Blackjack players have been looking for ways to improve their winning odds for decades now. Countless strategies have surfaced over the years as a result. The bad news is most of them are inefficient and work to the player’s detriment, increasing rather than reducing the house edge.
One popular approach some people choose to adopt is the so-called “mimic the dealer” strategy. The name itself pretty much indicates what this strategy is all about, i.e. the player obeys by the fixed house rules their dealer is expected to follow.
People who decide to give this approach a try usually have the following reasoning: “The dealer seems to beat me all the time. Maybe if I mimic their plays, I will have a level playing field with the dealer?”.
The question is does this strategy work and if not, what are the reasons for its inefficiency. In this article, SuperCasinoSites provides the answers and tackles the main faults of this approach. Also featured are several other flawed strategies to avoid along with the tactics that effectively reduce the house edge.
The Mimic the Dealer strategy is beyond simple and can be implemented in both online and landbased blackjack games. All you have to do is follow the same fixed rules of play as your dealer. Of course, some of these would vary from one casino to the next but here is a brief recap of how to play like a blackjack dealer.
- You must always hit totals of 16 or under.
- You must stand on all totals of 17 or higher*.
- You should never take insurance.
- You can only make plays the dealer is allowed to make, which means no doubling down or splitting pairs.
- You cannot surrender your hands.
*Here we would like to remind players that there are variations in the dealer standing rules. S17 games require the dealer to stand on all totals of 17 while at H17 tables, the dealer stands on hard 17 but hits soft 17. The S17 rule favors the player so if you really do intend to play like a dealer, you should always hit soft totals of 17. That is all there is to this approach.
At first glance, playing like this seems like the smart thing to do because the house has an advantage over players. It follows the house representative is playing in a way that enables the house to maintain its edge, right? No, not really. Read on to understand why.
Mimicking the Dealer Strategy and Its Impact on the House Edge
In order to understand why mimicking the dealer is an ineffective strategy, you must first get a proper grasp on how the house obtains its edge in blackjack. Of course, you should also have a good idea of how to properly play blackjack in the first place.
Recreational blackjack players generally fall into three distinct categories. Some follow their intuition when playing their hands, which is basically the same as guessing. Others rely on strategies like mimicking the dealer approach. The third group uses the basic playing strategy, which is the only mathematically sound way to reduce the house edge in blackjack but more on this later.
When asked how the casino gets its advantage, most people would answer the house edge results from players not knowing how to play their hands. This is partially true because the house edge increases when you hit, stand, split or double on gut instinct. However, there is more to it than players guessing how to act on their hands.
The Double Bust Rule
Mimicking the Dealer Will Cost You a Lot over the Long Haul
Player Advantages over the Dealer
The Double Bust Rule
The inherent house edge in blackjack results from one simple rule that dictates players must always act on their hands before the dealer plays theirs. This may seem like nothing to cry about but it gives the casino a built-in advantage that is impossible to overcome unless you count cards or use other advanced techniques.
You are forced to act first and if you bust, i.e. go over 21, you automatically lose regardless of whether the dealer busts afterward or not. Your bet is already lost even if other players at the table have won their wagers. You don’t get your money back if the dealer loses subsequently.
Casinos were well aware of the mathematics of this game when they introduced it to their floors. The casino advantage does not result solely from poor playing decisions, it also stems from the way the game was designed.
Mimicking the Dealer Will Cost You a Lot over the Long Haul
Following the same hitting and standing rules as the dealer has a devastating effect on clueless players’ bankrolls because it yields a house edge of roughly 5% to 6%. By means of comparison, someone who follows basic strategy faces a casino advantage of under 1%. You will agree this is a huge difference.
What does this mean in terms of hourly losses, though? Let’s have a look. Suppose you bet $25 per hand and go through 100 rounds per hour with basic strategy against a house edge of 0.5%. You will incur hourly losses of 0.005 x 100 x $25 = $12.5.
Of course, you are not going to lose this exact amount precisely after an hour. You will win some hands and lose others but over a big enough sample size, you will lose around $12.5 per hour on average. The 0.5% house edge will inevitably have its say.
This is the reason why casinos are never concerned about patrons’ short-term wins but try to get them to play as long as possible. They know the math of the game will eventually have its say so that players will end up losing in the long run.
Now let’s see what happens if you follow the same rules as the dealer. You are again betting $25 per hand on average and playing 100 rounds per hour, only this time you are grinding against a house edge of 6%.
