Blackjack 5 Card Trick
Back to Blackjack School Index Next Lesson. Lesson 5: Card Counting – The Tricks N o, I’m not going to teach you card tricks here, but I am going to show you a few interesting ways to practice the count you’ve decided to learn and then teach you the methods we use to keep track of the cards as they’re played at the casino. Developing your speed at counting is an important part of. One could argue that the best blackjack card trick is learning how to count cards. This skill and basic blackjack strategy will give you an edge that the house will find difficult to overcome. Even so, it is best for the card counter to use the proper amount of discretion in order to avoid being caught in the act. Ex-Casino Dealers Reveal: With These 5 Ways Casinos Trick You Into Losing. By David “Loudon Ofton” Drury. She became fed up with how casinos were run and decided to put her efforts at taking money out of casinos through card counting at blackjack. She was happy to offer her input into how dealers think and casinos operate.
I've come across a promotion with a UK online casino in which the player is awarded an instant £25 cash prize (no wagering requirements) every time they get 5 cards and win the hand. The minimum bet for the table is £5, and if the player is betting table minimum they still qualify for the full £25 prize.
The game is live Blackjack (dealt slowly by a dealer in front of a camera, usually an Eastern European woman caked in makeup), with a house edge of 0.7%. At the lowest tier of the site membership there is £1 cashback for every £1000 wagered on Blackjack, effectively making the house edge 0.6%.
I haven't delved into the maths fully but I'm pretty sure this is an EV+ offer simply by playing Basic Strategy betting £5 a hand and hitting the £25 wins every once in a while.
To boost the EV basic strategy could be altered. The wizard has a handy altered basic strategy chart for any games with a 5 card charlie rule, however I don't think the strategy would be identical as the conditions are different here.
With a 5 card charlie, if the player gets 5 cards without busting and the dealer doesn't get Blackjack, the player has won their stake x 2. With this offer, the player can get 5 cards without busting and still lose, without the dealer getting Blackjack. Also, the payout is bigger; if the player wins with 5 cards they get their stake back x 7 (the original stake, the win from the base bet, and the £25 from the promotion).
Card counting online games is usually a fruitless endeavour with the 8 or more decks and the limited penetration, however I think it could be used in this case to identify times when the chance of getting 5 cards unbusted is much higher. For instance I could bet £5 on 1 hand, but when the true count drops below -2 then spread out to more hands. An ace side count would also be useful, as when the count is low but the number of aces remaining is disproportionately high I could really go for it and spread out across as many boxes as possible.
Any thoughts?
I guess one of the smarter math guys can make a guess as to how much the bonus is worth, it might not be exact because you would need to change basic strategy..... you are definitely hitting a 4 card 12 against a 6 as an example....
Without any basic strategy changes: You should get a 5-card hand about 2% of the time . Such hands will tend to be evenly distributed between 17-21 and will have a win rate vs dealer in teh ballpark of 40%. So, roughly, this bonus is worth an average of $0.20 on a $5 wager without any strategy changes. (please forgive the U.S. currency units.) That's approximately a 4% EV bump to player.
However, as charliepatrick says, there are some changes to basic strategy to allow you to win this bonus more frequently.
1. Hitting any 4-card hand that is <18 and some 4-card 18s.
2. Hitting all 3 card 12s vs 4-6 and 3-card 13s vs 2-6.
3. Standing on most/all 5 card hands totalling 16 or less.
4. Not doubling on some soft hands (and some hard hands) that you would normally double on.
5. Not splitting A-A and instead hitting it in some situations.
6. Hitting (not splitting) 2-2 or 3-3 in some situations. (Or vice versa - splitting some pairs that you would normally hit, lol.)
So, this is a lucrative bonus. Played optimally and with minimum table stakes, I imagine that player will have >5% advantage on the house.
I could do a more precise infinite deck calculation but I think that some forumites have better tools than me and can do this calc more efficiently than I can.
So that would be a 3% bump to EV (5 unit bonus every 165 hands).
This is a decent but ballpark estimate since:
1) No adjustments to basic strategy
2) Did not account for splits/doubles . Overcounted 5+ hands so this probably cancels #1 more or less
3) Used infinite deck
4) Assumed all 5 card hands are vs dealer upcard >6. Only about 1 in 1000 hands go to > 4 cards when basic strategy says not to hit stiff hands (dealer upcard <7). Dealer upcard of 2/3 vs 12 would be immaterial
As with most Blackjack variations, simulation is probably the only way to get a precise number.
Is this 'no peek' European BJ?
Without any basic strategy changes: You should get a 5-card hand about 2% of the time . Such hands will tend to be evenly distributed between 17-21 and will have a win rate vs dealer in teh ballpark of 40%. So, roughly, this bonus is worth an average of $0.20 on a $5 wager without any strategy changes. (please forgive the U.S. currency units.) That's approximately a 4% EV bump to player.
However, as charliepatrick says, there are some changes to basic strategy to allow you to win this bonus more frequently.
