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It is very well known that single-deck blackjack, of
all the variants of blackjack which can be found in casinos, offers
best the odds to a blackjack player. Well known, but unfortunately,
not strictly true.
The overall odds within any blackjack game are the same
whether a single deck, two decks, or any number of decks are used. The
reason why single-deck blackjack is preferred by serious players is
that it is much easier for a player in a single-deck game to keep track
of the shifting odds from hand to hand. For this reason alone, it is
recommended to seek out the casinos which offer single-deck blackjack. Sometimes it can be a little hard to find a casino offering
true single-deck blackjack for several reasons. First of all, casinos
know full well that serious blackjack players will have been advised
to look for single-deck blackjack tables, and that they will be most
unlikely to make good money from a table of serious players. Casinos
often attempt to ameliorate this situation by either instructing the
dealer to count the cards and shuffle them when the odds look really
good in favour of the players, or by pulling another trick. If they
tell the dealer to shuffle, and he does this regularly just at those
moments when the players feel they are able to start making hay, this
casino will not keep regular blackjack customers for very long. So the
trick many casinos are pulling in the single-deck games is this: by
reducing the payout rate for a player's "natural blackjack" from
the customary $3 paid for every $2 bet to a new rate of $6 paid for
every $5 bet. A "natural blackjack" is a two-card total of
twenty-one consisting of an ace and a ten value card , it is far more
common than a blackjack achieved with three or more cards. So this is
a very harsh reduction in odds, a reduction of twenty percent in the
payout for the most common win. The overall effect of this change is
to shift the odds in favour of the casino by approximately one and a
quarter percent - which makes the odds for a player even worse than
they would get if they were playing the typical multi-deck casino blackjack
game with the usual rules and procedures!
So watch out for this trick, and be prepared to do some
hunting around when you are looking for a single-deck blackjack table
to join.
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