For BJ, does the house REALLY only win 50.64683% of all hands?

First, thanks to all who answer. I have loved and greatly benefited from all information from the Wizard of Odds / Vegas site.

Question: The Blackjack House Edge calculator on the Wizard's site puts the house edge for a common casino Blackjack table [8-deck shoe, dealer hits on soft 17, no surrender, 3:2 payout on BJ] at 0.64683% with a continuous shuffler and with perfect basic strategy.

1. Does that mean, in essence, that the dealer will win 50.64683% (and lose 49.35317%) of all hands on average (assuming the player uses perfect basic strategy)?

2. And therefore does it follow that if a player played a theoretical million dollars in $5 hands at the Blackjack table, that she would walk away losing only $6,468.3 (i.e., 0.64683% of a million bucks)?

THE REASON I ask is two fold: First, Steve and Matt Bourie say that you need to have 50x your bet in bankroll if you want to play for three hours at a table game like Blackjack. If you are a $5 dollar player, you need $250 to play for a mere three hours. But this is crazy, even though I am sure they are right: If the odds are roughly 50/50, wouldn't it take a hell of a long losing streak to end up with nothing left of an original $250 bankroll while betting only $5? Second, over the course of thousands of hands--both in the casinos in Biloxi and on the Wizard of Odds simular (so I know my basic strategy is perfect)--it seems I am much more likely to lose money than to win it.

Many thanks to all who respond!

Quote: tucobpjmramirez

Ignoring the 9% of the time that you will tie the dealer, you will win 48% and lose 52%.

That's not correct.


ZCore13

50 times your bet should see you thru most negative streaks. If you only had $100 or 20X your bet, you would go broke fairly often.
Having the extra funds will allow you to survive down turns.

To answer your first question..... No. Since the player can often win more than the initial bet (blackjacks and double downs) if the player wins 49.4% of his bets he would be way ahead.

To answer your main question, there is something called "Risk of Ruin" which will give you a likelihood of losing all your money given a set of circumstances and conditions.

You said 3 hours. Is it a fast dealer? Are you the only player at the table? Basically you need to know how many hands per hour your money will be at risk. Then you need to know the variance (another important term to learn and understand) of the game. And of course the house edge which you already know.

Without doing the actual calculation I would say your risk of ruin with $250 playing one hand of perfect basic strategy at $5 a hand over 3 hours is less than 1%. I could be wrong.

And welcome to the forum.

50x is pretty conservative.

If you’re playing perfect basic strategy with no side bets, 30x will probably be fine. 40x would almost guarantee it. Do you really want to lose $250 playing $5 blackjack in 3 hours anyway?

If I'm reading your question correctly, I think the answer you're looking for is that blackjack winning percentages (from a player's perspective) break out to:

Win 42.43%
Lose 49.09%
Draw 8.48%

This information is from the Wizard of Odds "Standard deviation in blackjack" page.

Quote: SOOPOO

Without doing the actual calculation I would say your risk of ruin with $250 playing one hand of perfect basic strategy at $5 a hand over 3 hours is less than 1%. I could be wrong.

As a red-chip player, this brings up a question I ponder often. I don't play long sessions, almost never 3 hours, rarely more than 2. Although you suggest that one's RoR is very small, does this mean that after 3 hours of play it's possible to lose, say, 90% of your session bankroll? You don't go bankrupt, but you lose a large amount of your session bankroll. And if consecutive sessions go this way, your total bankroll is drained much more quickly.

Is the solution to have a larger session bankroll to start with and then play for a longer time if necessary? Is there hope for those of us whose typical sessions are only an hour or two? Or is that too short of a time to make any meaningful type of recovery if variance at the beginning of the session has been unkind?

Quote: theoriemeister

As a red-chip player, this brings up a question I ponder often. I don't play long sessions, almost never 3 hours, rarely more than 2. Although you suggest that one's RoR is very small, does this mean that after 3 hours of play it's possible to lose, say, 90% of your session bankroll? You don't go bankrupt, but you lose a large amount of your session bankroll. And if consecutive sessions go this way, your total bankroll is drained much more quickly.

Is the solution to have a larger session bankroll to start with and then play for a longer time if necessary? Is there hope for those of us whose typical sessions are only an hour or two? Or is that too short of a time to make any meaningful type of recovery if variance at the beginning of the session has been unkind?

If your betting is the same, 10 one hour sessions is the same as one 10 hour session.

ETA: Assuming the same number of hands dealt.

Play any game long enough, and you will see extreme streaks. Of course it's possible to lose 90% of a $250 stake playing $5 a hand.
Just as it is possible to turn it into $500. Neither are very likely to occur in any one session but play enough and you will see them

If players were always going to be playing perfect strategy the dealers would not be young attractive females half-in and half-out of their skimpy uniforms, the cocktail waitresses would be wearing burkas and the drinks would be sold not given away for free. So right then and there we can eliminate this Perfect Strategy stuff.

Risk of Ruin and House Edge are totally different concepts.

Risk of Ruin is usually expressed as the bankroll required to have a 90 percent confidence of avoiding complete loss of bankroll for a certain length of play at a constant betting level involving perfect strategy and no tipping of dealers or waitresses. We can call it 'luck' or 'Dame Fortune' or 'Normal Variance' but it can indeed wipe you out fast. If you start out with a pittance sheer random variance can wipe you out. If you start out with a better bankroll you have a chance to overcome variance wiping you out totally.

Obviously things like hands per hour and house edge get factored in but usually historical estimates are used, not the latest casino surveys that actually clock dealers and tables for exact data. Blackjack at a full table with neophytes who ask questions and can't add as well with jerks making side bets will slow down the rate of play. That is my one redeeming social value: my inability to perform basic arithmetic slows down the table's rate of play.

Quote: FleaStiff

If players were always going to be playing perfect strategy the dealers would not be young attractive females half-in and half-out of their skimpy uniforms, the cocktail waitresses would be wearing burkas and the drinks would be sold not given away for free. So right then and there we can eliminate this Perfect Strategy stuff.

Where I play (WA state), the drinks are not free, which definitely cuts down on how much I drink. Plus, my drink (and waitress tip) money is separate from my gambling bankroll. And the dealers, for the most part, are not young, attractive females. In fact, at least half the dealers are male. The casino uniform is pretty conservative. (However, during NFL season they are permitted to wear team jerseys.) At least I have fewer distractions going for me! lol

Quote: SOOPOO

To answer your first question..... No. Since the player can often win more than the initial bet (blackjacks and double downs) if the player wins 49.4% of his bets he would be way ahead.

Thank you all for your thoughtful and thorough responses, and thank you for welcoming me to the forum. I'm happy to be here, and have already learned a lot.

Regarding the quote above, you are so right (since winning 49.9% of all hands would put the player ahead, especially considering the payoff on Blackjacks). It occurred to me after I posted the question. A better way for me to have phrased it would be to say "49.4% of all money incoming v. 50.6% of all money outgoing."

Thank you all again. Much appreciated!

Yes, you are--and thank you!

Quote: blxbjack

A better way for me to have phrased it would be to say "49.4% of all money incoming v. 50.6% of all money outgoing."

OH!! I get what you're saying now. Sorry to misinterpret!