Can Side Bets Be Counted?
Updated
Yes — and more easily than the main game. Side bets depend on a handful of card ranks, so their odds move faster than blackjack’s do. We computed where Lucky Ladies crosses into player advantage. The reason nobody is getting rich from it is not the math.
- Side bets swing much harder with shoe composition than the main game.
- Lucky Ladies turns positive once about 30 low cards have left a six-deck shoe.
- That is a big edge for a short window — and it needs a separate count.
- Casinos know. Shufflers, shallow penetration and bet caps exist for this reason.
What we computed
Lucky Ladies pays on twenties, and twenties are made of tens. So we recomputed the bet for shoes in which low cards — twos through sixes — had already been dealt out, and nothing else had.
| Low cards gone from the shoe | Lucky Ladies house edge |
|---|---|
| none — fresh shoe | +17.64% |
| 20 | +5.95% |
| 30 | -0.85% — player has the edge |
| 40 | -8.42% — player has the edge |
| 50 | -16.87% — player has the edge |
The crossing point is around 30 low cards. Past that the bet belongs to the player, and by 50 it is a large advantage. Nothing in the main game moves like this: blackjack’s edge shifts by roughly half a percent per unit of true count, while this shifts by several percent.
So why is nobody doing it
Four reasons, and none of them is that the math is wrong.
1. It needs a second count. The Hi-Lo count you use for the main game is not the right count for a bet that only cares about tens. Running two counts at once, accurately, at table speed, is a different order of difficulty.
2. The window is short and late. A shoe only gets that depleted near the end — and most tables shuffle before you get there.
3. The variance is brutal. The edge lives in a 1000:1 jackpot that lands about once in 25,000 hands. You can be right for months and lose.
4. Side bets have low limits. A bet capped at $25 does not pay for the attention it demands, however favorable it gets.
It has happened, and casinos responded
This is not theoretical. Over/Under 13 was beaten badly enough in the 1980s that it disappeared from most floors. Several later side bets were withdrawn or re-priced for the same reason.
What replaced them is the modern defensive setup: continuous shufflers that reset the composition every hand, shallower penetration, and side-bet limits far below the main bet. Each of those exists specifically because somebody proved this arithmetic works.
The honest recommendation
If you are learning to count, put the effort into the main game. It is a smaller edge but a steadier one, the bet sizes are larger, and you only have to keep one number in your head.
If you are not counting, the side bets are simply the most expensive thing on the table — every one of them, priced.
Keep reading
By Martin Kosek · every number on this site is computed by us, not copied.
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