Hi and welcome to our instructional video
that is designed to make you a smarter gambler my name is Steve Bourie
I'm the author of the American casino guide which is the number one
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"American Casino Guide" In this video blackjack expert Henry Tamburin
who is the publisher of the Blackjack Insider newsletter as well as the author
of seven books on casino gambling
gives details on the five most misplayed hands in a game of blackjack
and now here's Henry Tamburin The number five most misplayed hand in blackjack
is a pair of nines against a nine. It seems logical to split
nines when the dealer has a small card but most players have a hard time
understanding
why they should split nines against a dealer nine
if you have an 18 and the dealer has a nine
upcard you're gonna win 8 out of 20 hands
if instead you split those nines
each of those nines are gonna win
nine-and-a-half hands on average
for every 20 hands so you're gonna win one and a half more times
when you split your own nines against the dealer nine
rather than standing So when you've got that pair of nines against a nine you
should always split them
the number four most misplayed hand in blackjack
is when you're dealt a 12 and the dealer shows
a 3 There's a rule in blackjack when you have a stiff hand and the dealer has a weak up
card
in general you shouldn't hit
you should stand but in the case of a 12 against the three
you really have to take a look at the percentages If you look at your 12
there are only four cards that could bust you
and that's the 10 the jack the Queen and the king
there are a total of five cards that will get you into the
17 to 21 safe zone so there are more cards that will get you
into a safe 17 to 21 than will bust you
the other reason why you should
hit your12 against the three is that
the three is not such a weak card for a dealer
as you would expect If you compare the chance of a dealer busting with a 3 up
card compared to 4, 5 or 6
he's got less chance of busting with a 3
so therefore when you have a 12 against a three
your best percentage play is to always hit that hand
the number three most misplayed hand in blackjack
is a 16 against a dealers 10 and there's no question that when you're dealt a
16 and the dealer has a 10 that that is really a bad hand
no matter what you do you're in a losing situation
but the most cost-effective play that you can make with that hand
assuming you don't have a pair of 8s now
we're only talking about hard 16 against the dealer
time your most cost-effective play
is to surrender when you surrender your hard 16
you're gonna lose 50 percent of your bet now why would you
give up fifty percent of your money without a fight Most players really
don't like to surrender because they feel that
you know you're waving the white flag and you just given in half your money to
the casino
well the fact of the matter is if you don't surrender
then the other playing options the probability of you
losing is going to be slightly greater than 50 percent
so obviously
it's much better to lose fifty percent of your money by surrendering
versus standing or hitting and losing slightly more than fifty percent
so the best play to make with the hard 16 against the ten is to
surrender now what if the casino doesn't offer the surrender rule
now your fallback position is to hit your 16
you lose slightly less compared to standing
but there's one exception to that rule and that is if you're 16
consists of three or more cards
for example suppose you're dealt a 7
a 5, and a 4
you have a hard 16 but you've got three cards
and you've got some small cards in that hand
because you've got some small cards the odds shift slightly from hitting
that hand to standing Why?
Because you've removed some of those small cards
from the deck and if you were to hit that hand
the fact that you removed some of the small cards that you would like to have
that fact shifts the odds slightly from hitting to standing
So the bottom line with the hard 16 against the ten is you should always
surrender
if that's all not available then you should hit
and if you have a three-card three or more card 16
then you should always stand The number two most misplayed hand in blackjack
is a soft 18 against the dealer's nine
or 10 Most players believe that when they have an eighteen
that's a strong hand and they shouldn't mess with it
they should always stand Well think about this
if the casino gave you an 18 on every one of your hands
for the rest of your life you would die a loser
in blackjack an 18 as just not
good enough so when you have
a soft 18 that's an eighteen with an ace counted as an 11
you have an out and that out is
to hit so if we look at some percentages
with a soft 18 just against the dealers 9
I'll show you what I mean if you stand on that soft 18
against the dealers 9 you're gonna win
8 out of twenty hands if instead you hit
the soft 18 until you either get the soft nineteen
hard 17 or you bust
you're gonna win 9 out of twenty hands
so you're gonna win one more hand out of every 20
when you hit soft 18 against the nine
versus standing So the best play when you have a soft 18
and the dealer shows a 9 or a 10
is you should always take a hit
The number one misplayed hand in blackjack
is when you're dealt a pair of eights against a dealer 10
I see this hand misplayed more often than all other hands
Why? because a player feels that the dealer has a strong up card
they're already in a losing situation when they have a pair of eights
and now they're afraid to split them because they're afraid they're gonna
lose
to bets instead of one and it's true that
the 16 against 10 is the worst hand you could have in blackjack
you're only gonna win 23 percent of the time
however when your 16 consists of a pair of eights
you have an out and that out is to split the eights
because when you split the eights you're starting a hand with an
8 and your chance of winning when you start with an 8
against the dealers 10 is 38%
so you're increasing your chances of winning from 23 percent
up to 38 percent
therefore you should always split your eights against the dealers ten
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