Playing Two or More Hands at Once

Has the Wiz done any work on this type of action?
As I've been doing MyVegas leveling, I noticed that playing three hands at once sort of evens out the losses but makes the wins much better.
At MDLive, they require you double the min bet if you do it. Is that worthwhile?

Worthwhile? What are your goals? Each hand has an expected loss, so adding more means a bigger/faster expected loss. But it does also reduce variance and lead to faster accumulation of comps (and attainment of status).

I've thought about this a lot. It's worthwhile if the shoe is ace rich. It's nice to grab an extra blackjack or two if the count is good but the effect is minimal.

Quote: UTHfan

Has the Wiz done any work on this type of action?
As I've been doing MyVegas leveling, I noticed that playing three hands at once sort of evens out the losses but makes the wins much better.
At MDLive, they require you double the min bet if you do it. Is that worthwhile?

Obviously it lowers the standard deviation (relative to total amount bet) because you have the chance to win one and lose one. Both the losses and the wins will be smaller.

It doesn't change expectation. I'm not sure what you are talking about with it being "worth it". It lowers standard deviation per dollar bet. The difference between playing 1 hand at min and 2 hands at 2x min is that you lose 4x as much.

If you are playing with and edge (counting, or hole-carding, or whatever) then this can be a good thing, for sure. You are better off playing 2 hands of $100 than 1 hand of $200. In fact, if you can go to 1 hand of $200 with a certain edge, you can go to about 2 hands of $150 with that same edge (which, since you are playing with an edge, raises your expectation by 50%).

I'd say, if you have an edge, it's definitely worth it to spread to multiple hands. If not, it's probably not (since swings are the only thing that can save you if you are playing at a disadvantage, so why lower them?)