1. Hitting any 4-card hand that is <18 and some 4-card 18s.
2. Hitting all 3 card 12s vs 4-6 and 3-card 13s vs 2-6.
3. Standing on most/all 5 card hands totalling 16 or less.
4. Not doubling on some soft hands (and some hard hands) that you would normally double on.
5. Not splitting A-A and instead hitting it in some situations.
6. Hitting (not splitting) 2-2 or 3-3 in some situations. (Or vice versa - splitting some pairs that you would normally hit, lol.)
So, this is a lucrative bonus. Played optimally and with minimum table stakes, I imagine that player will have >5% advantage on the house.
I could do a more precise infinite deck calculation but I think that some forumites have better tools than me and can do this calc more efficiently than I can.
Thanks for that Gordon. Yes it's no hole card. Specifically the rules are:
8 decks.
No resplits.
Only 1 card to split aces.
DAS allowed.Dealer stands on soft 17.
No surrender.
If the dealer is showing a 10-value card and gets blackjack, any money the player has placed on a double they get back.
I'm thinking that when the count is +1 or higher I can increase my bet size by spreading £5 a box across several boxes, rather than increasing the amount wagered on just 1 box. That way I also increase the chance of hitting a 5 card hand.
Without being able to calculate a precise basic strategy I will be following the kinds of rules you have suggested. I'd be very surprised if on proper examination any of them turned out to be incorrect plays. By altering BS in this way the expected loss on my base bet will increase, but not to the point that it makes the offer negative EV.
Blackjack 5 Card Trick Rule
I usually don't do offers online unless I am 100% sure of the maths in advance. However with this one being uncapped and likely being one of the few online offers that other UK advantage players won't touch I'm definitely going to milk it.
...I'm thinking that when the count is +1 or higher I can increase my bet size by spreading £5 a box across several boxes, rather than increasing the amount wagered on just 1 box. That way I also increase the chance of hitting a 5 card hand....
The higher the TC gets the less likely you are to draw out a 5 card hand. You should ignore counting, unless you want to count and spread to more hands when the TC goes negative, then some will argue you're card eating all the bad counts, etc, etc, etc.You need to quantify the amount of the promotion. I saw above ~3%. If the game is -.7% off the top, then you have approximately till TC -4 before the added hand -EV over-weighs the positive EV return from the hand due to the promotion.
i.e.
TC < -3 = 1 hand, or sit outTC = -2 = 2 hands
TC = -1 = 2 hands
TC = 0 = 2 hands
TC >= +1 = 1 hand
Some finer simulations/etc could tell you whether or not to play more than one hand in slightly positive territory.
Blackjack Cards Play
I ran a Markov chain to see how many hands would go to 5+ cards and win and it was 0.00604, or about 1 in 165....
I ran a very quick simulation using UK rules (i.e. allows resplits). The normal House Edge came out at 0.52% and 248269 out of 39.7m hands (1m shoes) used 5 cards or more and won. This comes out at 1 hand in 160 so corresponds with your figure.I ran a very quick simulation using UK rules (i.e. allows resplits). The normal House Edge came out at 0.52% and 248269 out of 39.7m hands (1m shoes) used 5 cards or more and won. This comes out at 1 hand in 160 so corresponds with your figure.
Glad to hear that. That’s closer than I expected.Does Blackjack Beat 5 Card Trick
So with a 5 unit bonus per 160 hands, it’s a 3.125 % boost to the player before making any strategy changes. I can only make an educated guess that those changes would add about another 1%.
Blackjack Vs 5 Card Trick
All this indicates that the player has about a 3.5 % advantage, with an N0 of only about 1300 hands (estimate standard deviation of 1.25). I assume you could easily play 200 hands per hour, so you could be confident of a profit even in the short term.
The only problem is that you can bet only £5 per hand to get the maximum % boost. Despite that, it’s still £35 per hour EV. If I could find this game in Vegas it would pay for my hotel room.- Appendices
- Miscellaneous
- External Links
Introduction
Rarely in blackjack there is a rule that if the player reaches a certain number of cards, usually 5 to 7, without busting, the player will automatically win. This is called a 'Charlie.' If the player automatically wins with 7 cards or less, without busting, that rule would be called a 'seven-card Charlie.'
Blackjack Card Free
As shown in my blackjack section, the house edge is lowered 0.01% under the seven-card Charlie rule, 0.16% under a six-card Charlie rule, and 1.46% under a five-card Charlie rule.
The following table shows the strategy for hitting, standing, and doubling. This differs slightly from the Charlie strategy in Basic Blackjack by Stanford Wong. The strategy below is based on an infinite deck, and thus may be wrong in some borderline situations. If you have Wong's book, I would defer to his strategy.
The next image shows the splitting strategy, which depends on whether or not double after a split is allowed, and whether a five-card or six-card Charlie rule is in effect. There should be no changes for a seven-card Charlie. Again, this is a little different from Wong's strategy, which I defer to.