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There were three of us
at a six-deck blackjack table. I was at third base. The player between
us had a pair of 4s against the dealer's 6. He looked over to his
friend at first base as he started to shove a second bet out and
said, "Should I?"
"Of
course!" came the answer. So the player completed his motion
and then held out two fingers, indicating a split. "No, no!"
objected first base, "Double it!". Play came to a grinding
halt and then center field asked my opinion. "I'll go halves
with you either way," I replied.
Why did I answer
the way I did? It's because the player is the favorite with that
hand no matter how he plays it. Both doubling and splitting will
make a profit. More specifically, of the three feasible ways to
play it, here's how they rank (the following hierarchy assumes you
can double after splitting a pair, which you can in most shoe games.
If you can't, then just never split a pair of 4s).
Splitting
makes the most money
Just hitting makes the next most
Doubling makes the least of the three.
That's why you
can watch somebody play this hand any way he pleases and he'll usually
gloat back at you afterwards with a "See, I knew what I was
doing" sneer. The point, however, is that splitting is the
optimal play because over half the time you'll end up doubling down
at least once.
Sadly though,
not all blackjack mistakes merely reduce your profit on a moneymaking
hand. Some goof-ups actually turn you from a favorite into an underdog
on the hand. Want a common example? How about when you have this?
A/3
against 2
If you play
this hand right and just hit, you're a favorite to win it. But if
like many players you decide it's a good double, you become the
underdog -- and for twice as much money! The thing of it is, not
all small soft hands against small up-cards are good doubles. And
very few players can tell the good from the bad. The closer to 6
the dealer's up-card and the side card next to your Ace get, the
better the double. The closer to a deuce they both get, the worse.
Another mistake
that most players make is when they have:
9/9
against 9
If you just
sit tight with your 18 here, you're a 3-to-2 underdog to win. But
if you split the 9s, you become only an 11-to-10 underdog on each
new hand. That works out cheaper overall.
Another time
you have a losing proposition no matter what you do is when you
have:
10/2
against 3
Don't be silly
enough to assume the dealer has 13 here. Yeah, four times out of
thirteen she'll have the 13, but five more times she'll have 7,
8, 9, 10 or 11 (by having a 4, 5, 6, 7 or 8 in the hole). In all,
the dealer will make a hand five out of eight times when she has
a 3 up. Not hitting 12 against a 3 is a telltale mark of an unskilled
player.
There are many
other ways players will shoot themselves in the foot when their
hard earned money is on the line. Last night, I passed by a table
where a big player had bet $2000 on the first hand of the shoe.
He was dealt a blackjack against the dealer's Ace up. Without a
moment's hesitation, he signaled for the dealer to pay him the $2000
(even money). What could his rationale have been? If he's playing
for that kind of money, he should know that only 95 cards out of
309 could reduce his hand to a mere push. The other 214 times he's
going to collect three grand! His average profit by just waiting
it out would be $2078. It turns out, the dealer didn't have a 10
in the hole and this player showed absolutely no concern over the
$1000 that he had just thrown away. Please -- don't you do that
to yourself.
Costly Superstitions:
It's amazing how far some players will go to protect their superstitious
beliefs. An elderly gent who was betting $500 to $1000 per hand
was sitting next to a woman betting $50. Halfway through the shoe
the girl suddenly put out two $50 bets.
"Don't
do that!" chided the older fellow, "I've got $800 up here
and you wanna' change the cards?" "I was playing two hands
before you got here!", remarked the lady, defensively.
"Here --
get your lousy 50 bucks off the table!" snorted the older gent
as he threw the girl two green chips. The girl's eye gleamed just
a tad as she pulled her second $50 bet back and then asked, "Now
what about the next hand?" |
