Odds if you could keep hitting after doubling down
Quote: RaskalnekovI've been playing blackjack with my friends lately, and the person who acted as the dealer was allowing people to keep hitting after doubling down, rather than just getting one card. I told him this wasn't how the game was usually played and he stopped doing it, but I'm curious of how this rule change would effect the house edge, assuming liberal Vegas rules.
Hi, and welcome to the forum.
I can't calculate the effect, but clearly this will reduce the house edge and might well give the player an edge...
Eg. dealer dealt a 5 player dealt a 4 and a 5 (=9) and he doubles but then gets dealt a 2 to give him a rubbish total of 11. He can now hit to give a great chance of winning the hand, with a double stake, where proper rules would see him in a relatively poor position.
On 10, you' only rehit on 2-6 when the dealer has a 7 or more.
With 11, you add the Ace but lose the 6.
With almost all the hands you want to rehit, chances are you either bust or get a small enough card to require a fifth one.
It's a good rule for the player but I don't think it's a game changer for your typical player. I imagine an AP would make better use of it.
Yes. It is fortunate perhaps that this was more a social blackjack game than a casino operation, although sometimes 'social' can involve a slight 'rake' for refreshments or something.Quote: billryanIt's a good rule for the player but I don't think it's a game changer for your typical player.
I imagine an AP would make better use of it.
Sharpies might not trek across country for this rule or 'pile on' in some mad AP feeding frenzy but it would surely be of interest to them. I pretty much think that any actual casino dealer who did this would get bounced, not retrained. It would have been caught rather promptly by the Floor and by that darned Eye in the Sky though.
Quote: RaskalnekovYou couldn't redouble, but interestingly enough before I joined the dealer was letting people split any hand. One person just kept splitting and resplitting, and it was kind of annoying, so I made sure they changed it to only doubles. Before that, they were splitting 10/6 , 10/5, etc, which seemed even more busted to me. And if they got another 16, they just split it again.
Is winning a ton annoying?
Yeah, was this just "friends" or were you playing to actually win money? If you were playing to actually win $, you screwed yourself really hard. All of these rules favor the player...Quote: RaskalnekovYou couldn't redouble, but interestingly enough before I joined the dealer was letting people split any hand. One person just kept splitting and resplitting, and it was kind of annoying, so I made sure they changed it to only doubles. Before that, they were splitting 10/6 , 10/5, etc, which seemed even more busted to me. And if they got another 16, they just split it again.
Although, even with those rules my friends were still losing money, because they didn't know the basic strategy. So I guess I certainly wasn't doing them any favors.
Quote: RaskalnekovWe were betting like 5 cents a hand, and I really didn't want to take money from my friend just because he didn't know the rules. And while winning is fun, the guy splitting over and over again really slowed down the action, so that's what I meant by annoying.
Although, even with those rules my friends were still losing money, because they didn't know the basic strategy. So I guess I certainly wasn't doing them any favors.
Why is it your fault he doesn’t know the rules of a game he is banking?
You did the dealer favors, but not your other friends. That’s how it works. Other than in a few specifically defined instances in certain propositions, somebody wins and somebody loses.
Ah, okay. Sometimes people have "home casinos" and people are trying to actually win money. Yeah if it's just a friend you don't want to see get busted for a lot of money I would have correct him all the same, so good on you Ras.Quote: RaskalnekovWe were betting like 5 cents a hand, and I really didn't want to take money from my friend just because he didn't know the rules. And while winning is fun, the guy splitting over and over again really slowed down the action, so that's what I meant by annoying.
Although, even with those rules my friends were still losing money, because they didn't know the basic strategy. So I guess I certainly wasn't doing them any favors.
But yeah, pretty much anytime you give the player more options, especially ones the dealer can't do (doubles/splits/etc) it benefits the player a fair amount.
In the UK there used to be a rule you couldn't split 4s 5s nor 10s and only double 9 10 and 11.Quote: Romes...pretty much anytime you give the player more options, especially ones the dealer can't do (doubles/splits/etc) it benefits the player a fair amount.
After deregulation, in most casinos, players can split and double anything (except BJ). Technically the difference is you would make some soft doubles and split 4's vs 5 and 6 (nearly all casinos are DDAS and S17).
I'm guessing this helps those who know what they're doing a small bit but enable ploppies to make even more stupid plays (doubling hard 13 comes to mind), so actually it might even help the casinos.
I used the Wizard's blackjack appendix 9, which shows the expected return of every starting hand and made an adjustment for each case where doubling is the highest EV.
For instance, with dealer showing 6 and player 7,2, the EV for hitting is 0.190 and doubling is 0.311 (highest EV). Since you can continue hitting under this new scenario, the new highest EV is 0.190 * 2 = 0.38, for an increase of 0.068. Multiply times hand frequency of .000919 and it's a gain of 0.000062.
Add them all up and it's a 47 bip favorable difference. There are only 105 such hands, and would be much less if this wasn't composition dependent.
We experimented a bit and settled on 25-1 pay for single numbers and 50-1 for zero, double zero.
We played everyday for about a week when we collectively decided we'd rather give our money to the clerk to buy beer instead of to our friend to buy his beers.
