Blackjack odds of winning every hand: the house edge table by rule

Blackjack odds of winning, losing and pushing

Blackjack is the one casino game where your decisions change the price. Roulette and baccarat charge the same edge whatever you do; here, each choice to hit, stand, double or split moves the long-run cost. So the honest answer to the odds of winning blackjack comes with a condition: the blackjack odds below assume the best move on every hand, the move our engine finds by working through every card that could come next. On a table that pays 3 to 2 and lets the dealer stand on soft 17, a round ends like this:

You lose more rounds than you win, yet the edge is only 0.57%. The hands that pay more than evens close the gap: a natural pays 3 to 2, a winning double pays twice the stake and a split can win two hands at once. Counting only settled rounds, you win 47.5% of them. The three shares come from two million rounds played on the engine's decisions, a double or split counting as one round; the house edge is the exact average over every deal, as the how we calculate the odds page explains.

The blackjack house edge table, rule by rule

The blackjack house edge is not one number. It depends on a few rules printed on the felt or in the game's help screen. The table applies perfect play to each rule set; every row changes only the rules it names from the standard in the first row, the one we quote across the site.

A dealer who hits soft 17 raises the edge to 0.79%, because a soft 17 that would have stood can still improve. Losing the double after a split raises it to 0.69%, since splitting small pairs against weak dealer cards is partly a way to set up good doubles. Late surrender, giving up half the stake once the dealer has checked for blackjack, lowers it to 0.48%. Rules combine roughly by adding: hits soft 17 with surrender lands at 0.69%, and hits soft 17 with 6:5 and no double after a split reaches 2.26%.

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3:2 or 6:5: the payout that moves the house edge most

A traditional table pays a natural at 3 to 2, so a £10 stake wins £15. Many low-stakes tables pay 6 to 5, which wins £12. A natural comes about once in 21 hands, and each now pays £3 less: the edge climbs from 0.57% to 1.92%, about 3.4 times as expensive. Paying a natural at even money is worse again, at 2.83%. If the felt does not say 3 to 2, ask what it pays.

The chance of a natural blackjack

A natural is an ace plus a ten-value card (10, jack, queen or king) as your first two cards. On an infinite deck each rank has a 1 in 13 chance, so a ten-value card has four in 13, and the ace can come first or second:

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The dealer has exactly the same chance. Showing an ace or a ten, the dealer checks the hole card before anyone acts, and a dealer natural ends the hand: you lose unless you also hold blackjack, which is a push. Our figures assume that peek. Where the dealer's second card comes only after the players act, common in Europe, a double or split against an ace or ten can lose the extra stake too, lifting the edge slightly.

Dealer bust odds by up card

The dealer draws to 17 and stands, so the final total is pure probability, and the up card changes it dramatically. The grid gives the chance of each final total for every up card, once blackjack is ruled out.

A dealer 6 busts 42.3% of the time, the most of any card, with 5, 4, 3 and 2 close behind; that is why standing on a stiff total against them is often right. From 7 up the picture flips: a 7 busts only 26.2% of the time and most often ends on 17, and a 10 finishes on 20 more than a third of the time. Over all deals the dealer busts 28.2% of the time, or 28.5% when hitting soft 17. Against a dealer 6 a player on basic strategy averages +23.2% of the stake; against an ace, counting the naturals it brings, −33.8%. Those blackjack odds by up card, weighted by how often each card appears, are the house edge.

Your bust odds when you hit 12 to 16

Hard 12 to 16 is the awkward middle: too low to stand on comfortably, high enough for one card to bust it. The chance depends only on how many ranks are too big.

Even hard 16, which busts 61.5% of the time, is not an automatic stand. Standing wins only if the dealer busts, and against a 7 or higher the dealer usually makes a hand, so basic strategy hits 16 against a 10 by the narrowest of margins and stands on it against a 6. Hard 12 busts just 30.8% of the time, yet the chart stands on it against a 4, 5 or 6: those dealers bust so often there is nothing to gain.

The basic strategy table

Basic strategy is the best move for every pairing of your hand and the dealer's up card. Each cell below comes from our engine comparing the expected return of every legal move, for the standard table on this page: dealer stands on soft 17, double after a split allowed, no surrender, 3:2. Find your hand on the left and the dealer's card along the top.

Learn the ideas rather than the cells. Double 10 and 11 against weak dealer cards. Always split aces and 8s, never 10s or 5s. Stand on hard 12 to 16 against a 2 to 6 (but hit 12 against a 2 or 3) and hit them against 7 or higher. With the dealer hitting soft 17 and late surrender on offer, our engine changes 11 cells, among them hard 11 against an ace (double), hard 15 against a 10 (surrender), hard 15 against an ace (surrender) and hard 16 against a 9 (surrender). Without a double after a split, 7 splits of small pairs become hits.

Playing like the dealer, hitting below 17 and never doubling or splitting, gives the house 5.67%; never risking a bust gives it 6.08%. Basic strategy cuts that to 0.57%, about a tenth, which is how good blackjack odds are made at the table. For a hand you are unsure of, the blackjack calculator shows the return of every move.

Blackjack odds simulator

The simulator shows how far a short session strays from the long-run blackjack odds. It plays rounds by the book on an infinite deck under your chosen rules, with nothing staked, and counts rounds won, lost and pushed and the share of opening stakes that would have come back.

Over 100 rounds the share returned swings by several points; at 10,000 it settles near the dashed target. Switch to 6:5 and the target drops by more than a point, which no amount of good play wins back.

Insurance and side bets

With an ace showing you are offered insurance, a side stake of up to half your bet that pays 2 to 1 if the dealer has blackjack. The hole card is a ten-value card 4 times in 13, so over 13 insurance stakes you win double 4 times and lose 9 times: an edge of 7.69%, more than ten times that of the hand. "Even money" on your own blackjack is the same bet in disguise. Side bets such as perfect pairs or 21+3 pay large multiples for rare combinations from a paytable the designer sets, so the edge varies by game and is almost always well above the main hand.

Card counting and the number of decks

Our blackjack odds assume an infinite deck, where every card keeps the same chance on every draw. Real shoes are finite, and with fewer decks each card dealt shifts the rest a little more, which slightly helps the player on naturals and doubles. So one deck usually beats an eight-deck shoe on the same rules, though the rules above move the price far more.

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Card counting uses that idea on purpose. A counter tallies high cards against low ones as the shoe is dealt and stakes more when the cards left are rich in tens and aces. Done well for many hours, it can turn a small house edge into a small player edge. It is legal in the UK, but slow, easy to get wrong, and a casino may refuse to deal to anyone it suspects. Online there is nothing to count: digital games shuffle a fresh shoe for every hand, and a continuous shuffling machine has much the same effect.

Blackjack odds against other casino games

With good rules and basic strategy, blackjack has the lowest edge of the common casino games. The catch is the condition: its figure holds only if every hand is played right, while the baccarat odds and roulette odds are the same for everyone.

At 1.92%, a 6:5 table costs more than the baccarat banker bet and sits closer to a European wheel than to a good blackjack table. The house edge page explains where every game's margin comes from, the casino odds table puts them side by side, and the poker odds page covers a game played against other people rather than the house.

The house keeps its edge over time however well you play, so treat a session as paid entertainment with a limit set before you start. If blackjack has stopped feeling like a choice, our responsible gambling page lists free, confidential help in the UK.

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