Blackjack Myths, One at a Time
Updated
Most blackjack folklore is not harmless. It leads people to stand on hands they should hit, blame strangers for their losses, and raise bets at exactly the wrong moment. Here is each common belief with the figure that settles it.
- “The dealer always has a ten” — a ten-value card is 30.8% of the shoe.
- “Never bust” costs 3.0%, more than every bad rule combined.
- “The bad player at third base cost me” — helps you as often as it hurts.
- “The table is due” — only the cards remaining matter, not the results.
“Assume the dealer has a ten”
Ten-value cards — tens, jacks, queens and kings — are sixteen of every fifty-two, so 30.8% of the shoe. Assuming the hole card is one of them means assuming an event that fails about seven times in ten.
The advice is not entirely worthless: it points in the right direction against a strong upcard. But taken literally it produces the never-bust habit below, which is the most expensive mistake at the table. The actual dealer figures are here.
“Never take a card that could bust you”
We computed the whole game with this rule applied: it turns a 0.46% game into a 3.49% one. That single habit costs more than a 6:5 payout, more than the dealer hitting soft 17, more than every bad table rule put together. The full calculation is here.
“That player took the dealer’s bust card”
They also, just as often, took the card that would have saved the dealer. Any change to who receives which card, made without knowing the cards, leaves everyone’s expectation exactly where it was. The argument fits in a paragraph, and it needs no simulation.
What makes the myth durable is that only the bad outcomes come with a story attached.
“The table is due”
Here blackjack differs from roulette in a way worth being precise about. A shoe genuinely does have a memory — dealt cards are gone, which is the whole basis of counting. But that memory is about which cards remain, not about who has been winning.
Losing six hands does not make a shoe rich in tens. Only tens leaving does, and you can count them. The streak numbers are here.
“This betting system beats it”
No staking pattern changes the odds of the next hand, because the next hand does not know what you bet. why the Martingale fails, with the probability of it wiping you out.
“Take insurance on a good hand”
Insurance is a separate bet on the dealer’s hole card and does not care what you are holding. It pays 2:1, needs a 33.3% hit rate to break even, and gets about 30.9%. Decline it unless you are counting — including on a blackjack, where it is offered as “even money”.
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By Martin Kosek · every number on this site is computed by us, not copied.
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