What's the house edge of The Star Sydney's Blackjack Challenge?

The rules are as follow:

1, Player loses when standoff (except Blackjack).
2, Player 5-card automatically wins.
3, Player 21 automatically wins.
4, Player blackjack pays 2:1 if dealer has no blackjack.
5, Player blackjack pays 3:1 if dealer has blackjack and the player's ten card is equal or lower (J vs J, J vs Q, etc.).
6, Player blackjack pays 5:1 if dealer has blackjack and the player's ten card is higher (player K vs dealer J).
7, Doubling allowed on any 2 or 3 cards.
8, Hit allowed after splitting Aces.
9, Split allowed up to 3 times.

I roughly estimate the house edge increased 5% due to 1, while decreased 3.5% due to 2-9. Could the wizard please check the rigorous house edge?

Also, although the general house edge is terrible, I have a hunch that card counters can gain a considerable edge when the count is high enough, because when there are plenty of Aces and tens, blackjack standoff's are more likely to happen. But they use CSMs in The Star... Some dealers put the used cards back to the CSM only after many hands, so one can observe a true count of 2 sometimes. I guess in this game 1 point of true count gives the player an edge of more than 0.5%.

1) -8.38%
2) +1.46%
3) +0.54%
4) +2.27%
5) ?
6) ?
7) ~+0.15%*
8) +0.19%**
9) +0.00%***

*Player may double on any number of cards = +.23%, so on any 2 or 3 would be less, but 'close' I'd estimate.
**If you can double after re-splitting aces: +0.15%. If A-10 after split aces is blackjack: +0.19%
***Split only to 3 hands = -0.01. No listing for splitting to 4 hands, I'd assume it has no positive/negative effect.

There were attained through the Wizards rules page here.

You also didn't give the standard rules of the game to tell what the game was before these extra rules. With your commas as decimal points, is this a game in Europe? Does the dealer take a 2nd card before the players act? These things will effect the game even further. You need to start from a base %, then add these more rare rules on to it. Use the House Edge Calculator provided by the Wizard.

A) So total you have -8.38%, and +4.61% = -3.77%. Pretending 5 & 6 = another +1.00% (they're not, they're lower) it's still unplayable at -2.77% There really is no coming back from Losing all ties except blackjack.
B) Continuous shuffler... Why even waste time with this game? TC +2 won't get you anything. In an AVERAGE game (which you're 2.5% away from), this gets you half a percent, maybe.
C) By your own estimation of the game being -1.5%, you'd need to see a TC +4 to make it 'slightly' positive, which again by your own estimation you'd never see.

Overall, not playable.

Thank you Romes, it's a very detailed analysis. I should have looked at the wizard's rules page first. Standoff edge 8.38% is way more terrible than 5%, which I mistakenly calculated. I'm not gonna play this game any more!

This game is in Sydney, Australia. No hole card but dealer takes one bet only when he gets blackjack. I assume this is equivalent to dealer peeks.

I got some blackjack standoff's when I tried this game without knowing the accurate house edge. It's lucky to know that I was just being lucky.

All the blackjack tables in the ground floor of The Star (the only casino in Sydney) use CSMs. Since I'm on expat in Sydney (from China) and have no other place to go for weekends, Counting CSMs will be a great way to kill time. :) Sometimes you stand there for an hour and do nothing but talking with the superstitious players teaching you the philosophy of flow and boxes. The highest TC I've observed is 3. But I lost that hand. Then the dealer put all the cards in the tray back to the machine....

G'day BJ

Hope you're enjoying the warm Sydney weather.

The Sydney OBBO rule for when the dealer gets BJ is not quite the same as the US-style 'dealer peeks' rule because it's possible to split and bust which is not the case in the US if the dealer peeks and would show BJ before you're able to do anything with your hand.

In any case, I would steer well clear of BJ Challenge and other gimmick BJ games that are simply a margin grab. There are plenty of normal BJ tables with varying table limits at The Star. To their credit, they still have S17 unlike Crown in Melbourne. However, I still prefer to play at Crown because of the nicer atmosphere (and before anyone says that's crazy, I'm not a counter and expect to lose in the long run in exchange for entertainment). They are also much more generous in terms of free parking and meals etc compared to The Star where you need to turn over the GDP of a small African republic to earn a car park. I hope someone from The Star is reading this....

Cheers

U235

Thank you U235. Weather here is really good all seasons.

Yes the split and bust (against potential dealer blackjack) possibility exists. Normally we only split 8s or Aces when facing A or ten. Then the possibility of these arrangements is 1/(13*13*13)+4/(13*13*13)=1/439.4. The chance of bust (with first card of A or ten) is slightly more than 6*8/(13*13)=0.28. Safely assuming it's 1/3. This might increase the house edge by 0.08%. But I'm not sure if my math is correct.

I think there's no problem at all to simply play without counting. There are hundreds of ways to make money, while entertainment is the reason we go to casinos. With the help of Continuous Shufflers, the trophy for counting is way less than the minimum wage in Australia...So if you don't like counting, it's not worth doing it in this country. ( in 1 hour you might have 2 hands TC+2, which gives you 0.4% edge. That's 125 hours for one unit bet. The minimum wage here is $16.87. So if you are betting less than $2000 each hand, you're paid less than the waiters in a lousy restaurant...)

Quote: Romes

1) -8.38%
2) +1.46%
3) +0.54%
4) +2.27%
5) ?
6) ?
7) ~+0.15%*
8) +0.19%**
9) +0.00%***


A) So total you have -8.38%, and +4.61% = -3.77%. Pretending 5 & 6 = another +1.00% (they're not, they're lower) it's still unplayable at -2.77% There really is no coming back from Losing all ties except blackjack.

Overall, not playable.

Actually 5 and 6 are close to another 1% for a 6 deck game, assuming I did the math right.

5) +0.40%
6) +0.41%

So adding these in to the rest of your numbers, it looks to be about -2.96% from the base rules. Sounds like standard Australian gimmick BJ garbage to me.

Not an expert, but it seems a ripoff to me that the dealer will take both bets in a split situation. Any split/double should only lose the original bet on dealer BJ. The FreeBet format could ensure this, or something similar, though it should be obvious by spot. With that rule, it seems this game is best left alone.

I have done an infinite deck analysis of this and get a house edge of 1.45%. This is not quite perfect as I have not added only losing 1 bet when you split on a dealer blackjack, (I do have this handling doubles), and I am not confident of the limiting split to 3 hand is accurate, and of course the whole infinite deck thing.
However, I am confident that the edge is reasonably close to 1.5%

Quote: beachbumbabs

...it seems a ripoff to...will take both bets in a split situation...

I agree that those based in the US might baulk at the European rule. On the other side the British would detest the dealer already having a second card. I think the Atlantic City rule seems to be the best - but that means the dealer has to keep back split busted hands (and certain other sidebets such as House Money).

On Blackjack variants - some of them sound fun but any House Edge over 1% would probably only be attractive to a recreational player. In the UK I think there's a market for fun-to-play games, especially those which offer sidebets which can win large odds.