European Blackjack

On these tables the dealer's second card arrives after the last player stands, so 11 against a ten is hit and eights facing an ace stay together. Before the first deal, find the rules-screen line on what a late dealer blackjack takes.

Without a hole card, a player facing an ace or a ten makes every decision before anyone knows whether the dealer holds blackjack. Doubles and splits are made under the same uncertainty, and a house rule decides what becomes of that extra money when the dealer's second card completes a blackjack. Two versions of the rule are in use.

• All bets lost. The common European rule: the dealer's blackjack takes the original bet, every double and every split hand. Dealt from six decks with every other rule standard, that game costs a basic strategy player 0.52%.
• Original bet only. Some tables hand back the doubles and splits and keep only the first bet. The edge is then 0.41%, the same as the peek game, because every hand ends exactly as it would have if the dealer had checked first.

The key number: Surrendering doubles and splits to a late blackjack costs 0.11 points, while the original-bet-only version of the rule leaves the price untouched.

Across the whole six-deck basic strategy chart, 4 cells change when a late blackjack takes every bet. All of them face an ace or a ten, the two upcards that can still become blackjack after the player has acted.

Each changed cell is a play that puts a second bet on the table against an upcard that may yet turn into blackjack. Without a hole card, hitting 11 against a ten is worth +3.1 per 100 units staked and doubling only +0.8, because the doubled stake can be lost whole to an ace the dealer has not yet drawn. At a table with a peek, the double comes out in front.

The pairs follow the same logic. Splitting eights is a rescue, a smaller loss rather than a gain, and it only works while the second bet is safe from a dealer blackjack. With no hole card, 8,8 against an ace averages −66.5 per 100 when hit and −92.3 when split; against a ten the hit returns −57.1 and the split −61.6. A pair of aces facing an ace tells the same story, −32.6 for the hit and −53.4 for the split.

The full chart for this rule set is printed in the basic strategy guide, beside the charts for the peek game. Surrender, where a table without a hole card offers it, runs into the same timing, and the blackjack surrender page sets out which hands it still saves.

Many European rule sets also limit doubling to a first-two-card total of 9, 10 or 11. Every soft double disappears, and the soft hands that would have been doubled are hit or stood on instead; the doubling guide lists every double the restriction takes away.

In the peek game that restriction alone adds 0.10 points to the house edge. Combined with the all-bets-lost rule, six decks and a dealer who stands on soft 17, the edge comes to 0.61% with basic strategy.

In short: No hole card and doubling on 9 to 11 only, taken together, lift the six-deck game from 0.41% to 0.61%.

In our library, European Blackjack Multihand from Platipus deals this game across several seats at once. Each provider writes its own rules screen, and the dealer-blackjack line in it decides which version of the chart applies.