Your long-term losses per hour will jump to 0.06 x 100 x $25 = $150. This is twelve times more than the losses you will incur when playing against a 0.5% house edge with a proper mathematically sound strategy. It is not difficult to see why mimicking the dealer is a ludicrous way to approach the game of blackjack.
Player Advantages over the Dealer
Fortunately, things are not as grim since casinos have incorporated several rules that actually aim at helping blackjack players. Otherwise, everyone will quickly lose their shirts and quit playing the game. Patrons can choose from a range of playing options that are unavailable to the dealer. We outline these below.
- Unlike dealers, players have the option to double down their bets when in advantageous situations like having two-card totals of 9, 10, and 11 against a dealer who shows weak cards like 4, 5, and 6. This enables the player to extract more value profit-wise from these favorable spots. The more flexible the house rules on doubling down are, the better for the player.
- The option to spit and resplit paired cards also works to the advantage of the player and has a similar effect as doubling, i.e. it gives them the opportunity to profit more or potentially improve their odds of winning with otherwise poor hands like a pair of 8s, for example.
- Blackjack players have the option to stand on totals 12 through 16, unlike the dealer who must always draw to 16 or lower. In certain situations, the S17 rule makes the dealer more susceptible to breaking their hand.
- The ability to surrender a bad hand is particularly useful in some instances because it helps you minimize your losses in unfavorable situations. One prime example is when you are dealt a hard 16 against a dealer with 9, 10 or Ace. In this case, the best course of action is to surrender your hard 16 and get half of your original bet back.
- When the player wins the round with a blackjack, they are rewarded with a bonus payout of 3 to 2 rather than receiving even money. By contrast, the dealer collects from you a payout of 1 to 1 (even money) when they beat you with a blackjack.This increased payout alone is capable of reducing the casino advantage by 2.3%. The table below shows you the effect of the other favorable player rules in blackjack. Keep in mind these percentages might vary a bit depending on the exact house rules and the number of decks in play.
Favorable Rule for the PlayerHouse Edge Reduction in %Correct Splitting Decisions0.4%Correct Hitting Decisions3.5%Correct Standing Decisions3.5%Correct Doubling Down Decisions1.6%3 to 2 Payout for Blackjacks2.3%
Other Flawed Blackjack Strategies to Avoid
If you think mimicking the dealer is a bad playing strategy, wait until you see the travesties we discuss in brief below. All of these strategies and systems have been proven mathematically ineffective and are guaranteed to lead to the downfall of any blackjack player who uses them. Avoid them at all costs no matter what “experts” swear by their efficiency.
The No Bust Strategy
Taking Insurance to “Protect” Strong Hands
Progressive Strategies
Assuming the Dealer Always Has a 10 in the Hole
The No Bust Strategy
As we already established, if you bust, you inevitably lose regardless of whether the dealer busts after you or not. This has led some players to the conclusion that they should never draw to a hand that could bust. Let’s demonstrate how this reasoning works with an example.
Assume you are dealt a ten-value card next to a 4 for a total of 14 while the dealer is showing a 10. You decide to hit (the mathematically correct decision in this case), pull out another ten-value card, go over 21, and lose your bet.
The dealer then flips over a 6 for an awful total of 16. You reason the dealer would have busted with this 10 if only you had decided to stand on your hard 14. Therefore, you are better off not drawing to any hand that could bust.
Does this approach increase your win rate? No, it actually has the opposite effect because it gives the casino roughly a 4% edge over you. By contrast, you are battling a house advantage of around 0.5% if you follow the correct strategy and hit totals 12 through 16 against a dealer with a 7 or higher. In other words, your negative expectation with the No Bust strategy is eight times greater.
Taking Insurance to “Protect” Strong Hands
Most people usually decline insurance against a dealer showing an ace but many tend to accept this option when they are dealt a strong starting total like 10 or 11, for instance. They reason these hands are worth “protecting” but the thing is insurance does not improve your odds of beating the dealer in any way.
Insurance is nothing more than a proposition bet on whether the dealer has a ten-value card in the hole when showing an ace. When you accept insurance, you must post a second wager equal to half of your initial bet. If the dealer indeed has a ten in the hole, you win the insurance bet at casino odds of 2 to 1 but lose your original wager. This basically means you break even on this round.
Statistically speaking, insurance is always a bad bet, in fact, one of the worst you can make in the entire casino. It puts you at a huge disadvantage, yielding a house edge of 7.4% in multiple-deck games. In other words, you can expect to lose roughly $0.74 for every dollar you spend on insurance over the long haul.
Does this sound like a cost-effective way to “protect” a strong hand? We think not. You should always decline insurance unless you use advanced techniques such as card counting.
