'Fair' Social Blackjack?

Hi,

I want to know if the game below is as close to 'fair' as possible (by fair I mean close to 0% edge).
The main reason for this is because I want to play with friends and not give anyone too big an advantage (or disadvantage).

See rules below:
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Stakes: $10 - $50
Card Counting Is: allowed (to minimise the player advantage from it, you must play the same stake the entire shoe)
Hole Card: OBO (American)
Decks: 8
Dealer Hits On: soft 17
Surrender: Early (no surrender against dealer 2 - 9)
Doubles: Double any two card total
Splits: allowed to split once, to make two hands
Double After Split Allowed: yes

Edge: 0.0139...%, player edge (total dependent basic strategy)

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if possible, please tell me if the above edge is correct for these rules.

thanks in advance

ps I used MGP's Analyzer, so would prefer if you could verify with another program/method.

the way to make it fair with friends is to take turns being the dealer

anyway, check this out: https://wizardofodds.com/games/blackjack/rule-variations/

To make it virtually dead-even I'd allow surrender against 2-9 (under BS the only hand would be 16 vs. 9).

Flat betting the players destroys most advantages of card counting..

Quote: billryan

Flat betting the players destroys most advantages of card counting..

Which is what makes it as close to equal between player and dealer as possible.

As already mentioned, best way is to come up with simplest / most enjoyable rules, then rotate dealers each round.

99.9% of players do not know how to count cards. Do you have reason to believe your friends would try to count cards? I believe you would ruin some of the fun by disallowing varying of bet sizes.

Thanks for the replies,

The main reason for a 'fair' game is because quite often someone has to 'go home early', and we want to minimise the potential advantage/disadvantage of that.

After reading the replies, I have decided that i will let them vary their bet sizes during a round/shoe.

I was just thinking it may be more fun to change it up some nights and turn it into a blackjack tournament style game with no dealer***

***: someone will obviously have to deal the cards, but that person will also be allowed to play in the same tournament as a player

If this is just a fun home game then I guess you could just have an agreed upon flat bet.

You can plug your rules in to the blackjack calculator from the wizard (type blackjack house edge calculator in google, first hit).

Not only has it been pointed out that 99.9% of people don't know how to count cards, even some who actually can still don't play correctly (indexes, proper betting ramps, bankrolls, etc). Are the 'other' friends worried about this, or ?

With only a $10-$50 betting limit you'd be hard pressed to make any kind of significant money counting in this game... probably something like $5/hour (educated guess).

If you guys all like playing that much, and don't want to win/lose that much to each other, why not become a team and count at a local casino doing call in's? If all of you are betting $10 and you have one guy come in and bet a couple hundred in good shoes, you could all enjoy the game you like playing and make a small (small) amount of money from the casino, not each other.

sounds like a good idea, thanks for the reply