Consider the card situation below.
What do you notice? Is the dealer likely to bust or not?
Then answer these questions:
If you were the third baseman, should you split the 9s?
And, finally, how would you bet going into the next round if this was the first round and you were acting on this card information alone?
Old school blackjack players would miss some of the very important information on the board and misread other information (assuming they picked up on the fact that no Aces were dealt).
Old school players are most often taught that 7s, 8s and 9s are “neutral” cards; they’re not supposed to matter. This, however, is contradicted by my years of research showing the 7s, 8s and 9s are crucial to how well you’ll do in the next round. I detail this in Cutting Edge Blackjack but here’s what you need to know: the more these cards are played out, proportionally when compared to the other cards, the worse you will fare in the next round.
Aces, when overdue, are also bad portents in the next round, as my research has proven. (If you don’t believe me, set up a second round situation similar to the above and play out the second round over and over again with that same mix of undealt cards, keeping records of how well the players do. When the dealer’s cards include no Aces, the dealer’s busting rate is in the 40-percentile range. When the dealer gets an Ace, the dealer’s busting rate overall is a miniscule 8 percent. Plus, when you get an Ace, your average score, over time, will be lower than average, thus making you more vulnerable to the dealer’s score beating yours.)
So, here are the answers to the four questions I posed above:
There are three 8s and three 9s, approximately two more of each card than should be on the board, if the cards were balanced. And no Aces dealt. That’s what you should notice.
With this mix of cards, the dealer’s 4 will be a lot less likely to bust than normal (there are six 10s, one more than a 5-player table should see per round if the cards are balanced and the other bust cards, the 8s and 9s, are already on the table, in higher than normal proportions).
Should you split the 9s? No. While an Ace would be welcome, the 8s, 9s and 10s are unlikely to come your way; in fact, cards most likely to give you bad point totals are most likely to fall on your 9s. That being said, if you did choose to split the 9s, you should then go on to draw to a 17 or better. Otherwise you’ll most likely end up with two stiff hands (with scores of 12-16 points) and lose both hands when the dealer (most likely) achieves a good score.
And you should place the table minimum bet for the next round, given what you now know.
You can test this for yourself. Take two decks (it would take more of your time to prove this with more decks) and play out the current round and next round with the same mix of undealt cards (re-shuffling them before each trial). You’ll see!
FYI: I’ll be doing a seminar in Denver very soon (my first in Denver in four years). Stay tuned for details.
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Richard Harvey is a world-renowned blackjack researcher and innovator, expert player, coach, columnist, and bestselling author of Blackjack The SMART Way (the NEW Gold Edition), Cutting Edge Blackjack (the NEW Third Edition), NEW Ways To Win MORE at Blackjack and the audio book Richard Harvey’s Blackjack PowerPrep Session. Have blackjack questions? Send them to rharvey2121@netscape.net. For more info see http://www.blackjacktoday.com.