Progressive Strategies
Some players rely on strategies that call for varying their bets according to some progression. Betting decisions are made based on the result of the previous hand, i.e. how much you bet on the next hand depends on whether you have won or lost the previous one. There are two types of betting progressions:
- Positive progressions require you to increase your bets after each winning hand and decrease them after a loss. Such betting systems are predicated on the idea that the player should try to squeeze out maximum profits during a winning streak while at the same time minimizing their risks of incurring huge losses.
- With negative progressions, the player increases their wager after every losing hand and decreases it after a winning one. The premise here is that negative progressive systems help players mitigate the effects of long losing streaks.
Sooner or later, you will win a hand and this win will come at such a high stake that it will offset all your previous losses, leaving you with a small profit. The Martingale is the most notorious system based on a negative progression.
Both types are ineffective and as such, should be avoided. Why? Because the odds of winning your next hand are not influenced in any way by the results of the previous hands. Also, no progressive system is capable of overcoming the house edge in blackjack. They all fail in the long run.
Assuming the Dealer Always Has a 10 in the Hole
According to this strategy, the player should assume the dealer’s hole card is always a ten-value one. Hitting and standing decisions should be made according to this assumption. When dealt a hard 17 against a dealer showing an 8, for example, one such player would hit rather than stand (which is the mathematically correct decision) because the dealer would ultimately flip over a 10 for a higher total of 18.
The strategy rests on the idea that there are more ten-value cards in the shoe than any other card value, which increases the probability of the hole card being a 10.
The truth of the matter is the probability of the dealer holding a ten-value card is roughly around 30% while that of them having something else is 70%. In a standard deck, there are 16 ten-value cards only.
It follows that cards of other numerical values make for more than ⅔ of the entire deck. This strategy is so faulty that it gives the casino nearly twice as big an edge compared to the Mimic the Dealer approach.
Strategies That Effectively Reduce or Eliminate the House Edge
All of the above-listed strategies, along with mimicking the dealer, have been proven to fail players in the long. The good news is blackjack has been analyzed in-depth by many mathematicians, who have proven with absolute certainty there is a right way and a wrong way to play each hand. Their efforts and analysis have birthed what is known as basic blackjack strategy.
Basic Strategy
Advantage Play Strategies
Basic Strategy
Using basic strategy is the only way to improve your odds of winning at blackjack. The latter is a set of rules that tell you how to optimally play every possible hand you can get dealt in the game. This set of rules has been refined over the years through computer simulations and mathematical computations.
The optimal plays suggested by the strategy are based on limited information because they take into account only the player’s starting two-card total and the upcard of the dealer. Nevertheless, basic strategy has the capacity of reducing the house edge in blackjack to the meager 0.5%. This is a significant improvement from the 5% to 6% casino advantage you face when mimicking the dealer.
Basic strategy is presented in the form of a chart where you get to see the optimal playing decision (hitting, standing, splitting, doubling, and surrendering) for any two-card total against any dealer upcard. Its purpose is to minimize players’ losses and maximize their profits over time. Do not underestimate the importance of basic strategy. The fact that even card counters use it only goes to show how essential this strategy is.
Advantage Play Strategies
Basic strategy has the power to reduce the house edge but is incapable of entirely overcoming it on its own because it is based on a neutral deck. This means you will still lose money in the long run albeit at a much slower pace. There are, however, several advanced techniques that can help you eliminate the house advantage and profit consistently from your blackjack sessions.
- Card counting is the most widely implemented approach by advantage players in blackjack. This technique relies on the fact blackjack is a dependent-trials game. Once the shoe is reshuffled, the number of high and low cards is equal. However, this composition changes with each card leaving the shoe as the game progresses.
An excess of high cards left to be dealt favors the player while an excess of low cards works to the dealer’s advantage. By tracking the cards removed from play, card counters can detect when the advantage swings in their favor so that they can increase their bets. And vice versa, the card counter bets small when the dealer has the edge. Check out our detailed article for further information on how card counting works.
- Shuffle tracking is an advanced technique where the player keeps track of certain cards or card clumps when the dealer reshuffles the decks for the purpose of identifying them during the next shoe. To use this technique, you need to learn basic strategy and master card counting in advance. Check out this article for more information on shuffle tracking.
- Edge sorting is another sophisticated technique that enables blackjack players to identify key cards by asymmetries in the cut patterns at their backs. However, using this approach is not always possible because casinos have already introduced a measure against it, known as the “shuffle turn”.
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