What Are Your Odds of Winning at Blackjack?
Updated
Playing perfect basic strategy, you win about 42% of hands, lose 49%, and push the other 9%. The house edge works out to roughly 0.44%, meaning about $4.40 of every $1,000 you wager over the long run. Play without the chart and that figure climbs past 2%.
The probabilities
| Outcome | Roughly |
|---|---|
| You win the hand | 42% |
| You lose the hand | 49% |
| Push | 9% |
| Blackjack in your first two cards | 4.75% |
| Dealer busts (weighted across all upcards) | 29% |
Losing more hands than you win while giving up only half a percent seems impossible until you look at which hands pay extra. Blackjacks return 1.5 times your bet, and doubles and splits put more money on the felt exactly when you are favored. Those close almost the whole gap.
It also explains why some rules hurt so much more than others. Anything that attacks blackjacks, doubles, or splits attacks the mechanism that keeps the game close.
How the table rules change your odds
These are the levers, in the order they matter.
| Rule | Effect on house edge |
|---|---|
| Blackjack pays 6:5 instead of 3:2 | +1.36% |
| Dealer hits soft 17 | +0.20% |
| Doubling restricted to 10 and 11 | +0.18% |
| No double after split | +0.14% |
| No hole card | +0.11% |
| Late surrender offered | −0.08% |
| Doubling after splitting aces | −0.19% |
Deck count matters too, though less than people assume: a single-deck game with otherwise identical rules is worth about 0.4% to you compared with eight decks. That advantage is why casinos attach 6:5 to single-deck tables, and 6:5 costs three times what the deck reduction gains.
What a 6:5 payout does
It takes a 0.44% game to roughly 1.8%, four times as expensive, on a table that otherwise looks identical.
Avoid those tables regardless of how well you play. Nothing else on the placard compensates, and counting does not rescue them either, since you lose the payout in high counts and low counts alike. Full breakdown in 3:2 versus 6:5.
How often do you get a blackjack?
About 4.75% of hands in a six-deck game, or once every 21 deals. There are 24 aces and 96 ten-value cards in the shoe, and the arithmetic falls out of that directly.
Once every 21 hands is also once every twenty minutes or so at a normal pace. That is frequent enough that the payout on it matters enormously and rare enough that you will not notice a bad one until it has cost you real money.
How counting changes the picture
Counting turns a small deficit into a small surplus, realistically 0.5% to 1.5% depending on the count, the rules, and how wide you can spread. It does not produce big edges. It produces a persistent small one, which over enough hands is the whole game.
You can watch it happen in the live counter, which shows your edge in percent as the true count moves.
How many hands before the math shows up?
More than you think. In the short run, variance dominates completely, and an edge of one percent is invisible next to the swing of a single evening.
You can play correctly, hold a genuine advantage, and lose for hours or for weeks. Thousands of hands and a bankroll built to absorb the swings are what turn an edge on paper into money, and both requirements are routinely underestimated.
• Win about 42%, lose 49%, push 9%.
• Basic strategy holds the house to about 0.44%.
• A 6:5 payout pushes it near 2%. Walk away.
• Short-run results tell you nothing about whether you are playing well.
What does it cost per $1,000 wagered?
At a 0.44% edge with correct play, about $4.40 per $1,000 you put into action. Playing without the chart, at roughly 2%, it is about $20.
Note that this is per dollar wagered, not per dollar you walk in with. At $25 a hand and 60 hands an hour you are wagering $1,500 an hour, so correct play costs about $6.60 an hour and sloppy play about $30. That is the real comparison, and it is the reason the chart is worth an afternoon.
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By Martin Kosek · every number on this site is computed by us, not copied.
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