Blackjack Probability Of Winning
Posted : admin On 7/28/2022If you want to become better at playing blackjack and increase your chances of winning, then what you really have to do is to play the blackjack odds and figure out how you can benefit from following these general rules. It may take a bit of practice to really get your head around it all and start thinking about it in a more natural way, but once you get there you will find that you are able to play a lot better and really increase your chances of winning by looking carefully at everything that you need to do in order to win more often.
The way that you can use the blackjack odds to good effect is by first working out that the chances of any card coming up in a normal deck are one in fifty two, but then you have to take into consideration the fact that certain cards are worth the same amount. Therefore, when you draw an extra card from the deck, you have a four in fifty two (or two in twenty seven) chance of getting a card with a value of two, and the same goes for those with values of three, four, five, six, seven, eight, or nine, as well as of the next card being an ace which can be worth either one or eleven. When you get to ten things become a little more complicated however: you have not only the four 10s, but also the four kings, the four jacks, and the four queens to think about, which means that there is a sixteen in fifty two chance of getting a card worth ten (or an eight in twenty seven chance). What this means is that there is always a higher chance of a card with higher worth coming up – but it is always also important to note which cards you have in your hand at the moment and what you can see of the dealer’s hand, because these will have an impact on what can possibly come out of the deck. If you are playing in a land based environment and there are other players with you, then you can also take their cards into account – although you must also be wary just in case you are playing at a casino where more than one deck is used, which will again change the odds considerably.
Odds of being dealt a blackjack – About 4.83% Odds are just the likelihood that something will happen. As a blackjack player you deal with this all the time. Lets look at a couple real examples to show you what I mean. The true odds of winning are 37 to 1 or 38 to 1, not the 36 to 1 that is the most the player can get paid on a winning bet. The house edge, the odds advantage in its favor, represents the average. Blackjack odds are percentage figures which represent your probability of losing or winning a hand. They can also represent the house edge or their profit margins as well. Usually probability odds don't mean much on the short term, but they clearly average out in the long term and this is why the casinos always win over the long term.
Looking at a blackjack strategy guide you will find that the odds are often easier to work out when you are in a land based game because you have more information to work on, though the catch 22 is the fact that you will also not have as much time or space to work it out in – you can hardly whip out a pen and piece of paper and start making the calculations there on the blackjack table! We will talk about playing online when using this technique instead, because it gives you more time to think about things and work out what you need. If you think about a hand which is worth fifteen points to start with, then you can easily work out what you need to know in order to make a well informed decision about whether to take another card or not, as for many people this would be an issue that really needed thinking about. You need a card with a score of six or less in order to avoid going bust, and this means that the cards from ace to six would be good options: that gives you a twenty four in fifty two chance of the right card coming in. On the other hand, cards from a seven and upwards would not work for you, so you would be looking at a chance of twenty eight in fifty two of the wrong card coming in. There is not much between these two options, so in many ways you may wish to take that risk even though the odds lean a little towards the fact that you will go bust; but if you want to take it to the next level, then you also have to consider the cards that you can see on the table and which make up your own hand.
The way that these affect the blackjack odds is very important, so imagine that your hand was made up of a king and a 5 to make that fifteen. If you are playing a form of blackjack in which you can also see one of the dealer’s cards face up while you are taking your turn, then let us say that he has a 10 sitting on his side of the table – so you know already that three cards cannot be coming out of the deck next, specifically those which you can see. This means that the chance of a card worth seven to ten coming up is reduced by two, since two of them are already on the table, which now gives you a twenty six in fifty two chance of the wrong card being next. There is also one card between one and six which now cannot come up, reducing your chances of still being in the game after the next draw down to twenty three in fifty two. In this case the general relation of the odds to one another has remained more or less the same, but if you had a hand that was made up of a five, a six, and a four (because you had already taken a card) and the dealer had a three you might seriously think twice about taking another.
Far and away the most important thing about looking at the blackjack odds is that you take them in relation to one another, and that you use all of the information that is available to you to calculate quickly what the chances are. At first you may take a while to work it out each time, which you can freely do when playing online, but you will improve.
Numbers Dont Lie
By Henry Tamburin
Dominator, who is my good friend and fellow blackjack instructor, will probably kill me when he reads this article. Hes always preaching to me that blackjack players 'dont want to know how the clock works, they just want to know what time it is, so dont bore them with a lot of numbers.' But Ive decided to risk life and limb and discuss some of the more important blackjack statistics in my column this month, because I believe it helps players better understand the fundamentals of winning blackjack strategies. Ive got to admit, however, that numbers are boring to most folks, so I crafted this article as a fun quiz (at least I hope you find it entertaining, as well as informative). So lets get going, and Dom, if you are reading this have mercy on me.
