European no-hole-card blackjack

5 October 2012

By Henry Tamburin

In some countries, dealers take their hole card after all players have their hands. This is called European no-hole-card (ENHC) blackjack. Some countries will have the players lose the total amount of their splitting and doubling when the dealer gets a blackjack.

Your odds and your playing strategy in such games changes somewhat.

The ENHC rule increases the house edge by about 0.11 percent (rule dependent). It also requires a modification to the basic playing strategy. The strategy differences for a multi-deck ENHC game (dealer hits soft 17 and players can double after pair splitting), compared to an American game with the same rules (courtesy of Dan Pronovost; for details, see issue #97 Blackjack Insider Newsletter at www.bjinsider.com).

Essentially, the strategy changes occur when the dealer shows a 10 or Ace and include hitting a hard 11 against a 10; hitting a pair of Aces against the Ace; and hitting a pair of 8s against 10 and Ace.

The above modifications to the playing strategy, for ENHC, assume surrender is not offered. In a future article, I’ll cover the strategy changes when early surrender is available.