Who pays for a "Free Bet" double or split

The dealer offers to double your hand for you and takes no chip from your stack when you say yes. Who puts that second bet up, and what does the table charge for putting it up?

Both halves come from one sentence of the rule book.

Leoformer dealer · rules and maths

The word “free” on this table means one thing and one thing only: the second bet is not taken out of your stack. It does not mean the hand is played at no cost, and it does not mean the house has handed something over for nothing. Read both halves of the rule before you decide whether this table suits you, because both halves are in force on every hand you play at it.

Who puts the second bet up

At an ordinary blackjack table, doubling means putting a second bet of your own behind the first, and splitting a pair means putting a second bet of your own to the side of the first for the second hand. At a “Free Bet” table the dealer puts that second bet up instead, on the hands the rules name, and the chips in front of you stay where they are. At this table the cards come from a machine that shuffles continuously rather than from a shoe, and the game is dealt from six decks.

The hands the table pays for are named in the rules, and the list is short. A double is on the table’s money when your first two cards make a hard 9, a hard 10 or a hard 11 — hard meaning that the hand holds no ace, or holds an ace that has to count as one.

The first bet of the hand is always your own money — the table never puts up the bet you started the hand with.

Nine of the ten pairs a shoe can deal you are split on the table’s chips. The pair of 10-value cards is the one the rules leave out, and a jack beside a queen counts as that pair just as two 10s do.

A hand split at this table can be split again if another pair comes, up to four hands in all, and a pair of aces is the exception: aces are split once, and each of the two hands takes one more card and stops there.

What the table takes back

The same rules that hand you those doubles and splits change what a dealer’s bust is worth to you. At an ordinary table a dealer hand over 21 is a bust, and a bust loses the dealer the hand, so every hand still standing is paid. At a “Free Bet” table one count is carved out of that: if the dealer’s hand ends on exactly 22, a hand still standing is a push, which means the bet comes back to you and nothing is added to it. The rules set that push down and open a list of exceptions to it in the same sentence, so the push does not reach every hand at the table.

One hand that the push on a dealer 22 leaves alone is named plainly by an operator who deals this game at its own tables: a player who is dealt a blackjack is exempt from the push, so a blackjack is paid as a blackjack rather than handed back. No other hand is named.

Only one of the dealer’s over-21 counts changed. A dealer hand ending on 23, 24, 25 or more pays the hands still standing exactly as it does at any other blackjack table, and only the count of 22 is settled at nothing.

How often that one count comes up is not a rounding error, and it depends on the card the dealer is showing. A dealer hand that ends on exactly 22 is one part of every way the same dealer has of going over 21, and against a low up card that one part is a large slice of the whole — which is how much of the dealer’s bust these rules take out.

The same operator names one more bet its “Free Bet” tables carry, and that extra bet is your own money: it goes down beside the bet you start the hand with, and it is settled on whether the free double or the free split is used on that hand. The free double and the free split are offered whether or not that extra bet is on the felt, so the extra bet buys neither of them, and taking it means putting money of your own down at the one table where the second bet on a hard 9, a hard 10, a hard 11 or a pair is not money of your own.

The chart for this table is a different chart

Because the table puts the second bet up, the move that costs least changes: a double the table pays for is worth taking far more often than a double you pay for yourself.

At the ordinary table a hard 9 is a double against four of the dealer’s ten cards and a plain hit against the other six, and a hard 10 stops being a double against a dealer’s 10 or ace. At the “Free Bet” table all three of the totals the table pays for are a free double in all ten columns, against every dealer card from a 2 to an ace.

Pairs move the same way. At the ordinary table, whether a pair of 2s or a pair of 9s is worth splitting depends on the dealer’s up card, because each split costs you a second bet. At the “Free Bet” table the second bet costs you nothing on nine pairs out of ten, and the chart splits them all against every dealer card — with two rows that do not follow the rest.

