A story in the Las Vegas Sun this year explored the controversial move toward lesser blackjack payouts at some Vegas casinos, those casinos offering 6:5 blackjack payouts versus the traditional 3:2 payout. (In other words, a $10 bettor would gain $12 for a blackjack at the stingier casinos versus $15 at the more generous casinos.)
Claiming that 25 percent of Vegas casinos had become blackjack penny pinchers, the newspaper debated whether it was smart for the industry to get tight on blackjack payouts when revenues were down $1 billion in Vegas alone as of the fiscal year ending this past April, compared to the same 12-month period the prior year.
One gambling author and casino consultant, Max Rubin, sided with the penny pinchers and said, “One way to measure value is how much fun people are having. Sometimes it’s OK to have sucker bets if the suckers are enjoying themselves.”
Bill Zender, however, author of How To Detect Casino Cheating At Blackjack and a Colorado casino consultant disagreed. He said the lower payout was a bad move on the casinos’ part:
“This epitomizes some of the greed that’s gone on in the industry,” he was quoted as saying. And he said players will choose to play elsewhere in the face of lower payouts because “customers [know they] are getting less bang for their buck.”
In fact, Zender, the article continued, is warning his casino clients not to opt for the lower payout because he believes it drives away business.
The article goes on to state (mistakenly):
“Although many players don’t understand the difference in payoffs, more are catching on to the 6-5 games, which add 1 percent to the typical house edge of 1.5 percent against novice players.”
The mainstream media rarely fail to get the math wrong, so let’s look at what’s at stake here and who is hurt by the lower payouts on naturals and by how much. (Hint: it’s not just “novice players” who are hurt and it’s not a “1 percent” disadvantage that players suffer.)
Let’s start with the “typical house edge of 1.5 against novice players.” (They neglected to say “1.5 percent” but that’s what they meant.)
I’ve heard all kinds of blanket statements but this one offers a new twist. The truth is the figures put out by the old school statisticians are the result of their misguided computer simulated tests of their own basic strategy method. So the “house edge” refers specifically to basic strategy players. Let’s be clear about that.
Secondly, the old school testers admitted they did not test for betting variations! Yet any house advantage or disadvantage cannot be computed based upon computer-simulated phony blackjack wins and losses (and gains from doubling and blackjacks) alone. Any good mathematician should understand that – even if they aren’t true blackjack players.
Accordingly, the house advantage or disadvantage for player blackjacks varies depending on the size of the bet the player has on the table. We real players play with real money (unlike Ivory Tower theoreticians who, noses in the air, don’t deign to consider that inconvenient reality). What we lose or gain depends not on computer simulations but on our bet size which, sorry old schoolers, constantly varies. So no study could tell us how the lower blackjack payout affects any one player without factoring in that player’s betting method and the average amount they typically bet on hands that turn out to be blackjacks versus other hands.
Thirdly, even if we don’t consider the important effect bet size has on our result, it’s essential to understand that a player’s edge or disadvantage against the house depends on many factors and cannot be neatly summed up with one tidy number. Here are just some of these factors:
1. The rules and restrictions at any casino (which often vary within the casino itself by the way) – for instance: do they let you: a) Surrender?; b.) Double down on any hand?; c) Split Aces up to 4 hands?; and so on.
2. The minimum bet at the table as compared to the player’s normal choice of tables
3. The quality of the cards and the repeating patterns I’ve proven exist in casino blackjack (is the player’s betting spot getting largely good or bad cards?)
4. The skill of the player and the method he or she uses (basic strategy being one of the worst ways to play)
The seat in which the player is sitting (players smart enough to have learned how to analyze the cards to make the best moves understand you win more by sitting in or near third base (the seat with the final player turn) because you see more cards and get a better read on the dealer’s likelihood of busting or scoring
5. The number of decks in play (every good book tells you a player’s disadvantage grows with each additional deck)
And so on…
And by the way, blackjacks occur about 5 percent of the time. So the basic strategy player’s loss – if you (wrongly) factor out betting patterns – is 1.5 percent (not 1 percent as the article states) with the lower 6:5 payout versus the traditional 3:2 payout.
Finally, it’s basic strategy players who need fear the lower payout the most since its creators admitted it’s a losing strategy. While Edward Thorp, author of 1962’s Beat The Dealer and widely credited as being the one who popularized the basic strategy idea, said you might get a “.12 percent edge” with basic strategy if the game is a one-deck game dealt to the last card, he acknowledged that at casinos with “adverse rules” such as those that shuffle before dealing all the cards (namely all the casinos modern players play at) basic strategy players would face a 1 percent disadvantage (in a one-deck game). It’s a losing system.
That being said, state-of-the-art players need not fear the lower payout as much since we most often win many more rounds overall than we lose. The lower payout presents a monetary loss, yes, but it’s not fatal to our game as it is to the basic strategist, whose prospects are dim to begin with.
Nonetheless, as Mr. Zender implied, smart players seek casinos with the more generous 3:2 payouts, as we well should (all things being equal). However, given a choice between a casino with great 1 deck games that paid a 6:5 blackjack bonus versus a casino with 6-deck games that paid 3:2, I’d take the 1-deck casino any day because of the much greater advantage offered by the 1-deck game, in the way of predictability alone.
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Richard Harvey is the acclaimed blackjack strategies innovator, expert player, blackjack coach 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
