Hard 12 Against a Dealer 3
Updated
Hit — but by a smaller margin than against a two, and this is the last upcard where hitting wins. Standing costs 1.8% of your bet. Against a four, one card higher, the answer reverses.
- Hit. 23.4% lost, against 25.2% for standing.
- The margin is 1.8% — less than half the gap against a 2.
- A dealer 3 busts 37.4% of the time. Still not enough.
- Against a 4 the answer flips to standing. That is the tightest cell on the chart.
The 12 row is a slope, not a rule
People memorize the 12 row as a block: hit against 2 and 3, stand against 4, 5 and 6. What the numbers show is a smooth slide rather than a switch. Standing improves steadily as the dealer’s card gets weaker, and it crosses hitting somewhere between the 3 and the 4.
Against a 2 hitting wins by 4.0%. Against a 3 it wins by 1.8%. Against a 4 standing wins by 0.4%. The line is crossed, not jumped.
What each option is actually worth
Six decks, dealer stands on soft 17, averaged across every two-card 12. Bet of 1 unit:
The first cell a counter changes
Because the margin here is only 1.8%, it takes very little for the answer to move. At a true count of +2 or higher there are enough tens left that hitting a 12 becomes too dangerous and standing takes over. It is one of the earliest and most-used deviations in the Illustrious 18.
If you are not counting, ignore that and hit. A deviation applied at the wrong count is worse than no deviation at all.
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By Martin Kosek · every number on this site is computed by us, not copied.
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