Mar 26, 2014
While poker requires people reading skills to win and roulette just requires a hell of a lot of luck, blackjack on the other hand boasts one of the lowest houses edges in the casino, making it the game to place your bets on, but how can you use mathematics to your advantage?
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It doesn’t take long to learn perfect basic blackjack strategy, and if you know what you’re doing you can even get as far as lowering the house edge to 0.5%.
The house edge alone is not a determining factor in whether you win or lose, since the unexpected always happens in cards, which is why it’s called gambling in the first place, but there is a mathematical area for deviation that can give you an insight into your winning and losses.
Mar 01, 2021 Our database of free casino games contains slot machines, roulette, blackjack, baccarat, craps, bingo, keno, online scratch cards, video poker and other types of games. The vast majority of games are slots, which makes sense, as slots are by far the most popular type of online casino games. Free roulette is also quite popular. Variance a term we all hear a lot but may not fully understand what it is. In a gambler’s world, if they hear this they will just say “hey that’s just a fancy word for luck”. By definition it is simply the difference in the expected advantage and the actual results produced. Jan 13, 2018 Free Blackjack Photos LeoVegas: Up to £400 in bonuses + 100 bonus spins 18+ New eligible UK players only. Select Casino offer on Free Blackjack Photos sign-up and deposit. 4 deposits of £10, £20, £50, £100 matched with a bonus cash offer of same value (14 day expiry).
The secret behind blackjack lies in the mathematics behind statistics, in the variance and its standard deviation.
Deviating from the standard
When you use strategy to lower the house edge down to 0.5%, theoretically this means that after playing a certain amount of time, you’ll lose 0.5% of your money, which goes back to the casino.
Some basic blackjack strategy tips:
• Always hit a hard 4 to 8
• Always stand on a hard 17 and on any combination above 18
• Surrender a 16 versus 10
• Double a hard 10 or 11 if more than the dealer
However, real life is not as simple as that, since there is always room for a variation, which mathematically is deemed as the “variance”, which is calculated by measuring the standard deviation.
In statistics, probability is not an act of chaos with no pattern, but rather follows a bell curve, where the middle corresponds with the average, and the distribution shows all the possible outcomes and their probabilities.
Poker Variance Chart
The standard deviation is essentially the number marking the number of units falling to each side of the average, which means that 68% of the outcomes will fall within the standard deviation of the average.
Mathematically, this also means that 95% and 99.7% of the outcomes will fall within 2 and 3 standard deviations, respectively.
Standard deviation and its effect on blackjack
If you account for all the blackjack rules and basic strategy of blackjack, the standard deviation of the game falls at the value of 1.14, in general.
This means that in a game with a 0.5% house edge, the standard deviation marks the odds to win and lose on both sides of the bell curve. This means that 68% of the time you’d either win or lose 1.14 units, and 95% of the time win or lose 2.28 units.
But again, statistics also shifts depending on how many hands you play, and the more hands you do play mean that you get closer to the average. Thereby by including the variable of your dealt hands, you can predict your winning and losing likelihood by a fixed number.
To calculate the amount you win or lose, you basically take the square root of the number of hands played and multiply by 1.14.
So that means for 100 hands of blackjack, yields a standard deviation of 11.4 in this case. So betting, say, $1 per hand would yield an expected loss of 50cents, since the house edge is 0.5% (for 200 hands, this would go up to $1).
If you play 100 hands, then there is a 68% chance you could win or lose $11.4, for example. While there is room for manoeuvre, you can use standard deviation to budget your losses.
Show me the money
Let’s take a more concrete example. Let’s see how often you would lose $50 in a game of blackjack using the above examples.
To calculate this you need to factor in the expected loss (50cents for 100 hands) and measure the difference from the actual loss ($50 in this case). So the difference applied here is $49.5.
You then need to apply the standard deviation for your set of hands, so for 100 hands this is 11.4, as seen before, and divide this difference so 49.5/11.4 = 4.34.
This means losing $50 is over 3 standard deviations, so the chances of winning or losing the amount is in the margin of around 0.3% of time.
Using standard deviation can help you to optimize and minimize your risk. Playing 100 hands of blackjack and betting $1, with setting your maximum loss at $50, means that you’re only likely to lose that amount 0.3% of the time.
