Here?s something you?ll probably never see: a single-deck 5-card 21 comprising all four 5s. I?ve thought about this hand through the years and started to make some observations about it. This hand can only be made by starting with two 5s, hitting and getting another 5, and then hitting and catching an ace followed by the case 5. The ace can fall in no other position otherwise the player would stand.

Now in order to hit 5,5 the dealer would usually have to have a 10 or ace up, otherwise the player would probably double. And if the dealer had an A or 10 up he could not have a blackjack or the hand would be over. Also, with a 10 or ace up the counting player would stand a good portion of the time with 5,5,5,A (he would not hit the sixteen).

This situation is more rare than a royal flush, if I may use this analogy, for several reasons. First, a royal can be in one of 4 suits and can also be made on the draw. Also, there are 20 cards available to work with initially. Getting a blackjack hand with all four 5s which includes an ace as the second hit card, I would think, would be about 4 times as hard to achieve as being dealt a royal flush in any of four suits. (Yes, you would have a chance at any of four aces ( three if the dealer?s up card is an ace) to complete the 5-card 21, but it must be in the second hit-card position only.)

My math may be faulty, but I calculated that being DEALT a royal flush is one chance in 649,739. Being dealt one in a specific suit is about 1 chance in 2,598,956. And since the player would normally hit a 5,5 about one-third of the time ( against a 10 or ace where the dealer has no blackjack) the odds of the 5,5,5,A,5 hand are about one in 7,796,868. And even then the player has only about a 53% chance that he would hit a 5,5,5,A (sixteen) because of the count. So, the chances are about 1 in 14,711,071 of this scenario playing out.

If a player played 70 hands an hour he would have to play continuously for about 24 years for this scenario to happen.

Greasy John