1.Ignoring ties, the percentage of hands that you can expect to win when you play blackjack is about:
a. 45 percent
b. 48 percent
c. 50 percent
Answer: b. When you ignore the 9 percent of the hands that tie, you can expect to win 48 percent of the hands dealt to you, and lose 52 percent. Notice that you will lose significantly more hands than you win. So how do you win money playing blackjack? For starters, the average amount of money that you win on the winning hands is slightly greater than a single betting unit because the latter are sometimes hands where you get a blackjack and are paid at 3-2, or you double down and win double the amount of your bet. Losing hands, on the other hand, often lose only a single betting unit. The result is that monetarily you will be close to, but not quite even when you play (this assumes that you use the basic playing strategy for all your hands). If you want to go a step further and win much more money on winning hands compared to the amount you will lose on losing hands, so that overall you show a gain, then youve got to learn card counting.
2.If you are dealt three consecutive hands, what is the chance that they will all lose, excluding ties?
a. 1 percent
b. 14 percent
c. 30 percent
Answer: b. You have about a 14 percent chance of losing three hands in a row when you play blackjack. Surprised? Most players probably guess 1 percent because they figure the chance of this happening is very low. Well it isnt, so dont panic and abandon the basic playing strategy when it happens.
3.How frequently does a player get a blackjack?
a. Once every 15 hands
b. Once every 21 hands
c. Once every 30 hands
Answer: b. The game is 21 and you can expect to get a blackjack once in every 21 hands. This brings me to the point why I harp that you should never play any blackjack game that pays 6-5, instead of 3-2, for a winning blackjack. Suppose you play two hours worth of blackjack on one of the heavily advertised, $10 minimum, 6-5 single deck games. Lets assume you are dealt 100 hands per hour, so over the course of two hours you played 200 hands of blackjack. Getting a blackjack once every 21 hands means that you should theoretically have gotten about 10 blackjacks. Sometimes youll get more blackjacks in two hours of play, sometimes less, but on average youll get 10. Each of those blackjack hands cost you $3 on a 6-5 game (the difference between getting paid 3-2 vs. 6-5, or $12 instead of $15, for your $10 wager). So you forked over $30 to the casino for the privilege of playing a single deck game (yeah, right). Save your money and avoid playing any 6-5 single deck games.
4.How frequently does a basic strategy player bust?
a. Once every six hands
b. Once every eight hands
c. Once every ten hands
Answer. a. A basic strategy player can expect to bust about 16 percent of the time or once every six hands. When a player busts, he always loses. Not so with the dealer (see next question).
5.How frequently does the dealer bust?
a. One time out of every seven hands
b. Two times out of every seven hands
c. Three times out of every seven hands.
Answer: b. The dealer busts about 28 percent of the time, or about two times out of every seven hands. Unlike a player bust, the dealer often wins when she busts, because players who act first and bust automatically lose (this is how the house has a built-in edge in blackjack). The 28 percent is an average over all possible dealer upcards. In fact, the dealer will bust significantly more times when she shows a 2-6 upcard (about 42 percent with a 5 or 6 upcard), and much less with a 7 through Ace upcard (with an Ace, its only 17 percent after checking for a natural). Because the dealers chance of busting is higher when she shows a small upcard, you should not risk busting a 12-16 stiff hand and should always stand (with two exceptions - its slightly better to hit a 12 against a dealers 2 or 3). However, when the dealer shows a strong upcard from 7 though Ace and has a much lower risk of busting, you should be more aggressive and hit your stiff hands until your hand totals 17 or more (even if it means you risk busting).
6.You can expect your initial two-card hand to be a hard 12-17 about:
a. 30 percent of the time
b. 35 per cent of the time
c. 43 percent of the time
Answer: c. About 43 percent of the time youll be holding a 12 through 17, and the only way you can win is if the dealer busts, or you improve your hand. So any time you hold a 12 through 17 its bad news and you should expect to lose. In fact, approximately 85 percent of your financial losses occur with these hands. The best you can do when you are holding a 12 through 17 is to play your hand optimally using the basic playing strategy to minimize your losses.
7.The dealer has an Ace upcard. What is the chance she has a 10 in the hole for blackjack?
a. 15 percent
b. 24 percent
c. 31 percent
Answer: c. The dealer will have a ten four times out of 13, or roughly 31 percent of the time. The remaining 9 out of 13, or 69 percent of the time, the dealer wont have a 10 in the hole. When you make the insurance bet, you are betting that the dealer has a ten in the hole when she shows an Ace. Assume you make a $10 insurance wager. Four times youll win $20 on the insurance bet (2 to 1 payoff odds) for a total win of $80. The other nine times you will lose $10 on your insurance bet for a total loss of $90. In other words, you lost more than you won. Therefore, its wise to never make the insurance bet.
8.The edge that card counters have over the casino is approximately:
a. 1 percent
b. 10 percent
c. 50 percent
Answer: a. Most players are surprised at the tiny one percent edge that card counters have over the house. Oftentimes, depending upon the game and the card counting system being used, the card counters edge is even less. With an edge this small, it means in the short run, luck will play a great role in the fortunes of a card counter, even though he will show a profit in the long-run.
So how did you do on the questions? It really doesnt matter how many you got right or wrong, but whether or not I motivated you to play better. And I hope I did.
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Henry Tamburin is the Lead Instructor in the Golden Touch™ Blackjack course (www.goldentouchblackjack.com) and editor of the Blackjack Insider newsletter. For a free 3-month subscription to his blackjack newsletter with full membership privileges, visit www.bjinsider.com/free.