The Smaller Live Studios

Updated

Away from the four large studios the rules stop converging entirely. One of these tables has the best blackjack rule set we have found anywhere online, one has the worst, and for two of them nobody publishes a house edge at all. We computed the ones that can be computed.

The short version

Gold Tier Games: the rule nobody has priced

Gold Tier runs tables offering early surrender against every upcard except an ace. Early surrender means you may give up half your bet before the dealer checks for blackjack, so you can even escape a hand the dealer is about to win with one. It is a genuinely valuable rule and it is almost extinct.

The published live-dealer databases do not carry a house edge for these tables, because their models do not handle early surrender. So we computed it. Against an eight-deck S17 game with doubling after a split, early surrender excluding the ace is worth 0.245%, which puts the table at 0.240%.

That figure carries a condition. Gold Tier does not publish its deck count or its other rules, so we have computed the surrender rule against the standard eight-deck rule set the rest of the industry uses. If their tables differ elsewhere, the number moves. We are publishing it because a computed figure with a stated assumption is more useful than the blank that is there now — not because we have verified the table.

The reason early surrender is so rare is visible in the same calculation. Extend it to include the ace and the same game comes out at −0.143% — a player advantage, before counting. That is why nobody offers it, and why the version that excludes the ace is where operators stop.

Gold Tier Games 0.240% — if rest standard Bombay Live 0.595% Visionary iGaming 0.669%
The Gold Tier figure assumes its other rules match the eight-deck standard, which is not published.

Bombay Live: no peek at all

Bombay Live’s dealer never checks for blackjack, against a ten or an ace. Our figure for eight decks, S17 and doubling after a split on that basis is 0.595%.

Not checking at all costs 0.111%, which is close to the 0.103% that Evolution gives up by not checking on tens alone. The reason the difference is so small is that a dealer ace is a much rarer upcard than a dealer ten, so most of the damage was already being done.

This table needs a different strategy and the standard chart will cost you money on it. Against both a dealer ten and a dealer ace: do not double, and do not split. Not eleven against a ten, not aces against an ace, none of it. The chart assumes a dealer who has already checked; here nobody has. Against every other upcard the normal chart is correct.

This is the same adjustment as a European no-hole-card game, and it is the single most common way to lose money at a table whose rules you have not read.

Visionary iGaming: six decks, and it does not help

Visionary runs six decks rather than eight, which sounds like an improvement and is worth about 0.03%. Then it has the dealer hit soft 17, which costs 0.215% — seven times as much.

Our figure is 0.669%, the most expensive live rule set we have priced. It is a clean demonstration of why deck count is the rule players ask about most and the one that matters least. If you are choosing a table on one number, choose the soft-17 rule, not the deck count.

Our figure assumes Visionary allows doubling after a split, which is what their published edge implies. Without it the table would be at 0.791%.

Vivo Gaming, and what we will not do

Vivo Gaming runs live blackjack. We do not know its deck count, its soft-17 rule, or whether it peeks, and neither does any source we trust.

So there is no number here. We could produce one by assuming the industry standard and computing that, and it would look exactly like the other figures on this page, and it would mean nothing. A house edge is a statement about a specific rule set; without the rule set it is decoration.

The same applies to the Gold Tier figure above, which is why it is labeled. If you are at a Vivo table, the rules panel is the only source that counts.

Counting and fairness at the smaller studios

The smaller studios are not less honest than the large ones, and in Gold Tier’s case the rules are markedly better. What they are is less documented, which shifts the work onto you.

Penetration: about 50%, and that is the whole counting story. Two independent sources put live shoes at roughly half dealt before the shuffle, and neither found a studio that deals deeper. What still is not published is the penetration of any particular table, which moves shift to shift. Since penetration decides almost everything, half a shoe is what makes live counting a losing hobby rather than a job.

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.

Keep reading

The big fourpriced side by side Early against latewhy early is worth so much The peek rulewhat changes without it

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

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