Resplit of split hand possible?

[PinkChip]

I have a question about the splitting rules which may be stupid but nevertheless is not
clear to me.

Suppose you are playing a game where resplitting is allowed, let's say up to 4 hands.
The Dealer has a 6 up. You get a pair of Eights (8,8) on your hand and decide to split them.
Now you play two separate hands, each of which consists of one Eight initially.

The dealer then draws a Ten onto your first split hand,
which is now (8,10). You decide to stand on this Hard 18
and wave off the dealer in order to switch to the second split hand,
which is still one Eight.

Now the dealer draws a third Eight, which lands
on your second split hand, which is now (8,8).
Question: are you allowed to split these Eights and start a third hand,
which would be a resplit, but with the interruption of a Ten drawn
between the first two 8s and the third 8?

(You got 8,8,10,8. With 8,8,8 you could surely resplit,
but is it still possible after the intermediate 10?)

[ZenMaster_Flash]

Yes. You can again re_split.

Casinos in some venues (e.g. PA and NJ) will only permit one re_split (resulting in three [3] hands).
Some locales will permit two re_splits (resulting in four [4] hands)
Some casinos have no cap at all.

[PinkChip]

Hi, many thanks for your quick answer! I had doubted it but it made sense to me to resplit in such cases,
so I implemented this feature when I once wrote a simulator for testing basic strategy.
By the way, PA is Pennsylvania, I guess?

[Alvaro]

Now the dealer draws a third Eight, which lands
on your second split hand, which is now (8,8).
Question: are you allowed to split these Eights and start a third hand,
which would be a resplit, but with the interruption of a Ten drawn
between the first two 8s and the third 8?

I knew a casino (in Arg) in which you can re-split only if the cards were consecutive, so in your example, when the ten apeared it crashes the splitting action at the second pair of eight's.

[21forme]

Now the dealer draws a third Eight, which lands
on your second split hand, which is now (8,8).
Question: are you allowed to split these Eights and start a third hand,
which would be a resplit, but with the interruption of a Ten drawn
between the first two 8s and the third 8?

Absolutely.

[PinkChip]

Thanks to all answers. So it seems to depend on the casino. Interestingly, this question has occupied me for a long time, but despite reading many books on card counting etc., I never found an answer to it in literature.

[Wave Function]

I don't know if you're near a casino or not, but you can always walk up to the dealer or the floor supervisor and ask, "Do you allow so and so in this casino?".
In Foxwoods, the high-limit room in MGM Grand allows re-splitting of Aces, while the Newport high-limit room nextdoor doesn't, and they're both under the same roof.

[PinkChip]

No, I have little casino practice since there are not that many in the near, and when I once asked a casino employee if resplitting, soft doubling and surrender is allowed, she looked at me as if I came from Mars, so I avoid such questions because I do not want to look like a knowledgeable player.

But it was a general question anyway. Obviously, it depends on the casino, so asking in a specific one would not yield a general image. Since the situation needs three cards of same rank, it occurs rarely, so it is also not easy to observe it (also not in Casino Verite).

[Wave Function]

Your quote, “I avoid such questions because I do not want to look like a knowledgeable player.”
I don’t know what to make of that. <chuckle> You will *never* be mistaken for a knowledgeable
player by asking naive and rudimentary questions. LOL! Feel free to ask away at any casino with
absolute impunity. If a rude dealer gives you a dirty look, then simply walk over to the next dealer,
and so on. They’re not important people, so you can disregard them indiscriminately.

[PinkChip]

I think I have to clarify that I am living in Europe, which is a totally different place. I call it a "blackjack desert" because playing conditions, at least in Western Europe, got so bad that the game is not playable anymore. I have visited three casinos in different countries there so far - in Venice, Tenerife (Canary Islands) and Switzerland - all of them had only CSMs, so I played just a few minutes (well, about one hour) perfect BS, only in order to get used to the casino atmosphere. From what I heard, Monte Carlo seems to be not much better, no shoes except maybe for high rollers. That is clearly not the big opportunity in "International Play" which some older US books describe. Also, casinos here are ridiculously small (just 2 or 4 BJ tables altogether, which would form only one pit in the US). You get no free cocktails and no comps here. So I believe in order to get some decent atmosphere and playing conditions, you have to travel to the US (maybe some places in Eastern Europe, where they do not have the money to buy expensive shuffling machines).

The sad thing is that the players are generally so poor here that they seem to not care about this CSM scam, which makes blackjack, in my opinion, a stupid and boring "card roulette". There is hardly anyone to even know Basic Strategy. I think this is the reason why the casino employee was such astonished about my questions. You must be aware that in Europe, surrender is virtually unknown, and soft doubling is either not allowed (only hard 9,10,11) or they try to make it useless demanding that you must count an ace as 1 after doubling (which would render A,7 doubling and then getting a 3 a worthless 11 rather than a 21). So you look quite suspicious if you even know the word "surrender" or "soft doubling".

I have never visited a US casino but would like to. The most important question to me is, how much is the percentage of CSM in the US? But even if pitch and shoe games are prevalent, from what I read in the books and in this forum, conditions are getting worse and worse (6:5 single deck, H17 even on 6 and 8 decks), so the question is how long it will be possible to still gain an advantage? I have the impression that there are many old books from veteran authors (only few books were released after 2000), who often described the good old times "back then", but gave no perspective for the future. And when they did, it was in the 90s and way over-optimistic (e.g. Ian Andersen, whose latest comments in "Burning the Tables" date from 2002/03, where CSMs just started to appear in greater numbers). He predicts a golden time and simultaneously assumes he can get a penetration of 5 out of 6 decks (83 percent) most of the time, which is totally unrealistic nowadays, isn't it? Also Stanford Wong's benchmark in "Professional Blackjack" assumes a whopping 5 out of 6 deck penetration. Don Schlesinger's articles mostly date from the 1980s and often deal with 4-deckers, which have become very rare (due to Norm's "Modern Blackjack", only 3.8 percent in the US). Just to name a few obsolete facts.

The essence is that the game seems to be unbeatable in Western Europe (how is it in England? I don't know), and that there is no "blackjack culture" here as in the US. So with just knowing Basic Strategy or rule variations, you stick out here and just do not fit the image they have of their average "ploppy" customer. And because of the few casinos and tables, the "just walk over to the next table or casino" is not possible. Sorry if this sounds frustrated, but I have the impression that America is a complete different world in this respect.

[paymypush]

I don't know if you're near a casino or not, but you can always walk up to the dealer or the floor supervisor and ask, "Do you allow so and so in this casino?".
In Foxwoods, the high-limit room in MGM Grand allows re-splitting of Aces, while the Newport high-limit room nextdoor doesn't, and they're both under the same roof.

Everything comes with a price. All the games in the MGM Grand high limit room are H17.