Back to The Blackjack Page
The Blackjack Page Archive
Playing Multiple Hands - Part 3

As I mentioned in Parts 1 and 2 of this series, you should play more than one hand at Blackjack only if you have an edge over the casino. This edge may come about through the very favorable rules which the casino offers (as this is being written, there's a game on the Internet which offers the Basic Strategy player a healthy edge over the house) or it may come through counting cards. Playing more than one hand when the casino has an edge only hastens the loss of your $$$, so I want to stress that multi-hand play by itself is not a way to beat the game. But it is a good way to get more $$$ on the table when the deck is in your favor and that's what was covered in the first two parts of this series.

Now, I want to cover the specific money management techniques to use when you're playing more than one hand. As you know, how much to bet on a hand of blackjack depends upon the size of one's bankroll and the advantage the player has on that hand. The advantage is calculated by first knowing what kind of edge the casino has "off the top" of a freshly-shuffled deck or decks and that's determined by the rules which the casino offers. For general discussion purposes, I like to use a casino edge of 0.5%, but that can vary widely. This edge changes as the True Count moves in favor of the player thus, in a 'normal' game, an increase of 1 in the True Count decreases the casino's edge by about 0.5%. So, if the casino's basic or starting edge is 0.5% and the True Count is 2, then the player would have an edge of about 0.5%. I like to use 75% of the advantage in these calculations, rather than 100%, so that splits, doubles, etc. are automatically figured in. Below is a table which shows the optimum bet for a $3000 bankroll in single-hand play and next to it is the actual bet that should be made, since it's not practical to bet odd amounts like $11.25 at a Blackjack game.

		Optimum bet		Actual Bet
True Count	Player Advantage	X 75%	X $3000	Single-hand
Below 0	(Disadvantage)	0	0	$5
1	0	0	0	$5
2	.5%	.375	$11.25	$10
3	1.0%	.750	$22.50	$20
4	1.5%	1.11	$33.30	$30
5	2.0%	1.50	$45.00	$40
6	2.5%	1.87	$56.10	$50
7	3.0%	2.25	$67.50	$60

If you'd like more background on this, you'll find it the archived lesson, "Money Management, Part 1" down at the bottom of this page.

When playing two hands, the bet should be about 55% of the advantage on each hand, so this is what the calculations look like:

		Optimum bet		Actual Bet
True Count	Player Advantage	X 55%	X $3000	Two hands
Below 0	(Disadvantage)	0	0	$0
1	0	0	0	$0
2	.5%	.275	$8.25	$10
3	1.0%	.550	$16.50	$15
4	1.5%	.825	$24.75	$25
5	2.0%	1.10	$33.00	$35
6	2.5%	1.38	$41.40	$40
7	3.0%	1.65	$49.50	$50

So, to summarize, this is how it all looks:

	Actual Bet	Actual Bet
True Count	Single-hand	Two hands
Below 0	$5	$0
1	$5	$0
2	$10	$10
3	$20	$15
4	$30	$25
5	$40	$35
6	$50	$40
7	$60	$50

Of course, when the player doesn't have an edge, s/he wouldn't go out to two hands, so when the True Count is 2 or lower, only one hand is played. It's usually not worthwhile to go to three hands and there's no advantage to playing two hands when you're alone at the table. No, it's not some superstition that makes me say that, it's grounded in pure mathematics. As you can see by the betting schedule above, you're betting roughly 50% more $$$ and you're using 50% more cards so one offsets the other. But if there's one or more other players besides you, then go to two hands whenever you have an edge, if it's possible to do so. But don't over bet.

See you here next time.

ARCHIVE of BLACKJACK ARTICLES