Modern Blackjack nth Edition

The goals of the casinos and of the advantage players are in conflict. The casino wants every dollar the player has and the player wants every dollar the casino has. If either party gets what it wants, neither side wins. It is necessary that both sides make money to keep the casinos in business and keep the mystique of the game alive. So, this is my attempt at triangulation.

My suggestion is that the casino offer a rather poor set of rules, 8 deck, dealer hits soft-17, double after split, late surrender. This provides the house with a .576% advantage. I also suggest 100% penetration. That is, every card dealt but the bottom card. Five burn cards, to keep the casino from losing its shirt. This will affect different players differently.

• Poor players – The casino will make more money off of them per hour as the time wasted shuffling will be reduced.
• Perfect basic strategy players – The casino will make more money from them per hour due to reduced shuffle time and poor rules.
• Poor and mediocre card counters – The 100% penetration is a card counter’s dream. But, to take advantage, your count must be perfect. And, in this case, it must be perfect after counting and playing eight decks. If you have the count wrong at very deep penetration, like the last half deck out of eight, errors will be greatly magnified. The true count will swing dramatically in that last half deck and betting must be precise, or you will be making terrible bets with a huge increase in risk. On top of this is the tricky situation where the dealer will run out of cards and shuffle in the middle of the hand, which means that the count will often be very high, but your double down and hit cards, as well as the dealer hit cards, will come from a shoe with a far different count than present at the bet. Mediocre card counters will likely be killed by this game.
• Good card counters – They would love this game. Boring as Hell for the first six decks, and then more and more exciting. A SCORE in excess of 100 is quite possible.

The overall point is to offer a true game of skill. In the long run, you will reduce costs as tables will not sit idle during frequent shuffles, reduce player boredom during shuffles, and entice more customers by offering a game that can be beaten.

Am I being greedy by moving winnings to the skilled over the unskilled? Well, yeah. But those that want to gamble without putting in the effort to obtain an edge will eventually lose anyhow, and the odds are still better than many other games.