Chinese Blackjack: The Edge Moves Around the Table
Updated
Every other game on this site has a house edge, because every other game has a house. Chinese Blackjack — Ban-Luck, 21-dian, kampung blackjack — does not. One of the players banks, the banker has the advantage, and the banker changes. That single structural fact matters more than any rule in it.
- A player banks. The advantage belongs to whoever is banking.
- Ban-Ban — two aces — is the best hand and pays 3:1. It comes once in 221 hands.
- Ban-Luck — ace with a ten-value card — pays 2:1. Once in about 21.
- An ace is worth 10 or 11 with two cards, 10 or 1 with three, and only 1 with four or more.
- You may not stand below 16, except on exactly 15.
There is no house edge, and that is the point
In a casino the edge is a fixed property of the game. You can look it up, and it applies to you whether you are winning or losing. Ban-Luck is not built that way. The banker deals, plays last, sees what everyone else has finished with, and settles against each player individually. That is a real advantage — the same structural advantage a casino dealer has, for exactly the same reason.
The banker is also a player, and the role moves. In most house rules it passes to whoever draws a Ban-Luck, or it rotates by agreement. So the question “what is the house edge in Chinese Blackjack” has no answer. The useful question is how much of the evening you spend banking, and that is decided by a rule your table agreed on before the cards came out.
If you ever see a fixed house-edge figure quoted for Ban-Luck, be careful with it. It can only mean one specific set of home rules with one specific banking arrangement, and yours will not be the same.
The two hands everyone is looking for
These we can compute exactly, and the answers hold a small surprise.
| Hand | One deck | Two decks | Pays |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ban-Ban (two aces) | 0.4525% | 0.5228% | 3:1 |
| Ban-Luck (ace and a ten) | 4.8265% | 4.7797% | 2:1 |
| Either one | 5.2790% | 5.3025% | — |
Look at the direction each one moves. Adding a second deck makes Ban-Ban more likely and Ban-Luck less likely, and the reason is worth understanding because it applies far beyond this game.
To make a pair you need a second card of a rank you have already taken one of. In a single deck, drawing an ace leaves only three aces in fifty-one cards. Add a second deck and it leaves seven in a hundred and three — proportionally more. Pairs get easier as decks are added. Two unlike ranks work the other way: your ace removes nothing from the supply of tens, so the effect runs slightly against you. The same arithmetic is why pair side bets pay differently by deck count.
The ace rule is the whole game
Chinese Blackjack does something no casino variant does: the value of an ace depends on how many cards you are holding.
| Cards in hand | An ace is worth |
|---|---|
| Two | 10 or 11 |
| Three | 10 or 1 |
| Four or more | 1 only |
Read that as a countdown. An ace is at its most valuable the moment it is dealt and gets weaker with every card you take. A soft hand in ordinary blackjack keeps its flexibility indefinitely; here the flexibility expires.
That is what gives the game its distinctive feel. In blackjack you can twist on a soft 17 knowing the ace will quietly drop to 1 if you overshoot. In Ban-Luck, taking that third card can knock your ace from 11 to 10, and the fourth knocks it to 1 — so a hand that looked comfortable becomes a hard hand you cannot escape from. The pressure to stop early is built into the arithmetic, and then the standing rules take that choice away.
You are not allowed to sit on a bad hand
You may not stand below 16. On exactly 15 you have a free hand and may do as you like; below that you must draw. This is the rule that separates Ban-Luck from every casino game on this site, where standing on a twelve against a dealer six is not only permitted but correct.
The compensation is the five dragon: five cards without busting wins, and a five-card 21 pays 3:1. Forced drawing and a reward for surviving it are the same rule seen from two sides. We computed the value of an ordinary five-card Charlie in six-deck blackjack at 1.54% — more than the entire house edge of a good table — and the working is on our five-card Charlie page.
Put the three together and the game has a shape: you cannot stop early, your ace decays as you draw, and the reward for going deep is real. It is a livelier game than blackjack, and it is not one where a chart would help you much.
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By Martin Kosek · every number on this site is computed by us, not copied.
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