House edge clarification

I'm in need of a little clarification of house advantage, please.

If the house advantage in a given set of blackjack rules is .4 %, does that mean that I am guaranteed to lose money - however little - in the long run, no matter what I do?

I thought that I could counter that small advantage by winning a few double downs, splits and blackjacks. Am I wrong on that point?

I had hoped to make a meager living out of bj, but this house edge will certainly kill that idea if that loss ratio is absolute.

Please forgive my ignorance and thank you in advance.

Yes and yes. If a game has a House Advantage, then that means (by definition) that the player cannot win in the long run.

The winning splits / double downs / etc are taken into account when calculating the house edge.

Bear in mind that refers to each individual hand. Players tend to stay at the table, recycling the money, so the edge can be compounded.

I.E. If the edge is 0.4%, and you buy in for $1,000, don't expect to walk away with $996.

That edge may be somewhat accurate after a lifetime, but as I recently read on another gambling board: "In the long run, we'll all be dead."

The house edge is applied to "action."

So if the house edge is 0.4%, and you make a single, $1000 bet and then walk away, your expected value is $996. (Assuming you have more money in your pocket to cover splits and doubles should they come up.)

However, if you buy in for $1000 but actually play 20 hands of $500 each, your action is $10,000, and your expected value is $960.

In the short term, your results will vary wildly, but the more hands you play, the closer your results will come to the expected value of the game.

Thank you all very much for your help. Math is not my forte.

Where the house edge really matters is from the house's perspective, or a truly hardcore grinder. For the casual gambler, "in the long run, we'll all be dead" are words to live by. At about 80 hands an hour, at a .4% edge (assuming no mistakes) your expected loss will be about a third of your average bet for every hour you play - but you know you'll never be up or down a third of a bet. I'm sure you recognize even that after an hour, it would be surprising if you're up or down one bet, or two. The median will be about seven bets up or down after 80 hands flat bet, so for you, an edge that low doesn't really matter. But with all the people at all the tables, the house is going to make money.

If you're looking to mitigate that edge, counting and taking advantage of out-of-game elements are probably your best bet.

For example, a small local casino held a drawing recently amongst its table players where you had to be present to win. 10 drawings of 200$ over the evening, spread out amongst 30 people or so. Got drawn twice while taking an additional 10$ after 3 hours of 5$. I. Another place, I ran the math on it and it turned out that grinding away at a roulette machine get the top tier card, and free meals that came with it, was worthwhile if you valued food at 8$ per day, for two people. (Plus the FP/comp/drawings you'd get from shoving that much cash through it.)

Your Risk of Ruin is very much worse than it may appear at first blush.

This is because BJ in the short-term is dominated by extreme volatility.

The Standard Deviation (the square root of the sum of deviations from expectation.)

is very high. As such you can fully expect to win or lose 10 to 20 times expectation

within an hour of play, with your losing being far more likely than your winning.

Quote: ZenMaster

The Standard Deviation (the square root of the sum of deviations from expectation.)

is very high. As such you can fully expect to win or lose 10 to 20 times expectation

within an hour of play

Actually, the standard deviation of a single hand of blackjack is pretty low, it is just about 1.2 times the initial bet. Most games are far worse.

The reason you easily "win or lose 10 to 20 times expectation" lies primary in the fact that blackjack has quite low expectation (the loss of a single hand is already 200 times expectation). Secondary reason is: you can play a lot of rounds per hour.

The Standard Deviation of a single hand is misleading.

When was the last time that you played ONE hand ?