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Ask The Wizard #428

On your Blackjack Expected Values page, the link for eight decks with the dealer standing on soft 17 displays an Appendix 9 page labeled “Five decks, dealer hits on soft 17, no hole card.” Can you correct this?

John

Thank you for reporting this. The link pointed to the correct address, but the page at that address contained a duplicate of the five-deck, hit-soft-17 page, including its title, rules, and tables.

We restored the correct eight-deck, stand-on-soft-17, no-hole-card content from an archived copy and checked all 550 table rows: 450 unpaired hands and 100 pairs. Weighting each hand’s best expected value by its probability reproduces the stated expected player returns, within the tables’ rounding precision:

  • Double after splitting allowed: −0.0054263 per unit of initial wager, equivalent to a house edge of about 0.5426%.
  • Double after splitting not allowed: −0.0068239 per unit of initial wager, equivalent to a house edge of about 0.6824%.

The page title and index-link description have also been corrected. The restored page is Blackjack Appendix 9: Eight decks, dealer stands on soft 17, no hole card.

When I checked your Double Down Madness Blackjack strategy, it said to double a lone ace against every dealer upcard except an ace in Version 1, when it advised hitting.

I believe this is reversed: double a lone ace against every upcard in Version 1, but hit ace against ace in Versions 2 and 3. I have checked this with my own solver. Can you clarify?

Lawson

The current Double Down Madness strategy agrees with your correction:

  • Version 1: With an ace as the first card, double against every dealer upcard, including an ace.
  • Versions 2 and 3: With an ace as the first card, double against every dealer upcard except an ace; against an ace, hit.

These recommendations apply to the rules analyzed on that page. Thank you for bringing the distinction to our attention.