Early Surrender and Late Surrender
Updated
Both let you give up half your bet. The difference is when — before the dealer checks for blackjack, or after — and that single word is worth nearly nine times as much. It is also why you will almost certainly never see the good version.
- Late surrender is worth 0.071% to the player. Common enough to find.
- Early surrender is worth 0.624% — about 9 times more.
- Early surrender lets you fold against a possible dealer blackjack. That is the whole difference.
- It is essentially extinct. If you find it, the table is worth playing.
The difference in one sentence
Late surrender happens after the dealer has checked their hole card. If they have blackjack, the hand is already over and you lose your whole bet — you never get the chance to fold.
Early surrender happens before that check. You may give up half your bet even when the dealer is about to turn over a blackjack.
That is the entire distinction, and it is worth 0.553% more to the player.
Why the gap is so large
Because the hands where you most want to surrender are exactly the hands where the dealer is most likely to have blackjack — against a ten or an ace. Late surrender hands you the option only in the cases where the dealer has already failed to make blackjack, which is precisely when your position is least desperate.
Put differently: late surrender lets you fold a bad hand. Early surrender lets you fold a bad hand and insure against the worst outcome on the table.
Where you can still find it
Essentially nowhere. Early surrender appeared in Atlantic City when casino blackjack began there and was withdrawn within a couple of years once the arithmetic became clear. It survives in a handful of games, usually paired with other rules bad enough to more than pay for it.
Late surrender is common and worth using. It appears in exactly four cells of a six-deck chart: 16 against 9, 10 and ace, and 15 against 10.
Keep reading
By Martin Kosek · every number on this site is computed by us, not copied.
← Back to guides