Blackjack Betting Deviations
If you’re going to write about the worst blackjack mistakes you can make, you should probably start by defining what a blackjack mistake is and what makes one such mistake worse than another.
The house edge for blackjack is usually between 0.5% and 1% depending on the rules variations in place. The change in blackjack payouts adds 1.5% to the house edge. Instead of losing an average of $1 per every $100 you bet, you’ll lose $2.50 for every $100 you bet — on average, over time. What else is awful about this rule? A dealer who deals himself 5 straight blackjacks off the top of a hand-held double-deck game is several standard deviations out the door and off the cliff. Let's put it this way: 2 in a row would.
A blackjack mistake, for the purpose of this post, is a deviation from basic strategy. Mathematically speaking, every possible decision in every possible situation in blackjack has an expectedvalue. The play with the highest expected value is the correct play.
Any deviation from that (other than deviations based on counting cards) is a mistake.
How do you decide which mistakes are worse than others?
The biggest mistakes in blackjack basic strategy are the ones with the worst mathematical expectation.
Of course, some of these mistakes are so boneheaded that no one would ever make such a mistake. I’ve eliminated these mistakes from consideration.
Here’s an example.
You have a hard total of 20. If you hit this total, you’ll almost certainly bust. That’s a terrible expected value, but I don’t know any player foolish enough to make such a mistake.
Blackjack Betting Deviations
With that understanding, here are ten of the worst possible basic strategy decisions you could make when playing blackjack.