Post
Topic
Board Gambling
Re: Stop gambling your coins unless you're playing for entertainment!
by
DannyHamilton
on 13/11/2012, 03:27:31 UTC
I'm pretty sure there's no winning strategy for BlackJack at bitZino.  It's a game of skill, but no matter how good you are at it, the house edge is still positive.
Tell that to my balance (:  The trick with BlackJack is knowing when to split, when to double, when to take no cards and let the dealer bust, etc . . .
Don't need to tell it to your balance, I know the math behind it.  You can believe whatever you want, but it doesn't change the math.

Assuming that they are playing with fair decks (all cards are present and the shuffle is truly random), the current blackjack rules at bitZino give the house a 0.39759% edge.

So, if you play perfect strategy and never make a mistake on a single hand, over a large enough sample of hands you will lose 3.9759 BTC for every 1,000.00 BTC you bet.

The only "normal" Blackjack rules that favor the player that bitZino doesn't offer are "Dealer stands on 17" and "Surrender".


If they should decide only to add "Surrender" to the rules, it could shrink the house advantage to 0.30602%
If they should decide only to add "Dealer stands on 17" to the rules, it could shrink the house advantage to 0.18061%
If they should decide to add both "Surrender" and "Dealer stands on 17" to the rules, the house advantage would shrink to 0.10479%

The only ways to get an advantage over the game would be if they either
  • Offer BOTH the above mentioned rule improvements AND reduce the shoe to less than 4 decks (they currently use 8  )
or
  • Deal multiple hands out of each shoe providing the player with a card counting opportunity (they currently shuffle after every hand)

In the sort run, you could come out ahead due to "luck", also known as statistical variance. Given enough hands though, the house edge will eventually overcome the variance and you will come out losing roughly the amount indicated by the mathematically calculated house edge.