House Edge by Table Rules

Every blackjack table posts its rules on the felt, and those few lines of print matter more to your results than any decision you make while playing. Two tables can look identical, deal from the same shoe and attract the same players, and still cost you three or four times as much per hour as each other because of a single printed rule.

This page puts a number on each common rule. All of it assumes you play perfect basic strategy, so the differences you see are the rules alone, not skill.

House edge for each rule change

The first row is a good standard shoe game: dealer stands on soft 17, you may double on any first two cards and after splitting, and a blackjack pays 3 to 2. Every other row changes one thing from that game, except the last three, which are complete tables you are likely to meet. The last column is what a player betting $25 a hand at 60 hands an hour should expect to lose per hour, on average.

The rule that costs the most: 6 to 5 blackjack

A natural blackjack arrives about once every 21 hands. At 3 to 2 it pays $37.50 on a $25 bet. At 6 to 5 it pays $30. That $7.50 difference, spread across every blackjack you are dealt, adds 1.35 percentage points to the house edge, which is more than every other rule on this page combined.

In money, it takes the base game from about $8.55 an hour to about $28.84 an hour for the same $25 player. Nothing you do at the table wins that back. If the only table in the room pays 6 to 5, the best strategic decision available is to play somewhere else or bet less.

Even money, where a blackjack pays only 1 to 1, is rarer and worse still: the edge climbs to 2.83 percent.

Dealer hits soft 17

When the dealer holds an ace and a 6, or any soft 17, some tables make the dealer stand and others make the dealer hit. Hitting lets the dealer turn a mediocre 17 into a stronger total more often than it busts, and that adds 0.22 percentage points to the edge. Look for "Dealer must stand on all 17s" printed on the felt; "Dealer hits soft 17" or "H17" is the worse game.

The rule also changes a few plays at the margin, mostly doubling more often against a dealer ace, because the dealer's ace becomes slightly more likely to end on a stronger hand. The full strategy chart on this site is built for the stand-on-17 game.

Doubling restrictions

Doubling is the one way you get more money on the table when the odds favour you. Every restriction on it hands value back to the house. Losing the right to double after a split costs 0.12 points. Restricting doubles to totals of 9, 10 and 11 costs 0.09, and allowing them only on 10 and 11 costs 0.17, mostly because you lose the soft doubles such as ace-6 against a dealer 5.

Late surrender

Surrender lets you give up half your bet after the dealer checks for blackjack. It is only correct on a handful of very bad hands, but on those it saves money, and it lowers the edge by 0.085 points. Our surrender guide lists exactly which hands and how much each one saves.

Putting the rules together

Real tables bundle several rules. A good shoe game with surrender sits at 0.48 percent. A common Las Vegas Strip shoe that hits soft 17 but offers surrender sits at 0.69 percent. A table that hits soft 17, bans doubling after splits and pays 6 to 5 sits at 2.26 percent, roughly 4.7 times as expensive to play as the good table.

The practical routine is short. Before you buy in, read the felt for three things: what a blackjack pays, whether the dealer hits soft 17, and whether surrender is offered. Those three lines tell you most of what the table will cost.

What the house edge does and does not mean

A house edge of half a percent does not mean you lose half a percent of your buy-in. It means that across a very large number of hands you lose about half a percent of the total amount you bet. A player who buys in for $500 and bets $25 a hand for four hours puts roughly $6,000 through the table, and the edge applies to that $6,000.

Over a single session, luck swamps the edge completely. Our bankroll and swings guide shows how wide the range of results is over a session, and why a good table still loses money for most people over enough hours.

To see the correct play for any hand under the standard rules, use the calculator or the full strategy chart and guide.

A four hour session at a good table and a bad one

The table below prices the same four hour session, 240 hands, at the good table and at the bad table from above, for four common bet sizes. The average cost is the house edge applied to everything you bet; the last column is what the worse rules alone take from you.

A $25 player who chooses the bad table pays about $107 more per session on average for the same entertainment. Over twenty sessions a year that difference is roughly $2,135, and it is entirely avoidable by reading the felt.

Frequently asked questions

Is single deck blackjack always better?

Not automatically. Fewer decks help the player slightly, but most single deck games today pay 6 to 5 on blackjack, and that one rule costs 1.35 points, far more than the deck count gives back. A shoe game paying 3 to 2 is usually the better choice.

Does the number of players at the table change the house edge?

No. The edge per hand is the same whether you play alone or with six others. A full table does slow the game down, so you play fewer hands per hour and lose less per hour, which is one reason the hourly figures above use a moderate 60 hands.

Can I lower the edge below these numbers?

Only by finding better rules or by card counting, which tracks the cards already dealt. Basic strategy is already assumed here, and no betting pattern changes the edge on any individual hand.

Why does surrender help so little?

Because it is only correct on a few hands, and on those it saves just a few cents. The surrender guide lists each one.

How these numbers were made: every figure on this page is calculated, not quoted. Our blackjack engine works out the exact expected value of every hand for an infinite deck, which lands within about a tenth of a percent of a 6 to 8 deck shoe. It assumes the dealer checks for blackjack, one split per hand, and split aces receiving one card each.

A note on risk. Basic strategy reduces the house edge to roughly half a percent. It does not remove it. Nothing here is gambling advice or a prediction of results. If gambling has stopped being entertainment, the National Problem Gambling Helpline is 1-800-522-4700, or ncpgambling.org.