I'm having difficulty accepting that I should hit a 16 against a 7

[Neil Stevens]

Yes, I've heard of card counting, but don't all Internet blackjack games use a continuous shuffle?

And yes, I expect that most who play it live do it for fun, though some are doing it for comps right?

[Double Down]

Yes, online the cards are randomly "shuffled" from a new deck each hand, so card counting is not applicable to online casinos.

[scalf]

[img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] ya gotta hit 16 against a 7

it aint even close

stop gambling

spend your money elsewhere;

you have no business gambling mr. fish:

not hit 16 agin 7 you better have a warp read or you lose big

no joke

gl

seriously; get out of gambling; you have terrible gambling ability

gl

[img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]

[college kid]

The one and only reason you hit a 16 on a dealer 7:

EV for STAND: -0.48
EV for HIT: -0.41
EV for DOUBLE: -0.83
EV for SURRENDER: -0.5

Would you rather lose forty-eight cents on the dollar or forty-one cents? It's your choice. When you get a true count of eight or nine you can start standing.

So scratch the table and don't think twice!

(EV tables from BS --or neutral count-- for 6D, 5/6 Pen, S17, DAS, soft double and late surrender allowed)

[ChipWrecked]

[ QUOTE ]
OK sorry to move the thread away slightly, but why do people play Blackjack? You're going to lose over time. Why would you play a game that puts you at a statistical disadvantage?

[/ QUOTE ]

Most people aren't going to play enough hands to approach the long run. They are going to land somewhere at random in the SD curve, which is called luck.

[Yads]

What's never made any sense to me is why you should split 8s when dealer is showing an ace. That just seems so counter intuitive.

[PLOlover]

Any chance that standing might have less variance or something? It kinda seems that way but I hardly ever play bj.

[Double Down]

Similarly to hitting 16 against 7, splitting 8's against an ace is a losing play in the long run, but it loses less than hitting or staying, so it is the best option. Of course, surrendering if available is better than splitting.

[Cyrus]

[ QUOTE ]
Any chance that standing might have less variance or something?

[/ QUOTE ]

Variance increases when you put more money into play.

The simple reason why youy Hit 16v7 was given in collegekid's post : Because the expectation is better.

And here is a terrific trainspotters' primer : Cacarulo's Tables of Expected Values

Sample:

Hand Standing Hitting Doubling Probability
T6v7 -0.47648 -0.40862 -0.81725 0.003677
97v7 -0.48050 -0.40843 -0.81687 0.000881

[Cyrus]

[ QUOTE ]
What's never made any sense to me is why you should split 8s when dealer is showing an ace. That just seems so counter-intuitive.

[/ QUOTE ]

Expected Value and Hand Probabilities table:

Hitting 8vA has an EV of about -0.20.

Hitting 88vA has an EV of about -0.51.

Suppose you have a bet of $100 out there and you are dealt 88vA. You stand to lose $51 on that hand, on average. If you were given the choice to have instead one hand of 8vA, you'd lose about $20, on average. In fact, having two hands of 8vA, with $100 riding on each hand, would lose less in total than having $100 on a single hand of 88vA.

And, since Splitting gives you exactly that choice, you are Splitting your 88vA.

(The precise EV figure for Splitting 88vA is actually -0.36, as given in Cacarulo's table, and not two times -0.20. This is because Cacarulo's CA takes into account the specific cards dealt and not just hand totals. The EVs for 53vA and 62vA are different, for example. These differences are so small as to be unimportant in everyday play, of course.)