Aruba Blackjack

I'll be going to Aruba in a few weeks...from what I've seen online, the casino scene sounds much more like an amusement to supplement the hotel than a focus of the hotel itself (cruise ship like), with relatively low table mins ($5-10). I've seen varying reports on whether the dealer takes a hole card or not, and if so, whether doubles/splits are lost in the event of a dealer BJ...anyone have a definitive answer?

I went to curaçao in march, probably similar. $5-10 minimums, no hole cards, 6 decks hand shuffled, h17 no surrender. One casino had a csm and a hole card but that was it. I'll bet they're pretty similar.

Hotel casinos seem to be run by outside companies.

I was there about 18 months ago and saw only no hole card. Some casinos would take doubles and splits when the dealer had blackjack and some would only take the original bet. If you break after splitting, that hand is obviously lost blackjack or no blackjack.

The best thing to do is ask and you may have to ask more than once. I found a lot of the staff somewhat unfriendly and not that knowledgeable.

I have only been there once and was only there for part of a day a few years back -- just one of the ports on a cruise. I played in several casinos, collecting my souvenir chips, but I do not remember the rules. The thing I found interesting/amusing in both Aruba and Curaçao was that some of the casinos were using chips that had the names of other casinos. One chip I kept from Aruba was labeled for a different Aruba casino. One chip I kept from Curaçao had the name of a casino in St. Maarten. It wasn't random chips mixed in; they just used another casino's chips for some denominations. I have not yet checked into whether the casinos were owned by the same company, but I will probably do that before posting in the Chip of the Day thread.

Interesting...I'll definitely have to check that out. When it comes down to it, the only time this even matters is when you have 11 vs a 10 upcard, or 8-8 or A-A vs a 10 or an A upcard. According to Wikipedia, it doesn't add that much to the house edge (0.11%).

Of course, there are lots of other things I'm excited to go to Aruba for. The snorkeling looks awesome!