The two rows that break the pattern are the pair of 5s and the pair of 10-value cards, and they break it for two different reasons.

• A pair of 5sTwo 5s are a hard 10, and a hard 10 is one of the three totals the table doubles for. The free double is the move in every column of that row, and the free split is not.
• Two 10-value cardsTwo 10-value cards make a 20 that is already higher than most counts the dealer finishes on, the rules put no chips up for that pair, and the chart stands on it against every dealer card.

Those two rows aside, the rule of thumb at this table is short: take the free double and take the free split, every time either one is offered. It is short because the table is paying for the second bet, and a second bet you are not paying for is worth taking on hands where a second bet of your own would not be. The house keeps its edge; the chart only makes it smaller. A hand played by every row of the chart for this game can still lose, and the second bet the table put up loses along with the first one, which was always yours.

What an hour costs at each table

Played by the full chart — hard totals, soft hands and pairs together — the ordinary blackjack rules BCLC publishes for B.C. casinos leave the house about 0.53% of every bet on average, and every move away from that full chart makes the share larger.

The “Free Bet” game has a full chart of its own, and playing every hand by it does not bring the two tables level. On an example bet of $10 a hand — an example, not a suggested bet — and at the pace of 70 hands an hour that the Las Vegas Strip rating table gives for blackjack, an hour at each of the two tables works out like this.

• Ordinary blackjack$3.68an hour, on average
• “Free Bet” blackjack$6.15an hour, on average

Each bar is an average over many hours, not a price for one evening: a single hour can take nothing from you, or far more. The bet, the pace and the full chart are the same at both tables; only the game differs.

Mayaformer floor supervisor · manners, money and breaks

A table that puts chips up for you is still a table that keeps a share of every bet, so decide how much money the evening gets and how long it runs before you sit down, and stop when either one is used up. A losing streak is not a debt the table owes you: putting more money down to get it back only makes the hour dearer. If the money on the table starts to feel like money you need, call one of the lines below — that is what they are for.

The chart on one card

That is the lesson. The chart for this game is on one card: print it, or keep it on your phone.

Practice table

The practice table below deals the ordinary blackjack hand, not the “Free Bet” hand: it deals two cards against a dealer’s up card and checks your first decision against the chart for the table rules you pick from its menu. Decide with the buttons or with the keys H, S and D. There is no money on this table: the amounts beside each decision are averages for the example bet you choose.

Practising the ordinary hand is the point here, and not a stand-in for something missing. The chart for a “Free Bet” table is a departure from the ordinary chart, and a departure is only worth learning once you know what it departs from.

Check yourself

Mayaformer floor supervisor · manners, money and breaks

Five quick ones. Pick an answer, then check it. No timer, no points: just whether it stuck.

Where to play, and further reading

19+ (18+ in AB, MB, QC) · Play responsibly · help, day or night: Gambling Support BC 1-888-795-6111, 24 hours

Further reading

• Rules of Play for Table Games: Blackjack · British Columbia Lottery Corporation (BCLC)The rules this track follows section by section: six decks, the dealer on soft 17, doubling, splitting and surrender.
• Game rules: Blackjack · Loto-Québec (Société des casinos du Québec)Québec’s rules: one to eight decks, a face-down dealer card, and the soft-17 rule left to the sign at the table.
• Playing Blackjack · Fallsview Casino Resort and Casino NiagaraOne Ontario operator’s own booklet, including both blackjack payouts and both dealer rules it may post.
• Blackjack: how to play · OLG PlaySmartOntario’s beginner page: the moves, the hand signals it describes, and what insurance is.
• Know the game: Blackjack · Casinos Regina & Moose Jaw (SaskGaming)A Saskatchewan operator on what the chart does and does not do, and where to pick one up in the building.
• Blackjack basics · Wizard of OddsWhat three common ways of playing blackjack without the chart cost, on that author’s own table.

How it’s worked out