Blackjack Betting Deviations
If you’re going to write about the worst blackjack mistakes you can make, you should probably start by defining what a blackjack mistake is and what makes one such mistake worse than another.
A blackjack mistake, for the purpose of this post, is a deviation from basic strategy. Mathematically speaking, every possible decision in every possible situation in blackjack has an expectedvalue. The play with the highest expected value is the correct play.
By way of comparison, Stanford Wong, in his book Professional Blackjack (page 203) says the variance is 1.28 and the covariance 0.47 for his Benchmark Rules, which are six decks, dealer stands on soft 17, no double after split, no re-splitting aces, no surrender. True Count Betting Deviations If this is your first visit to the Blackjack Forum, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You will have to r e g i s t e r (free) before you can post: click the r e g i s t e r link to proceed. These deviations can be used at times when the player wants to alter his play. Note that the Blackjack deviations are not based on a hunch or winning pattern. They are solely mathematically driven. Basically, there are two types of deviations – playing deviations and betting deviations. Types of Blackjack deviations.
Any deviation from that (other than deviations based on counting cards) is a mistake.
How do you decide which mistakes are worse than others?
The biggest mistakes in blackjack basic strategy are the ones with the worst mathematical expectation.
Blackjack Betting Deviations
Of course, some of these mistakes are so boneheaded that no one would ever make such a mistake. I’ve eliminated these mistakes from consideration.
Here’s an example.
You have a hard total of 20. If you hit this total, you’ll almost certainly bust. That’s a terrible expected value, but I don’t know any player foolish enough to make such a mistake.
Blackjack Betting Deviations
With that understanding, here are ten of the worst possible basic strategy decisions you could make when playing blackjack.