Blackjack Probabilities 1

Probabilities are something that the Blackjack player must understand in order to win.

There exists a basic strategy which will help to reduce the house advantage when you are playing. Players who rely on luck and play with no strategy are going to lose plain and simple. A strategy can bring the house advantage down to as low as 1%.

Probabilities include the percentage of both dealer and player going bust. This stands at 8%, but the house has the advantage as they play second.

Other strategies that should be avoided are when you stick on a hard 12 as this gives the house a 3.91% advantage. Never imitate the croupier as they hit until 16 and stick on 17 or more. This gives them a 5.48% advantage over you.

If you look at the dealers hand after they reach 16 they have the following percentages.

• 16 28.36%
• 17 14.58%
• 18 13.81%
• 19 13.48%
• 20 17.58%
• 21 4.82%
• 21 if they have 3 or more cards then the percentage is 7.36%

More probabilities that are involved in Blackjack include when you take into account that 16 cards in the deck are valued at 10. With 52 cards in a single deck this gives a ratio of 3.25 that the card will be a 10. This equates to a 1/3 of the pack being valued at 10.

This is useful if there have not been any 10 value cards dealt in the last 7 or 8 cards and you now know that there is a very high probability of a 10 valued card at the next.