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By playing perfect basic strategy, your expected return is 99.5% (assuming a 0.5% casino edge).

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COMPOSITION-DEPENDENT STRATEGY

The basic strategy presented in Chapter 3 considered just the total of all the cards in your hand, without any consideration of the individual cards that comprise the total, known as Total-Dependent or T-D basic strategy. The latter is also more commonly referred to as the traditional basic playing strategy. There is nothing “wrong” with this basic strategy; however, you can gain extra precision (i.e., slightly lower house edge) if you consider the composition of the cards in your hand, known as Composition-Dependent or C-D basic strategy. Actually, C-D basic strategy has been around for a long time, having first been proposed in 1979 in the classic book The Theory of Blackjack by the late blackjack mathematician Peter A. Griffin. More recently, additional information on C-D basic strategy can be found in the book Blackjack Attack: Playing the Pros’ Way by Don Schlesinger; The book Blackjack Bluebook II by Fred Renzey; and Don Schlesinger’s commercially available Ultimate Blackjack Strategy Cards. Developing a strategy chart or table with all of the possible composition-dependent strategies would be pages long and virtually impossible for an average player to learn. However, what follows are a few composition-dependent plays that you can readily learn and use to make you a tougher player.

BLACKJACK ODDS: 16 AGAINST DEALER 10

If I asked you how you would play the following hands against a dealer’s 10 upcard what would be your answer? Assume surrender is not offered; if surrender is offered, you should surrender all two-card hard 16s against a dealer’s 10 upcard except 8-8. According to the (T-D) strategy charts and tables in Chapter 3, you would hit the first three hands and split the 8s. However, what the T-D basic strategy doesn’t consider is the makeup of the hand. It turns out there is a difference between a 16 made up of two cards, such as 10-6 and 9-7, and one made up of three cards, such as 4-5-7. All three hands total 16, but with a three-card 16, you are better off standing, whereas with the two-card 16, you should hit. The reason you should stand on a 16 when your hand contains three or more cards is because your hand contains one (or more) small-value cards that are no longer available in the pack of unplayed cards. These small cards are exactly what you need to make a pat hand when you hit your 16. The fact that a few of them just landed in your hand is enough to shift the odds toward standing rather than hitting. Fred Renzey, author of Blackjack Bluebook II, states the following in his book: “Against a 10 up, if your 16 contains any 4’s or 5’s, then stand.” Blackjack author Don Schlesinger takes this rule one step further with his Ultimate Blackjack Strategy card, where he states: “Stand if 16 is multi-card, or the result of a pair split.”

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According to Schlesinger, “When all multi-card 16s are taken into account, and the edges are weighted, it is wiser to stand on all of them rather than hit on all of them. There are some exceptions, but their level of complexity was too great to be enunciated on the strategy card." This is how I would recommend you play your hard 16, assuming surrender is not available, to improve your playing precision for this hand:

BLACKJACK ODDS: 12 AGAINST A DEALER 4

Another hand where your strategy is dependent upon the makeup of the cards is a starting total of 12 against a dealer’s 4 upcard in games with S17. Total-dependent basic strategy states to stand on 12 against a dealer 4. But there are, in fact, four different ways to be dealt a 12: 10-2, 9-3, 8-4, and 7-5 (6-6 would be considered separately, as a pair to be split), and in the specific case of 10-2, you are slightly better off hitting against the dealer’s 4, whereas with 9-3, 8-4, and 7-5, you are better off standing. Schlesinger says, “By having just one ten-value card in your hand when you hold a 10-2, you slightly lower your chances of breaking with a hit just enough to tip the balance in favor of risking busting by drawing one more card, rather than standing. This effect, however, diminishes as the number of decks increases, because removing one ten out of 16 is a lot more dramatic than removing one ten out of 128 for an eight-deck game. Therefore, for six or fewer decks, it’s best to hit a 12 consisting of 10-2 against a dealer’s 4 upcard, but in an eight-deck game, it’s best to stand.” I would recommend that you use the following strategy when you are dealt a 12 against a dealer’s 4 upcard:

BLACKJACK ODDS: 15 AGAINST A DEALER 10

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The T-D basic strategy states to surrender 15 against a dealer’s 10 upcard; however, I would recommend you use this C-D strategy: When your 15 consists of an 8-7, you are slightly better off hitting than surrendering (except surrender in 7 or more decks). The reason you hit rather than surrender 8-7 is that your chance of busting the 15 is slightly reduced after you’ve removed the 8 and 7 from play, as receiving either of those two cards would bust your hand, which is not the case for 10-5, or 9-6. This tips the scales just enough to make hitting 8-7 a slightly better play than surrendering. In technical terms, your expectation is higher than –50% when you hit, which is better than the exact –50% expectation when you surrender. This means you will lose less money in the long run when you hit 8-7 against a dealer 10 than when you surrender. PERCENT REDUCTION IN HOUSE EDGE By way of an example, according to Schlesinger, if you incorporate all of the C-D strategy on his strategy card for a double-deck game with S17 and DAS, the house edge can be reduced by 5.3% compared to the traditional T-D basic strategy (from 0.19% to 0.18%). For more information on the effect of the C-D basic strategy on the house edge compared to the T-D basic strategy, see Table A1 in Schlesinger’s book.

BOTTOM LINE

I would recommend you learn the above three C-D plays and use them when you play blackjack. The 16 vs 10 play occurs frequently, so at the minimum, learn the C-D strategy for that play.

888casino.com - Blackjack Odds: How To Further Reduce The House Edge

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