Blackjack Strategy Online
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Insurance a good bet? | Blackjack Strategy Online
There you are sat at the Blackjack table, you have placed your wager and the Dealer has dealt your cards and his or her upcard happens to be an Ace, you will now be offered a special side bet by the Dealer.
This side bet is whether you think that the Dealer is holding a Blackjack hand ( an Ace and a Ten valued card) and to take the Dealer up on this wager you have to place a wager that is half of your normal Blackjack hand wager amount.
If the Dealer then goes on to reveal a Blackjack, you will get paid out on this side bet at odds of 2 to 1, which on the face of it may seem like a good wager to make.
The idea is that you are insuring your normal wager against a winning Dealers Blackjack hand but stop right there this wager is one of the worst bets you can ever make on the Blackjack table!
The can easily be demonstrated by looking at a standard two deck Blackjack game, the average house edge of such a game is around 0.45%, but by accepting and then taking the Insurance wager you are now up against a staggering house edge on that bet of a whopping and mind boggling 6.796%. so just simply ignore and/or refuse this wager.
The casino isn't doing you any favours by offering this Insurance wager to you, in fact they are trying to rob you blind!
This house edge gets even worse the more decks that are in play, a 4 deck game has a terrible house edge of 7.246%.
A six deck Blackjack game will have an Insurance wager house edge of a miserable 7.395% and an 8 deck game will soon have you running for the ATM if you take insurance bets as the house on this wager is a pathetic 7.47%.
One or two different Blackjack variants will give you different odds when you place an Insurance wager, but don't be fooled into thinking you are getting a much better deal, as you aren't!
There is a Blackjack game that is found both online and offline and that game is called Double Attack Blackjack, you will get payout odds of 5-2 should your Insurance wager win, and this seems much better than the usual 2 to 1 offered on standard Blackjack games.
But a quick peep at the game play rules shows us that the game has a full eight 48 card Spanish decks in operation which means the house edge works out on this wager as a truly disgusting 12.27%!
So the moral of this story dear reader is to avoid taking an Insurance wager every time it is offered, the casino is not helping you out they just want your money quicker!
