Question of the Day - 13 June 2019

[Editor's note: This answer provided by blackjack Hall of Fame member Arnold Snyder. Arnold is also the author of our books The Blackjack Shuffle Tracker's Cookbook and Risk of Ruin.)

These days you almost have to play in games where the dealer hits soft 17, as most casinos have adopted this policy. But if you have a choice, playing where they stand is better.

Hitting soft 17 increases the house edge by 0.22%. Most players either don't realize this or simply don't care -- that extra edge sounds negligible. But putting it into perspective indicates otherwise.

Let's say you're a $10 bettor and you play 50 hands per hour. That's $500 in action, so the casino makes an additional $1.10 per hour off you now -- not insignificant.

There’s no simple way to explain why hitting soft 17 increases the house edge, except to say that computer simulations have determined conclusively that this is the case. Soft 17 is a bad hand that’s more likely to improve when taking hit cards. Interestingly, the casino is more likely to bust with this rule in place, but the times that the hand is improved to a winner for the house more than make up for the increased percentage of busts.

It’s worth noting that there are some variations to basic strategy when the dealer hits soft 17:

Double 11 against ace (instead of hit) Surrender 88 against ace (instead of split) Surrender 15 against ace (instead of hit) Surrender hard 17 against ace (instead of stand)

In Las Vegas, most of the time, the tables that have higher-denomination minimum bets stand on all 17s, while the lower-minimum tables hit soft 17s. The reason for this is that higher-limit players are often more knowledgeable gamblers and look for better odds on the games they play. At these higher-dollar amounts, the casino makes more money by virtue of the total action and doesn't need to take that extra 0.22% (at the risk of running off a big player who may walk across the street to get that 0.22% back at a competitor's game that stands on soft 17). In most cases, though, players are simply ignorant of the difference.

Hitting soft 17 is just one example of casinos trying to balance the conflicting imperatives of increasing their edge without alienating players and we’d call it a successful one. The latest -- and to date the boldest -- of such moves has been the revised payout on blackjacks from 3-2 to 6-5. Judging by the amount of correspondence we receive on the subject, a lot of our readers do notice and don’t like this change. And with good reason: A game with a 6-5 payoff on naturals increases the house edge about five times more than hitting soft 17. So while it's often acceptable to play at a blackjack table where the dealer hits soft 17, this can rarely be said for games where blackjacks pay 6-5.