How does a Casino’s edge work in Blackjack? It feels like the player and the dealer should have the same odds if they play the same (eg, always hit on soft 17).

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How does a Casino’s edge work in Blackjack? It feels like the player and the dealer should have the same odds if they play the same (eg, always hit on soft 17).

In: Mathematics

11 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

The house advantage lies in the player having to play first, thus giving the player the chance at busting out before the house can play. Additionally, if the dealer has 21, they win before the player has a chance to play and the best the player can do is push.

Anonymous 0 Comments

People are right in that it’s a huge advantage to go last. This is largely mitigated though by the casino having to play in a predefined way for example always hitting soft 17 even if the player is standing at 16. Also all the little bonus like blackjack and DD/split. However I’m going to go ahead and say the majority of the casino’s advantage in blackjack comes from players playing sub-optimally. Especially over time.

Anonymous 0 Comments

The house wins on a double bust. If you play by the dealers rules, you will bust 28% of the time, as will they. 7% of the time you will have a double bust, and the casino takes your money. The other 93% is a statistical split.

Anonymous 0 Comments

The house has the edge because the player has to put money on the table before the cards are dealt, and the house doesn’t play until the players have finished.

If a dealer and one player are playing, and the player goes bust, the dealer doesn’t even have to play.

Anonymous 0 Comments

The biggest advantage the house has is that it plays last. Even if a player busts out and the dealer busts as well, the house still wins.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Professional blackjack player here.

Players have many advantages that the dealer does not have. The following are true even if you’re not counting cards. They have more flexibility in choosing when to hit or stand, unlike the dealer who must hit 16 or less and must stand on 17 or more (except soft 17 depending on the rules). Players have more options too, including double, split, and surrender. And they get paid 150% for a blackjack.

However, the dealer has **one big advantage**. If a players busts, the house automatically wins that bet. It doesn’t matter if the dealer busts too. In the casino, the dealer will take away your cards and bet as soon as you bust instead of waiting until the end of the round. Around 10% of the time both the player and dealer bust. These are wins for the casino. Anything other than a bust is treated equally between the players and dealer. If you both get 18 or both get blackjack then it is a tie (a “push”).

The overall effect of these advantages on both sides is the house has an edge of about 1%. This means for every $100 worth of bets you make, the casino will get $1. And the casino actually makes more than this. Blackjack has high variance, meaning that there are big swings up and down. The casino won’t run out of money regardless of the swings, so they can keep playing indefinitely and expect their profit to approach the theoretical 1% over time. However, players usually have a limited bankroll. So they might get wiped out on a big down swing and then they have no way to continue playing to try to win some of the money back. This works to the casino’s advantage because more players end up stopping after losing a lot of money than after winning a lot of money.

EDIT: The above assumes the players are following proper basic strategy, which most do not. This increases the house’s profit even more.

I said I’m a professional. So there must be more to it than this. The player has additional advantages provided they use all the information available to them to make decisions. By counting cards, you have an approximation of which cards are left and therefore which cards are more likely to be dealt next. You use this information to bet big when the cards are in your favor, and bet small (or leave the table) when they are not. You also use this information to change your strategy to decide when to hit, stand, double, split, surrender, and buy insurance. This tips the advantage in your favor and now you have a 1% edge over the house. Come to r/blackjack if you want to learn more.

Anonymous 0 Comments

One thing I havent seen so far that should be noted: The full phrase should be the house always wins EVENTUALLY. It’s not about winning every hand. I’ve gone to Vegas now at least once 11 years running and I think I’m net down about $-400 (I don’t gamble much) but there are years I have won out and walked away with more than I went in. If I had hit the $1,000,000 3 card poker royal flush combo, its likely they’d never get enough back from me to make up that loss.

But over time and the entire breadth of their customer base, their advantages mean they win.

So for example, if someone is very good at video poker, puts in $5 bucks and drinks all night for free (as others here have claimed to do and I have seen occur personally), they may walk away as a loss for the house.

But the guy next to them who started out trying to do that, got tanked on cheap gin and tonics, and dropped $200 in the video poker covers that loss.

This is also built into their other pricing models for food, booze, etc.

Like any business, some customers may cost you more money than they make you due to mistakes or pure bad luck. But if you’re structured correctly with the odds of things happening, over time your end result is a positive.

Anonymous 0 Comments

You playing first means they get the advantage (if you bust they don’t even play), but it really doesn’t matter. A game being 50/50 when played perfectly would be okay for a casino if it’s a thing that brought in people or if some people played imperfectly. Even if it was really exactly 50/50 and they never lost or made money on it, it’s fine for them if it gets you in the door and they think you might play slots or something after a long day of making and losing zero money or if they thought you might mess up the rules and go with a gut feeling more than their dealer would or whatever.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Hi Everyone,

Just a heads up, reddit autoremoves comments that have links to certain sites in them. Its not something we control. It lets us know and we have been trying to catch and approve them, but maybe stop including hyperlinks in your comments if you want them to get through. (even though I’m sure that wizard site or that blackjack site is really good)

Thank you

Anonymous 0 Comments

Former croupier (and card counter). The biggest edge the casino has on blackjack is that people play first, and people are pretty stupid. There is something called “basic strategy”, it tells you how to play your cards against the dealer faced up card, you have a statistically correct move for any combination, like, never split 10s, do not hit anything above 11 if the dealer has 5 or 6, etc…. (5 is the worst card for the dealer because the dealer HAS to hit twice, but on 6, in some areas / casinos the dealer must stand on soft 17).

By using perfect basic strategy, depending on the rules, the edge of the casino should be around 0.6%.
There aren’t that many, like a few hundreds, you can learn them in a few hours. If not, you are even allowed to carry a basic strategy with you and look at it when you play (as long as its on paper and not your phone or a device).

But people just play by instinct. I totally feel he’s gonna bust on that 10, I’m gonna leave it at 12! Yeah guess what, you just gave the house a lot of edge….

Now you can ask, why does the game favours the house if the player plays perfectly?
Because it’s a casino game. They’re made so that the house has the advantage, while giving the illusion to people that they have a fair chance of winning, which we can see on your title: “I feel like the player and the casino have the same chance of winning!”. Nope.