Blackjack Side Bets

Each of these bets reads only the player's first two cards, with Match the Dealer also looking at the upcard. Pays are to one. The house edge is the long-run part of each side bet that stays with the game, given first for six decks and then for eight.

In each of these bets the upcard joins the player's cards to make a single hand of three. For the totals an ace counts as 11 when that does not pass 21, and in a straight it plays high or low.

Played with basic strategy, the standard six-deck game (soft 17 standing, blackjack paid 3:2) keeps 0.41% of each main bet over the long run. The figure is that low because the player acts on every hand: standing on a weak total against a weak upcard, doubling an eleven, splitting eights. Those choices win back most of what the house gains by making the player act, and bust, first. Each of them is worked through in the blackjack strategy guide.

A side bet offers no choice at all. Once it is placed the cards decide, so its price is fixed by two things only, the schedule it pays and how many decks are in the shoe, and every schedule in the two tables above pays less than the true odds of its hands. On six decks a mixed pair turns up about 1 in 26 deals, and Perfect Pairs pays it 6 to 1.

In short: The cheapest bet here, Lucky Lucky at 2.66% on six decks, still costs several times the main game's 0.41%, and Lucky Ladies keeps 24.71%.

None of these schedules leaves the player ahead in the long run, and a large top award does not change that: the rare line that pays it carries only a small part of what the bet returns.

In the main game extra decks work against the player, a cost the single-deck blackjack page sets out. For most side bets the effect runs the other way, because they pay on cards that match. Once one card is out, a single deck has few copies of it left among the remaining cards, while an eight-deck shoe has many, so pairs, suited cards and three of a kind all arrive more often from a bigger shoe.

Perfect Pairs is the extreme case. A single deck holds one copy of each card, so a perfect pair can never be dealt, and the 25/12/6 table costs 47.06% there against 4.10% on eight decks. 21+3 at a flat 9 to 1 falls from 13.30% on one deck to 2.74% on eight, and Royal Match from 10.86% to 6.46%. Top 3, which pays only on its three rarest hands, climbs furthest of all: 9.00% on eight decks, 25.45% on two and 39.28% on one.

The rule: A side-bet price needs two facts, the pay table and the deck count, and a quoted house edge means little until both are known.

Bets built on totals rather than matches barely move. Hot 3 costs 5.65% on four decks and 5.40% on eight, and Lucky Lucky 2.82% on two decks and 2.62% on eight.

Buster wins when the dealer busts and loses when the dealer does not, whatever happens to the player's own hand, and it pays more the more cards the busted hand holds. Chances are for six decks. The 6-card line is where tables differ: some pay it 12 to 1 and others 15.

From a six-deck shoe, at a table whose dealer stands on soft 17, Buster takes 8.25% of every stake when a 6-card bust pays 12 to 1, and 7.55% when it pays 15. Where the dealer hits soft 17, the same two schedules keep 6.21% and 5.42%. A shorter shoe nudges the price up: with the 12 to 1 line and a dealer standing on soft 17, Buster keeps 8.48% with two decks in the shoe and 8.77% with one.

The dealer rule matters because a dealer who hits soft 17 busts more often, and every one of the extra busts takes four cards or more, the lines that pay at the higher rates. The same rule costs the main bet 0.21 percentage points, as the rule-cost table on the blackjack odds page shows, so a hit-soft-17 table makes the main game dearer and Buster cheaper at once.