Lucky Ladies: The Most Expensive Bet on the Table
Updated
Lucky Ladies pays when your first two cards total 20, and it keeps 17.64% of everything you put on it. That is roughly -39 times the house edge of the blackjack hand you are playing next to it.
- House edge on the common paytable: 17.64%.
- The main blackjack game beside it keeps about 0.46%.
- You win something on roughly 10.6% of hands, mostly the smallest payout.
- The 1000:1 jackpot lands about 1 in 68666 hands.
Every outcome, and how often it lands
Six decks, the widely used paytable: 1000:1 for a pair of queens of hearts when the dealer also has blackjack, 200:1 for the pair alone, 25:1 for a matched 20, 10:1 suited, 4:1 for any other 20.
| Your first two cards | Pays | How often |
|---|---|---|
| Any 20 | 4:1 | 8.014% (1 in 12) |
| Suited 20 | 10:1 | 2.078% (1 in 48) |
| Matched 20 | 25:1 | 0.464% (1 in 216) |
| QH pair | 200:1 | 0.029% (1 in 3394) |
| QH pair + dealer blackjack | 1000:1 | 0.001% (1 in 68666) |
Our computed house edge for this table is 17.64%, which matches the published figure exactly.
One detail nobody states, which we settled by computing it
Does an ace plus a nine count as a 20 for Lucky Ladies? Descriptions of the bet almost never say. It matters: computing it both ways gives 17.64% if soft 20 counts and 25.36% if it does not.
Only the first matches the published house edge, so soft 20 counts. We mention it because it is the kind of gap that makes a number unverifiable, and because working it out took one calculation rather than an argument.
Why “the” house edge does not exist
Lucky Ladies has been released with several paytables. The one above keeps 17.64%. A more generous variant, which pays 100:1 for the queen pair and adds a 1:1 for any single queen, keeps about 6.2%. Older versions were worse than either.
So a page that says “Lucky Ladies has a house edge of X” without naming the paytable is telling you nothing. Check the felt: the payouts are printed on it.
It is countable, and that still does not help
Lucky Ladies wins on tens, so a ten-rich shoe genuinely turns it positive. We computed where the crossing point is — and why almost nobody can use it.
Keep reading
By Martin Kosek · every number on this site is computed by us, not copied.
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