Blackjack: Tradeoffs

22 December 2022

By Royal Flushes

CINDY: Are there any perfect games? Obviously, you can’t win all the time every time you play but are there games where there are no tradeoffs, good and bad inherent in the game or the people who play that game? What do you think?

ABBY: Quickly, no, I don’t think there are perfect games or perfect fellow and sister players even. Life is composed of tradeoffs, isn’t it? I think so. And I would say the same thing is right there in the games we play.

CINDY: I’ll give you a game and you tell me the tradeoff. Then you give me a game and I will give you the tradeoff.

ABBY: Okay but I think we should give both of our opinions of the games..

CINDY: Fine and first we have blackjack.

ABBY: The best things about blackjack is that playing the computer-based basic strategy the house will have only about a one-half percent edge over the player. You make the right decisions in playing your hands against the dealer’s up card and the game is a close contest in the long run. The table is usually composed of serious players and there is little screaming and yelling. Except you do get the occasional blackjack player who fancies himself or herself an “expert.”

CINDY: Don’t I know it! The blackjack “expert” at the table is a really annoying presence.

ABBY: And the expert is not lax in giving everybody at the table the benefits of his or her annoyingly wrong advice. That’s a bad element among the players who play the game. Luckily that doesn’t happen too much. By the way, I have found that there are more so-called experts among the male players than among the female players. Those “experts” are so annoying and not just because they are male.

CINDY: I agree about who most of the “experts” are--- they tend to be males. Now what about the actual game itself? Internal tradeoffs?

ABBY: You can go up and down pretty fast. You have what are called premium hands such as doubling down on your first two cards, splitting pairs and doubling down on split pairs. These premium hands are usually good for the players but they aren’t perfectly good. You can lose your double downs and splits and doubles after splits. That puts you in the basement when you are playing.

CINDY: Even a blackjack can be tied by the dealer having a blackjack so the “perfect hand” is not completely perfect. The very hands that give you more can also, at times, give you a negative experience. That’s bad.

ABBY: That is a real tradeoff in blackjack. The game is a good game but you do have areas where you hit the pits. Just take splitting the hands of two eights. It is a losing expectation but splitting lessens the losses. But it is still not a fun situation. You are lessening loses but not eliminating them.

CINDY: The ups and downs in blackjack can be tremendous. That is a fact and anyone who wants to play the game at a competent level should know the facts. You have to take the bad with the good.

ABBY: The good of blackjack is definitely good. But the bad is there making the game somewhat dangerous.

Next week, let’s take a look at more games.

CINDY: Absolutely. Craps?

ABBY: Great.