. Just be really careful with choosing your Blackjack table, because some online together with land-based casinos may advertise this kind of Blackjack like the more profitable than 3:2.
Finally, before you start to play Blackjack, know your math, and choose Blackjack that have the fewest decks, the one that allow early and late surrender, allow multiple pair splitting, re-splitting of Aces, doubling down on any two cards (including after splitting pairs), and, what is very important, require the dealer to stand on a soft 17. One more tip concerning the play itself, while playing together with using perfect strategy, keep in mind having enough bankroll to get you through extended lengths of game. What always will help you to put yourself in a profitable margin is doubling down when strategy dictates.
