| So then, with which hands should a good player surrender? Well, that depends upon the "soft 17" rule and exactly what you mean by a "good" player. If you're a plain basic strategy player and the dealer stands on soft 17, then you should surrender with 15 against a 10 and with 16 against a 9, 10 or Ace. That's because you have less than one chance in four to win any of these hands. And when that's true, losing a half bet every time actually saves you money overall. Now, if the dealer hits on soft 17, then there are three more hands with which you become worse than a one in four shot to win. In that case, you should also surrender against a dealer's Ace if you have 15, 17 or a pair of 8s. Today I want to give an illustration of how most people shoot themselves in the foot by misinterpreting the odds while playing blackjack. Suppose you walk up to a table where the dealer has just finished shuffling her six decks. You take a seat at third base and put a bet up on each of two spots. You're fully aware that a six-deck shoe contains 96 tens out of 312 cards, but you have no idea exactly where those 96 tens lie. Now the first round of cards is dealt to four other players besides yourself. Let's say everybody is dealt a bunch of small cards and the dealer has a deuce up. Suppose further that each player before you takes one hit and catches yet another small card. Now it's your turn. Your first hand is 8/4 and your second hand is 8/3. Seventeen cards have been exposed and not a single ten has been seen yet. The question is, how should you play your hands? Should you simply follow basic strategy and hit your 12, then double with your 11 -- or should you save the impending ten for your 11 by just standing on your 12? You realize that the appearance of a ten is growing imminently likely, but here's the key question. Which card is more likely to be a ten -- the next card in the shoe, or the one after it? This is where the majority of players misunderstand the laws of probability, and consequently misplay their hands. The correct answer goes like this. When the shuffled cards first went into the shoe, 30% of them were tens. Since nobody knew their order, every next card had a 30% chance of being a ten. Now, after seventeen straight non-tens were dealt, 32% of the remaining cards are tens. But again, since their order is unknown, every next card now simply has a 32% chance to be a ten. As hard as it may be to accept, the next card is absolutely no more likely to be a ten than the one after it -- or any other for that matter! For those of you who are not buying this, let me phrase it another way. Suppose that just before you decided how to play your two hands, the dealer reached into the shoe and reversed the order of the next two cards. Which card is more likely to be the ten now? Remember, the cards were shuffled into an unknown order before, and all that's happening is that they're being shuffled just a tad more now. |
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