> All things considered, I must admit that the
> concept of the Blackjack Switch variation on
> standard Blackjack, sounds kind of fun, at
> least at first glance.

It is my opinion that this game could be quite favorite. Psychologically it is very nice that you can switch second cards. And, if 22 pushes instead of loses, it does not look like such a big deal...

> And what a challenge to come up with an
> optimum strategy!

Indeed. This was the hardest part of everything.
There is some 10,550 different combinations of 4 cards & dealer's up card. (The number is smaller for no composition dependent strategy.) Quite a few decisions are tricky.

> Looking forward to discussing this more on
> Don's Domain, if BJ Switch actually catches
> on in the Casino.

> I wonder if it will turn out that the BJ
> rules given back to the House
> disproportionately "hurt" a card
> counter, and can't be made up by the hand
> switches?

One thing is that BJ pays even money, so the power of ace and ten is smaller due to this fact. On the other hand, switching with an ace is often very valuable.

The one possibly drawback for counters is the need to learn extra switching decisions.

Regards,

Karel