How Many Decks Do Casinos Play Blackjack With

Blackjack in Las Vegas can use one to eight decks. How many decks may not make any difference to a beginner player who knows just knows and plays basic strategy without paying attention to the cards played. However, the main thing you need to pay attention to is the rules of the specific table AND blackjack payouts. At a casino blackjack table, the dealer faces five to seven playing positions from behind a semicircular table. Between one and eight standard 52-card decks are shuffled together. At the beginning of each round, up to three players can place their bets in the 'betting box' at each position in play. Know How Some Land-Based Casinos Still Use Fewer Decks. In the beginning, the Blackjack game was played using a single deck of cards and a house edge of 1%. With the increase in players, the strategies too increased, especially the card counting one, to win at this game. Therefore, the casinos went on to make some rules to make the game fair.

How Many Decks Do Casinos Play Blackjack Withdrawal

• Appendices
• Miscellaneous
• External Links

Introduction

In playing blackjack online one problem I often face is not knowing how many decks are being used. This is a particular problem with Real Time Gaming casinos. The help files often do not indicate this rule, as well as other rules, and customer support are notorious for giving incorrect information on their own rules. So I devised a test to help determine the number of decks. This test is based on the player's first two cards and the dealer's first two.

The following table shows the probability for various configurations of the initial four cards in blackjack. Note the probabilites for a suited pair. Of all the hands I feel this is the best to test for, given both it's frequency and correlation to number of decks.

To determine the number of decks in an online blackjack game keep a tally of both the total number of hands played and the number of suited pairs. Only count a hands as a suited pair if the other two are singletons. For example one suited pair and one non-suited pair does not count. In a single deck game the ratio of suited pairs to total hands will obviously be zero. In double deck this ratio will be about 4.8%. In a 4-deck game the ratio increases to 7.0%. After that the differences are too subtle are to tell without a gigantic sample.

Of course if you ever notice three of the same card on the screen at once that rules out a double deck game immediately. Despite my lack of faith in customer support knowing their own rules I would suggest at least asking. If they give you an incorrect answer, and you can prove it, you may get some free money in your account as a way of thanks. This has happened to me several times.

Unfortunately it takes a fairly large sample size to have confidence in the number of decks between 2 and 4. After 250 hands the probability that the sample mean in a 2-deck game will be greater than 6.96% (the 4-deck theoretical mean) is 5.29%. Likewise the probability that the sample mean in a 4-deck game will be less than 4.78% (the 2-deck theoretical mean) is 8.76%. Increasing the sample size to 500 these numbers become 1.11% and 2.76%. At 1000 the numbers are 0.06% and 0.34%.

How Many Decks Do Casinos Play Blackjack Withdraw

You have already pointed out some of the advantages of online blackjack, as opposed to a physical casino. Unless you are card counting, it is to your advantage that they shuffle after every hand. In the land casinos they will usually play until a specific point is reached in the deck, finish that hand, and then shuffle. This works to the player's disadvantage because more cards will be dealt when the shuffle point is reached in a deck rich in small cards than one rich in big cards. In other words, in a physical casinos the player will see slightly more small cards than large cards over the long run, which is bad for the player. However, much more important is the fact that you don't have to feel obligated to tip in an online casino. The faster play, one on one play, and the larger spreads do not help nor hurt the casual player. I attribute your better results in online casinos to any combination of luck, better rules, and not having to tip.

• The dealer deals from an infinite deck
• Dealer stands on soft 17
• No surrender allowed
• Player can split any pair
• Player can re-split, except for aces
• Insurance offered only when player has two cards
• Player can double down on any hand
• Player can double after a split

These are the rules at 4 Aces casino, where I always seem to bust if I hit a 12 or 13 and the dealer wiped me out with a mind numbing over 40 21’s including twice 21’s four times in a row. They do allow late surrender even though it states otherwise in their rules. What is an infinite deck? If these are good rules could you point out a good strategy.

Why Do Casinos Use Multiple Decks In Blackjack

According to my blackjack house edge calculator, the house edge with these rules, assuming eight decks, is 0.45%. The effect of infinite decks, compared to eight, is 0.10% in the house's favor. So, the total house edge would be 0.45% + 0.10% = 0.55%.
You also seem to also imply that this casino is not dealing a fair game. Unless you provide some hard data I can't comment on that.

Most online casinos shuffle after every hand. However, the six-deck game at Unified Gaming casinos shuffles at a random point in the deck. I have heard of other casinos that also penetrate more than one hand into a shoe, but I don't recall which ones. If the cards are shuffled after every hand there is no use in card counting, other than applying my composition dependent basic strategy exceptions.

It is my understanding they shuffle after every hand in the single deck game. When I have played the six-deck game you can hear a shuffling sound and the bottom of the screen says 'shuffling' from time to time. Perhaps you were only playing the single deck game. It seems like they do this at random times. The lost connection is a known annoyance with Unified Gaming software. I mention it myself in my review. Some people say if you disable your sound card it helps with this problem.

You could test for how often the same card appears in two consecutive hands. Considering only the four initial cards dealt and assuming all four are different the expected number of those cards seen in the next hand is 16/52 = 0.307692, assuming the cards are shuffled after every hand. If you see fewer repeats than would argue that the cards are not shuffled after every hand. If the cards are not shuffled between hands the expected number of repeats seen would be 4*(4d-1)/(52d-4), where d is the number of decks. It is easier, but less reliable, to just ask customer support.

Each card is random whether the RNG is ’spinning’ before each card is dealt or not. As for whether the RNG keeps spinning, I don’t know, but mathematically it doesn’t make any difference.

Do Casinos Have Single Deck Blackjack

Perhaps you misunderstood the point I was trying to make in my blackjack appendix 10. The bottom line is that unless you are a card counter shuffling after every hand, as opposed to using a cut card, is a good thing. The house edge is reduced 0.02% in a 6-deck game, to 0.11% in a 1-deck game, by shuffling after every hand.