To maximize your blackjack game, you simply need a smart strategy and a bit of statistics know-how.
Playing with standard deviation means you can leave your card counting system at home for once, and not get yourself banned from a casino.
Tags: blackjack strategy, card counting system, smart strategy, Standard deviation, Variance
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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF BLACKJACK
V. Acronym for variablepenetration.
Vagabond. A professional blackjack player. Interviewed on the
'>Gambling with an Edge podcast.[ PODCAST: Feb 21, 2019 ] [ PODCAST: Feb 28, 2019 ]
van-john. The game of twenty-one as once known in England. A corruption of the French term vingt-et-un. See blackjack.
[ 66 Thorp '>Beat the Dealer 3 ]
Vancura, Olaf. Co-author of the excellent book Knock-Out Blackjack and the unbalanced KO Count.
[ APS News: Olaf Vancura ]
[ PODCAST: Mar 9, 2016 ]
From Gambling With An Edge
VAPC. See Victor Advanced Point Count.
var. Short for variance.
variance. In statistics, the mean of the squares of the variations from the mean of a frequency distribution. In other words, the variance is the square of the standard deviation. We use the term variance to refer to the fluctuation or luck in the game.
[ Wiki: Variance ]
[ possiblywrong.wordpress.com ]
variants. See blackjack variants.
Poker Variance Calculator
variations. 1) See rule variations. 2) See play variations.
Vegas, Radek. (Born 1983) A German journalist and gambling expert. He discovered blackjack as his passion when he first visited Las Vegas in 2010. In 2014, he published the German blackjack book Blackjack Winner. He has also written several articles for Victor Advanced Point Count (VAPC) Point Count System / Level 3 (Example DMPro)
A card counting system in which a card is assigned a value, either positive, negative, or zero, as it is played.
'>{PCS/L3}. (1995) (Rich Victor).A 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
0 2 2 2 3 2 2 0 -1 -3
Betting Correlation
'>BC = .92 Playing Efficiency'>PE = .68 Insurance Correlation'>IC = .89[ 32 Victor Insurance Parameter. (VIP) (Rich Victor) Used in balanced counts that disregard the Ace. The VIP is defined as the running count divided by the number of unseen aces. According to Victor, “it provides a much simpler and more accurate assessment of the insurance situation than the customary match-up of true count and insurance index.”
[ March 2002 Victor, Rich. See Victor Insurance Parameter above and the Victor Advanced Point Count.
Video Blackjack. A reference to an electronic video blackjack machine. Many of these machines paid only even money for a blackjack or at best 6 to 5. Beginning in 2014, most video blackjack games in Las Vegas began paying only 6 to 5.
WARNING:If you see “Blackjacks pay 2 for 1“, it means they are paying you even money. (2 for 1 is NOT the same thing as 2 to 1)
[ blackjack-scams.com ]
[ wizardofvegas.com ]
[ blackjackforumonline.com ]
From a Game King / IGT Blackjack Machine
Notice “Blackjack pays 2 for 1“
The newer video blackjack machines may be fancier but they
are also just as bad! Notice “Blackjack pays 6 to 5“
vig. As in vigorish. The casino commission in a game.
vingt-et-un. The French term for the game of twenty-one. It is believed that vingt-et-un was introduced in France and the rest of Europe in the 1700s. See also trente-un, van-john, pontoon, and blackjack.
[ blackjackforumonline.com ]
[ 38 Asbury Sucker’s Progress 49 ]
[ 65 Scarne Scarne on Cards 138 ]
[ 66 Thorp '>Beat the Dealer 3 ]
vingt-un. An earlier French wording for vingt-et-un.
[ 1875 The American Hoyle ]
[ 65 Scarne Scarne on Cards 138 ]
VIP. See Victor Insurance Parameter.
Vogel, John. Former member of the Czech Team. See George Hascik.
Voodoo. A reference to the
'>Blackjack Review Network’s former Voodoo message board. This board was especially set up to discuss mathematically unjustified ideas and methods as well as comments from those who don’t believe card-counting works!
Poker Variance Definition
[ web.archive.org ]
VP. Acronym for video poker – a game that is also potentially beatable.