Blackjack From The Houses View

Well I know that there are some real BJ players here. Especially Mason /images/smile.gif


Ok here is the deal BJ is coming to Az and I was talking to a buddy about learning the game.


However before I learn it as a player I like to understand it as the house sees it.


Questions:


What is the houses edge against an average player?


Does the house do better against low bet amounts or higher?


How many hands per hour is normal?


How many decks in play is best for the house? How much of a difference between single & multi?


How much of a threat are the counters/great players really?


And a bunch of other stuff that I am sure will get thrown in. I find that if I can understand where the house is then many of the things I should do are obvious countermeasures.


Thanks in advance,


1 Leg Lance

casino folks read this forum too.


Dino.

What is that supposed to mean?

I would then ask them to answer my question. I am not looking for advice to cheat...this is no different then getting into the head of the fish at my poker table to beat them.

I am trying to understand the math in BJ (it is new to me) and to see the basics like hands per hours, ll vs. hi, expectation, blah blah.

Please provide more than obscure hints if you are going to bother to answer.

1 Leg Lance

"What is the houses edge against an average player? "


2%.


"Does the house do better against low bet amounts or higher? "


Unless the player in question is counting cards or using some other trick it makes little difference, though the play of high-rollers is reckoned to be slightly more sophisticated and so the house would make less in terms of % of average bets from these players.


How many hands per hour is normal?


Depends greatly on the number of players. Theorists use 100 hands an hour as a benchmark but in a heads-up game you can get 4 times as many hands.


How many decks in play is best for the house? How much of a difference between single & multi?


The more the better. In theory there is a big mathematical disadvantage to the player by playing with multiple decks vs single deck. In practice the house knows this and adjusts the rules accordingly so it tends to make little difference in terms of house edge. Single-deck games in fact tend to have a higher off-the-top house edge than multiple decks because otherwise card counters would beat them too easily (at least so the casino thinking goes).


How much of a threat are the counters/great players really?


Not much. They tend to make no more than .5% in shoe games, considerably less than the house edge on most wagers you can make in a casino.

I don't know how you'd define "great player" but the ceiling on perfect counting is pretty low. Against most modern games even the difference between a computer and a human is fairly negligble.

With a Shufflemaster machine the house rakes in a lot of money. Shuffling multi-decks is the one drawback to the game from the house standpoint, but if they use a machine it takes less time than a single deck game to do it, they can put the cut card way up to really blow out the counters, and mostly they plain and simple keep the game flowing better with the machine as the continuity of the game goes better. Also there are machines now that are especially hideous, they are constant shufflers where counting and shuffling are completely eliminated.


Fortunately many non-counters hate machines and don't trust them. The house couldn't care less what most counters or even basic strategy players wanted, they don't make much off them. However the very superstitious are the biggest donators and they heavily complain about the shufflers too so for now most blackjack games are safe. The thing is that Arizona casinos are so ridiculously crowded most of the time that I am sure the casinos might ignore this factor and get the shufflers. Arizona has got to be the only place I have ever gone where they have crappy machine after crappy machine and yet much of the night they have LINES to play them! Casinos near Phoenix and Tucson don't need state of the art games, they don't need player friendly odds, all they need are open doors and they rake in the cash. This attitude probably will lead to terribly unfavorable rules for the blackjack games, at least for awhile.

"Shuffling multi-decks is the one drawback to the game from the house standpoint, but if they use a machine it takes less time than a single deck game to do it, they can put the cut card way up to really blow out the counters, and mostly they plain and simple keep the game flowing better with the machine as the continuity of the game goes better"


True, an important point that is not often made.


"Also there are machines now that are especially hideous, they are constant shufflers where counting and shuffling are completely eliminated. "


There are some tricks that work against some of these devices. I've written about some of them. Chiefly they depend on exploiting the latency of redistribution, ie the notion that cards immediately returned to the discard tray do not re-appear, and can therefore be counted to some extent like a normal game at a constant point of deep penetration.


The most popular shuffler at the moment is the King shuffler, though, and beating that is a tall order. There is a way to do it in theory but in practice it is a lot of effort for not enough return.