 
| ||
|
|
|
ACES! – Part 2
by The Babe
"The Babe" is a dedicated Tournament Blackjack veteran. He was attracted to the game at the start of the 80’s and has undoubtedly participated in more major blackjack tournaments than anyone. He learned the game the hard way…….from his own mistakes, and has won his way to the televised tables of The Hilton Million Dollar II Tournament, the Ultimate Blackjack Tour on CBS, and the World Series of Blackjack on GSN. He still competes, and has three major titles to his credit in the past three years.
Aces, Part 1, appeared in the July issue of Blackjack Insider Newsletter. You may want to review it now, but here is the chart from that article, showing the outcome when you split a pair of aces.
The top row represents your first ace hit, and the second Ace hit is down the left column. The numbers in the chart show the percentage of the time the two outcomes will occur, expressed as a decimal.
|
21 |
20 |
19 |
18 |
17 |
16 to 12 |
|
|
21 |
.09521 |
.02405 |
.02405 |
.02405 |
.02405 |
.11826 |
|
20 |
.02405 |
.00576 |
.00601 |
.00601 |
.00601 |
.02956 |
|
19 |
.02405 |
.00601 |
.00576 |
.00601 |
.00601 |
.02956 |
|
18 |
.02405 |
.00601 |
.00601 |
.00576 |
.00601 |
.02956 |
|
17 |
.02405 |
.00601 |
.00601 |
.00601 |
.00576 |
.02956 |
|
16 to 12 |
.11826 |
.02956 |
.02956 |
.02956 |
.02956 |
.14413 |
In order to help yourself in these aces situations, you must first realize that the splitting of aces is far from automatic when you are playing in a tournament. Every tournament situation must be assessed as to what the dealer’s up card is, and what your opponents have for hands (assuming the cards are dealt face up, as they are in most tournaments). What is important is not the total percentage of hands you can win by splitting, but that percentage compared to the percentage of wins by hitting, and weighed against the need to win one or two bets verses the need to not lose one or two bets. However, before we can make any comparison, we need to know what happens when one hits two aces.
This is a difficult mathematical problem, due to the very large number of possible combinations which can occur when hitting a soft 2 hand (i.e., a pair of aces). Under the normal strategy of hitting until you get soft 18 or hard 17 or better, one could get up to twelve cards for a total of "16" in a multi-deck game, and then need to hit again. That would require a hand containing a total of 11 aces with one five; highly unlikely, but possible. Under this hitting rule, you will end up with each outcome the following percentage of the time, when hitting two aces.
"RESULTS FROM HITTING TWO ACES"
- Bust = 26.72%
- 21 hand = 15.9%
- 20 hand = 16.1%
- 19 hand = 16.2%
- 18 hand = 16.4%
- 17 hand = 8.7%
These numbers were established for a five-deck shoe, but any number of decks would result in very little difference.
I believe these figures to be accurate to within ˝ of a percent, but it is possible they are off more. How did I discover them?...
...enter your member login information below to read this article/newsletter...
Paid Members-Only Article
You have clicked on a link to a Blackjack Insider web page or article for paid subscribers. You must have a paid membership to the Blackjack Insider newsletter to view this content. About 1/2 of the articles in each issue of the Blackjack Insider are for paid members only, while the rest are viewable by everyone. Your purchased membership will allow you to read all Blackjack Insider articles for 12 months.
Enter your user name and password below (they were listed and e-mailed to you after you purchased your Blackjack Insider membership):
Forgot your membership id or password? Click here.
How do I get a membership?
A membership can be purchased online at our secure store with your credit card for only $19.95 per year. You will receive a user name and password immediately by e-mail which you can use to read the all past and future members-only articles for 12 months, as well as the regular free articles.
CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE A ONE YEAR MEMBERSHIP NOW... only $19.95
Do I have to buy a membership?
No. Blackjack Insider will continue to be published as a free monthly e-newsletter. But about 1/2 of the articles each month will be for paid members only. Subscribers without a membership can still view and read the non-members articles for free.
What happens after I buy a membership?
Immediately after you complete your purchase, you will receive a unique login user name and password. These are displayed on the final purchase page, and are e-mailed to you. When you click on a members-only article in our web site, you will be prompted for this user name and password (as shown above). Simply enter them, and enjoy the article! Note: make sure you turn on the checkbox above when you login, to save the user name and password so that you don't have to re-enter them every time you view members-only articles.
Why did you switch to paid memberships?
Blackjack Insider is a professional monthly publication with top-notch articles by world-reknown gaming experts. In addition, we have regular reporters that monitor game conditions and tournament schedules throughout North America. We use a partially paid subscriber model to enable us to continue getting the best content for our readers from leading authors on blackjack and gaming.
|
|
©2015, DeepNet Technologies. No material to be copied without express permission of DeepNet Technologies.
This site developed by
DeepNet Technologies, Ontario, Canada. Contact webmaster @ bjinsider . com
if you have problems.
This site is best viewed in a 800x600 graphics mode, or higher.