Tag: Late Surrender

Two Types of Surrender in Blackjack

Since we discussed surrender as a part of your blackjack strategy this morning, I figured it might be beneficial to go over the two types of surrender that you are bound to come across: late surrender and early surrender.

The basic concept of surrender is to exit the round at the cost of half of your wager.

Late surrender is the variety that only allows you to bow out of the round after the dealer has checked to see if he has blackjack. This is the surrender variety that has the smaller impact on the house edge because the dealer is allowed to check first. And if he does have a natural blackjack, guess what

House Rules for New PA Tables

Part of the fun of getting new blackjack tables in Pennsylvania is waiting to see what the house is going to set their rules at: are they going to screw me or are they going to be decent and give me a fair shot at winning?

Thankfully the Pennsylvania blackjack tables have been set with some pretty decent house rules. How good? The Pennsylvania blackjack tables will have more player-friendly house rules than two thirds of the tables in Vegas.

So what is in store for players at these blackjack tables?

For starters I am pleased to say that they will be paying 3-2 for natural blackjack. There will be none of that 6-5 stuff in Pennsylvania!

Another good rule: dealers will have to stand on soft 17s. So that is 0.22% that the house will not have.

Double downs will not be limited to only hard 10s or hard 11s. Any two cards can be doubled down on.

Also having to do with double downs, players will be allowed to double down after splitting a pair.

And to top off all of those player friendly house rules blackjack players will be allowed to make late surrenders. So make sure you have a basic strategy chart that tells you when to surrender. This way you will only lose half of your wager rather than all of it.

In total these house rules will result in a house edge of less than 0.4% for those who use basic strategy

European Blackjack vs. Blackjack

For the most part blackjack is a pretty standard casino game. There are not a lot of ways to vary blackjack. And that is probably why most of the blackjack variations you run across in online casinos and in brick and mortar casinos are based on side bets, while the actual game is played the same as always.

However. There are a small number of blackjack variations which are true variations, meaning that some rules are different. European Blackjack is one such variation.

European Blackjack is not a variation based on a side bet. There are two rules in this game that make it different than regular blackjack. And these differences in rules are not to the player