Five-card Charlie rule question
my casino offers a five-card Charlie rule so I am interested in the correct strategy for it. I found this chart , but I have some questions. How could 17 vs 3 be a hit if 1 away from the Charlie? You have to hit 2,3, 4 or Ace to win. This is about 4/13 = 30.8%. If you stay the dealer will bust 37.42% and another 13.43% for push. Do I not understand the rule properly or am I wrong with the calculations?
Quote: SoulChaserI'd be interested in where the other 18.35% lies
I think the remaining scenario is when the player stands on 17 and the dealer hits to 18-21.
Quote: dimitar80Hello,
my casino offers a five-card Charlie rule so I am interested in the correct strategy for it. I found this chart https://wizardofodds.com/games/blackjack/strategy/charlie/ , but I have some questions. How could 17 vs 3 be a hit if 1 away from the Charlie? You have to hit 2,3, 4 or Ace to win. This is about 4/13 = 30.8%. If you stay the dealer will bust 37.42% and another 13.43% for push. Do I not understand the rule properly or am I wrong with the calculations?
dimitar80,
On the chart's webpage, the WoO recommends deferring to Wong's strategy in Basic Blackjack, according to which you'd need to have a bonus of at least 2 bets to hit hard 17 vs. 3 (comparison of Table 22, page 100 with Table 24, page 104). Thus, you are correct in standing.
Wong also states that this rule is worth +1.4% (page 96), so like another of this thread's posters, winmonkeyspit3, I'm curious what "compensatory" rule the house has implemented to offset this boon. I'm guessing... 6:5 crapjack?
One final warning: these results are based on ANY unbusted 5-card hand winning. If instead you need to have a 5-or-more-card 21 to win automatically, then the rule is much less valuable (Wong states 0.2% on page 97), so the B.S. deviations are much rarer.
Hope this helps!
Dog Hand
There is no "compensatory" rule. The other rules are standard. Europen style (no hole card), 6 desks, DAS, 3:2 blackjack and surrender(but not against ace). It is a news casino, the blackjack table is from less than a month, and may be it is a temporary bonus to atract players. Or may be a mistake in the calculations of the casino menagement, I do not know.
Quote: dimitar80Thank you for the post Dog Hand, this realy helps. Any unbusted 5-card hand wins, only lose to blackjack. If the bonus is 2 bets, hard 17 vs. 3 is really hit. But why then hard 17 vs. 8 is stay 1 away from a Charlie? Isn't it much better to hit and try to win 2 bets (in 30.8%) than stay with this weak hand?
17 vs 8 is actually a better situation to be in than 17 vs 3, according to this table. So, you can stay on your 17 vs 8 (even though it's a bad hand), because your odds of making the Charlie are not good. But 17 vs 2 or 3 is even worse (the dealer has more chances to make a better hand, it seems), so you hit for the Charlie.
Play that game as much as you can until the promo runs out, you have a clear advantage with perfect play.
Hit EV is 30.8% - (1 - 30.8%) = -38.4%
Stand EV is 37.42% - (1 - 37.42% - 13.3%) = -12.13%
the chart looks wrong to me.
Quote: dimitar80Acording this table, player's expected return by standing on 17 vs. 3 is -0.1172, standing on 17 vs. 8 is -0.382. So hard 17 vs. 8 is much worse situation than hard 17 vs. 3. How could 17 vs 3 be a hit, and 17 vs. 8 be a stay on this chart?
I agree, the chart looks wrong with regard to Dealer upcard 2 and 3.
Infinite Deck calculation for Hit 17 going for charlie is around -38.5% (for any upcard)
Stand 17 is as follows for Upcards
2 -15.3%
3 -11.7%
4 -7.9%
5 -4.5%
6 +0.8%
7 -10.9%
8 -38.5%
9 -42.2%
10 -41.7%
A -47.5%
So for 9,10,A Hit the chart is correct
For 8 the Evs are very close, so the chart is probably correct for Stand
For 4,5,6,7 Stand teh chart is correct
For 2,3 the chart is clearly wrong, the decision should be Stand
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