dealer draws to 17 and stands on all 18s

I've been thinking of ways to alleviate house edge on very simple blackjack games. The kind of games as a discord bot, or some other minor part of a game maybe even without money, just to win/lose

Infinite decks, no splitting, no doubling, no surrender, European no hole card.

The title is my solution. I haven't done any math but I wonder if this rule change would balance out the negative HE from the other rules or if it would be too much.

If that isn't the solution, what might be another way to balance the game? These rules [Infinite decks, no splitting, no doubling, no surrender, European no hole card.] are still mandatory. Maybe 3:1 blackjack or something crazy. "just leave it, the house edge obviously is negligible for that scenario" Defeats the purpose of this post.

If someone bored with programming knowledge wants to tackle this go for it. Keep in mind a new basic strategy would have to be calculated although I hear there's a new wizard video that does just that.

It's interesting that you are looking for ways to decrease the house edge on simple blackjack games. I think your suggestion of allowing a player's natural blackjack to beat a dealer's blackjack could potentially balance out the negative house edge from the other rules. However, it would require some mathematical analysis to determine the effect on the overall house edge.

As for other ways to balance the game, it might be worth considering changing the payout for a blackjack. For example, instead of the traditional 3:2 payout, you could try a 2:1 or even a 1:1 payout for a blackjack. This would also require some mathematical analysis to determine the effect on the house edge.

If you are interested in programming such a game, I would suggest looking into basic strategy charts for the specific rule set you are using. These charts will show the optimal play for any given hand, and can be used to determine the house edge for the game.

Good luck with your project, and let us know if you come up with any interesting solutions!

Do I understand that you're proposing hitting all 17's?

Quote: Dieter

Do I understand that you're proposing hitting all 17's?
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yes! It's the simplest way I can think of to favor the player. The question is if it's too much or if it ruins the integrity of the game where it isn't worth it

Quote: richodude

Quote: Dieter

Do I understand that you're proposing hitting all 17's?
link to original post

yes! It's the simplest way I can think of to favor the player. The question is if it's too much or if it ruins the integrity of the game where it isn't worth it
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My recollection of the evolution of Vingt-et-Un to Blackjack says that an in-spirit adaptation would be special treatment of certain player naturals. I think you get absurdly close to even with 3:2 in general and a 2:1 on A♠J♠ naturals, but I don't have the right analysis calculators handy.
Hitting hard 17 swings the game way off balance.

A quick simulation using the normal strategy where Dealer hits all 17s and the player can't split nor double gave a House Edge of 0.8%. The correct strategy, especially against a dealer's 7, would be better if one stood more often; it's actually similar to playing Pontoon where you lose on ties, except you also hit most soft 18s and gives a player advantage of about 2.16%.

So it's a nice idea and someone else already tried standing on 16s (including A5) and it needed a push 22 option and also could give a nice player option.

Using a Wizard-style infinite-deck analysis for (no-splitting, no-doubling, no-surrender, European-no-hole-card) blackjack, I get a player EV of +2.89% when the dealer must always hit hard 17 and stay on all 18's.

Even if we decrease the blackjack payout to even-money with the above rules, the player still has an advantage of 0.64%.

I did another run (and also had standing 12 vs 3) to get a very slight advantage if BJ pays evens. We're in the same ballpark and I manually copied across the revised infinte deck strategy so may have got something slightly wrong.

Hands	44 595 204		0.002%
Win	18 908 249	1	18 908 249
Tie	2 742 498
Lose	20 925 831	- 1	-20 925 831
BJ	2 018 626	1	2 018 626