Comparing Live Dealer Blackjack Studios

Updated 29 August 2026

Live studios are usually described as running much the same game. They do not. We computed all four large studios from their published rules and they spread from 0.485% to 0.706% — and the difference comes down to two rules that are on the screen and almost never read.

The four large studios, priced

Every one of the four deals eight decks, stands on soft 17, pays 3:2 and allows a single split. On the rules screen they look interchangeable. They are not, and the spread between the cheapest and the dearest is 0.22% — about the same as the gap between a good and a bad shoe game on a casino floor.

These are our own figures, computed for each studio’s actual rule set rather than for a generic eight-deck game. The two rules doing the work are below.

The two rules that separate them

Doubling after a split, worth 0.120%. Playtech, Ezugi and Pragmatic let you double a hand you have just split. Evolution does not. It is one line in the rules panel and it is the single largest difference between the big studios.

The peek on a ten, worth 0.103%. When the dealer shows a ten, Playtech looks at the hole card before you act. The other three check only against an ace. If you then double or split and the dealer turns over blackjack, you lose the second bet as well, not just your original.

That second rule is the one nobody puts on a comparison table, because it does not change how the game looks. It changes what happens on perhaps one hand in fifty, and it costs about four times what moving from six decks to eight costs. It is the same mechanism as a European no-hole-card game, applied to half the upcards.

Those four are the studios you will meet most often, and they are not the whole market. Among the smaller studios there is one table with better rules than any of the four, one where the dealer never checks for blackjack at all, and two that publish nothing we can compute from.

Why our numbers differ from the published ones

Published comparison tables tend to give Evolution, Ezugi, Playtech and Pragmatic figures that sit close together, and our numbers only reproduce those figures if we assume the dealer always peeks for blackjack. Three of the four do not. Model the peek rule each studio actually uses and the studios separate by more than twice as much.

There is a good check on this. Evolution publishes its own RTP of 99.29%, a house edge of 0.71%. Our figure for Evolution’s rules, including the missing peek on a ten, is 0.706%. Take the peek penalty out and we get 0.604%, which matches no published Evolution figure at all.

So the operator’s own number only reconciles if the penalty is real. We think that settles it.

Can you count at a live table?

In principle yes. Real cards, a real shoe, and no shuffle between hands — everything counting needs, and everything RNG blackjack makes impossible.

Three other things work against you and none of them is unfair. Live tables are slower than a physical table, so there are fewer hands per hour to earn from. Bet limits are set per table, which caps your spread. And you are far less anonymous than in a casino, because the account is yours.

Put together: a beatable game in theory, at a penetration that removes almost all of the edge, at a speed that removes more of what is left.

Is it fair?

Live blackjack is the most checkable game in an online casino, and that is worth saying plainly. The cards are physical, the shoe is on camera, and you can watch the deal. Nothing about the shuffle or the burn is hidden behind a random number generator the way it is in RNG blackjack.

What a stream cannot show you is the part that matters: where the cut card goes, whether the shoe is the same one after a break, and how the shuffle was done off camera. None of that requires dishonesty to hurt you. A perfectly honest table with a cut card at half the shoe is still a table where counting does not pay.

So the fairness question and the profitability question are separate, and only the second has a clear answer. A license tells you the game is not rigged. It does not tell you the game is beatable.

What to check before you sit

1. The payout. Anything other than 3:2 makes the rest of this page irrelevant. 6:5 costs 1.358%, more than every other rule here combined.

2. Doubling after a split. One line in the rules panel, worth 0.120%.

3. When the dealer checks. If the panel says the dealer checks only against an ace, do not double or split against a ten as freely as the chart says.

4. The bet limits. A table whose maximum is eight times its minimum cannot support a meaningful spread.

5. Ignore the side bets. They are the most expensive thing on the table at every studio, by a wide margin.

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By Martin Kosek · every number on this site is computed by us, not copied.