Blackjack Question
He does not play to win, he plays for the dealer to lose. Yes, he does use a progression and must start out at a $5 min. table. How many steps does he get? I have no idea. The dealer WILL bust in 'X' number of hands, I think we can agree on that. Lets also not forget, busting is not the only way to win. If he is dealt 19 and the dealer has 18, thats a win without RELYING on a bust. Any comment on this? Ken
Quote: mrjjjI heard this from a buddy a few years ago. I repeat, this is not my idea but I wanted to get a little input. When he plays blackjack, he only plays for the dealer to BUST. He never takes a hit. It does not matter what his cards are and it does not matter what the up card is for the dealer.....NO HITTING or DD or splitting.
He does not play to win, he plays for the dealer to lose. Yes, he does use a progression and must start out at a $5 min. table. How many steps does he get? I have no idea. The dealer WILL bust in 'X' number of hands, I think we can agree on that. Lets also not forget, busting is not the only way to win. If he is dealt 19 and the dealer has 18, thats a win without RELYING on a bust. Any comment on this? Ken
The Wiz has analyzed this here. The house edge is just under 4%. Basic strategy on the same table would yield a .4% house edge. I also have a friend who plays like this. He says it's better to watch the dealer bust than to bust himself. The progression can help mask the negative effect of the strategy, but if you get capped by the table/house limit then you'll really pinch yourself progressive betting like this.
On a six deck shoe, Dealer Stands on 17, I took the results in Wizard's BJ Appendix 9 and added up all the results of standing, multiplied by the number of combinations, and then divided by the total combinations to get an expected return.
Because my multiplication efforts did not take into account card removal, my result is slightly off. However, I calculate the HA of STANDING on any two cards is -12.79 percent, simply AWFUL.
It would be far better for the player to take a card on 11 or less and even better to double down and split correctly as well.
I've heard of this "Lazy Man's Blackjack" before and my first impression then was that the player is embarrassed by his slow and perhaps deficient math skills and therefore simply abandons any decision-making role on his hand. Its not really a sensible option but perhaps its entertaining nevertheless. He still gets his drinks and his entertainment and its still likely to be a bit better of a game than hitting a red button all day long at 8 percent house edge. So he sits there and avoids the embarrassment of hitting when he already has 21, nurses his drinks and has some fun "gambling".Quote: mrjjjhe only plays for the dealer to BUST. He never takes a hit.
The dealer only busts on about 23 percent of hands. That mean he makes 77 percent of hands (17-21). The player meanwhile is only going to get dealt a 17 to 21 on 22.5 percent of hands.
It sucks more when you're in third base, or watch the cards being dealt, and know that the dealer would have busted either way.
But to play all hands with the fear of the double bust is just nuts.
If you're holding a 12 and the dealer has a ten, you're not going to hit? Simple probabilities say that only 4 of 13 cards will bust you. You're not taking the card because of those odds? NUTS, I tell ya...
The players makes the following hands:
3-16 65.1 percent
17 7.1 percent
18 6.5 percent
19 5.9 percent
20 10.65 percent
BJ 4.73 percent
The problem is that on 3 - 16, with the dealer making 29 percent of hands, the HA on those is 41.6 percent.
The HA on the whole "I'll stand on 3 strategy" is still 12.8 percent.
Quote: mrjjjThe dealer WILL bust in 'X' number of hands, I think we can agree on that.
No, we can't agree on that. There is no value of X which will make that statement true.
The statement "The dealer won't win 'X' number of hands" is true as long as he deals < X hands.
Quote: mrjjjI heard this from a buddy a few years ago. I repeat, this is not my idea but I wanted to get a little input. When he plays blackjack, he only plays for the dealer to BUST. He never takes a hit. It does not matter what his cards are and it does not matter what the up card is for the dealer.....NO HITTING or DD or splitting.
He does not play to win, he plays for the dealer to lose. Yes, he does use a progression and must start out at a $5 min. table. How many steps does he get? I have no idea. The dealer WILL bust in 'X' number of hands, I think we can agree on that. Lets also not forget, busting is not the only way to win. If he is dealt 19 and the dealer has 18, thats a win without RELYING on a bust. Any comment on this? Ken
When you say he never takes a hit, do you mean he never puts himself in a position to break by staying on twelve or higher or do you mean he literally stays on the first two cards?
The posts above have given some percentages of the dealer breaking so let me throw this into the mix.
Players' faces light up when the dealer has a break card showing. Most know that a five or six are the worst cards for the dealer and are the cards the players most want the dealer to have.
What a lot of people don't know is that with these up cards the dealer has only a 42% chance of breaking. In a six deck shoe S17, it's 41.8% and 42.2% respectively. If you don't have a decent hand you see where this can go.
I can only imagine the flack your buddy must get from the other players. Personally I would love to play at his table. He'll never eat up the tens in a positive shoe and when the count tanks the pit won't think twice when I excuse myself. A win win!
Quote: WizardofOddsThree popular bad strategies encountered at the blackjack table are: never bust, mimic the dealer, and always assume the dealer has a ten in the hole. All three are very bad strategies. Following are my specific comments on each of them, including the house edge under Atlantic City rules (dealer stands on soft 17, split up to 4 hands, double after split, double any two cards) of 0.43%.
Never bust: For my analysis of this strategy I assumed the player would never hit a hard 12 or more. All other decisions were according to correct basic strategy. This "never bust" strategy results in a house edge of 3.91%.
One way that I find useful to think about basic strategy is that if your hand has a positive expectation then the decision on how to play is usually obvious.
Basic strategy is primarily about hands that have a negative expectation. Basic strategy tells you what is the least damaging move to make, even though usually all possible moves still have a negative expectation.
The "never bust" strategy undermines this principle because it attempts to avoid a bad occurence at all costs. So you are never forced to choose between two negative outcomes.
The probability is that your friend is playing at an even higher house advantage than 3.91%. If he never wants to bust, he probably is not trying to split 8's against a dealer high card or other difficult moves. The wizard's analysis assumed that all splitting and doubling was still done according to basic strategy.
Incidentally, it is why casinos are not afraid of strategy cards. Basic strategy tells you to split 8's against a dealer 9. Casinos know that if a player follows basic strategy a lot of really bad things will happen. The novice player splits 8's against a dealer 9 and sometimes he loses both hands. He gets frustrated and returns to playing with his gut.
Quote: mrjjjDoes the math INCLUDE, the player will never bust AND the player can win some hands without the dealer busting? Ken
So will the player win with a BJ and the dealer not bust? Great question, let me get back to you with the answer..... Anybody else?
Quote: DeMango...Anybody else?
Using an infinite deck analysis, I get a house edge of 16.0% for S17 and 15.8% for H17. So if my math is right, the H17 game is better than S17 for players who always stand on their first two cards.
(This analysis takes into account the possibilty of a player's winning a hand even if the dealer doesn't bust.)
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AiDpbflsSMD3dHctZG9mV2tKVWVtLTFLM0duWnJzdWc&hl=en&authkey=CP_liX0
Would be curious to see where the extra two percent came from ...
Quote: weaselmanI am getting 18% for S17 using this spreadsheet:
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AiDpbflsSMD3dHctZG9mV2tKVWVtLTFLM0duWnJzdWc&hl=en&authkey=CP_liX0
Would be curious to see where the extra two percent came from ...
I see one typo in your spreadsheet. In cell D5, you meant to have =sum(C3:C4)+C8-sum(C6:C7), but you have =sum(C3:C4)+C7-sum(C6:C7).
