Atlassino Academy · Blackjack · Lesson 13 of 21
Side bets: the price per hour
The second bet beside the hand is a bet of its own, with a pay table of its own and a price of its own by the hour.
Some blackjack tables take a second bet beside the hand you came to play. What does a chip on that side bet cost you?
The short answer
A side bet is a bet of its own, with a pay table of its own. The rules BCLC publishes for B.C. casinos set one of them out in full, King’s Bounty, and there the hand beside it has no bearing on it and it has no bearing on the hand. The two chips are not two halves of one wager, they are two prices — and at the same money on every hand, the pair bet priced below takes several times as much out of an hour as the bet on the hand does.
The bet on the hand
- Decided by
- your hand against the dealer's hand.
- Settled
- when the dealer's hand is finished.
- Paid by
- the rules of blackjack.
The side bet
- Decided by
- whatever its own pay table asks of the cards, and nothing else.
- Settled
- on its own, whatever the hand does.
- Paid by
- the pay table printed for it.
The same two cards are dealt to both chips. Each chip is then settled on a different question: the bet on the hand on how your hand ends against the dealer’s, the side bet on whatever the pay table printed for it asks of those cards.
Two bets on one hand
A side bet is an extra bet on the same cards. The rules BCLC publishes for B.C. casinos set one such bet out in full, and the name they give it says what kind of bet it is: King’s Bounty is an optional extra, a proposition bet you may lay beside a blackjack hand. Optional runs one way only. You can sit down, play hand after hand and never put a chip on King’s Bounty; you cannot put a chip on King’s Bounty without a bet on the hand, because those rules want a bet on the hand itself before any chip goes on King’s Bounty.
The two chips are then settled apart, and for King’s Bounty that is written down as a rule: how the main hand ends does not touch the King’s Bounty bet, and how the King’s Bounty bet ends does not touch the hand. A hand that loses can be sitting next to a King’s Bounty bet that is paid, and a hand that is paid can be sitting next to a King’s Bounty bet that is taken.
The game itself is not changed by the side bet being there, and that too is written down: there are no changes to the regular rules of blackjack.
What the side bet pays for
The whole of a side bet is its pay table: what it asks of the cards, and what it pays when the cards do it. Perfect Pairs asks for a pair in your first two cards, and it pays for that pair three different ways: there are three different types of pairs, and the payout odds vary accordingly.
A perfect pair is the same rank and the same suit; a coloured pair is the same rank and colour in two different suits; a mixed pair is one red card and one black card.
How much each kind of pair is paid and how often each kind comes out of a six-deck shoe belong together, because a pay table on its own tells you nothing about a price. Here they are in one table, counted over every two-card start a six-deck shoe can deal.
| Kind of pair | Pays | Two-card starts of this kind |
|---|---|---|
| Perfect pair | 25 to 1 | 780 |
| Coloured pair | 12 to 1 | 936 |
| Mixed pair | 6 to 1 | 1,872 |
| No pair at all | The chip is taken | 44,928 |
| Every two-card start | 48,516 |
A single bar standing for every two-card start a six-deck shoe can deal. Three thin bands on the left are the perfect pairs, the coloured pairs and the mixed pairs; the long band filling the rest of the bar is the starts that are not a pair at all.
Perfect pairsColoured pairsMixed pairsNot a pair
The bar draws the right-hand column to length: the rarer a kind of pair, the more it pays and the thinner its band.
King's Bounty is a different side bet, and it asks the same two cards a different question: whether your first two cards equal 20. A king and a queen count ten each, so a king dealt beside a queen answers King’s Bounty yes, whatever the hand goes on to do, and a nine beside an eight answers it no.
- Ten and ten make 20The question King's Bounty asks of the first two cards, and the same two cards the hand is then played with.
- Nine and eight make 17The same two cards say no to King's Bounty, and the hand goes on being played as usual.
What the side bet costs an hour
Played by the full chart, the rules BCLC publishes for B.C. casinos leave the house a share of every bet on the hand, and every move away from the chart makes that share larger. The Perfect Pairs side bet leaves the house a share of its own, worked out from the pay table printed for the pair bet and from the shoe the cards come out of. Here are the two shares beside each other.
| The chip goes on | Share of that chip the house keeps |
|---|---|
| The hand, played by the full chart | 0.53% |
| The Perfect Pairs side bet | 6.11% |
The share on the hand comes from the table rules this page is set to; the share on the pair bet comes from the pay table above, published by an Ontario operator, over six decks. A table that prints other numbers has another share.
A share is hard to feel, and money is not. Take an example bet of $10 — an example, not a suggested bet — put it on every hand for an hour at the 70 hands an hour of the Las Vegas Strip rating table, and here is what each of the two bets takes out of that hour.
The hour assumes a chip on the side bet on every hand and the pay table above: a smaller chip, a quieter table or another pay table is another price.
Before a chip goes on the side bet
Three questions settle what a side bet will cost you, and all three can be answered before the cards come out. Minimums, maximums and maximum payouts are posted at the table, so the smallest chip the table takes and the most it will pay are printed where you can read them. What the side bet pays line by line is the part worth finding before the chip goes down rather than after.
- What does this side bet ask of the cards?A pair in the first two cards, a first two cards making 20, something else again — each side bet asks one thing.
- What does it pay for each way of doing it?The pay table, line by line. Two tables with the same name on them are not always the same table.
- How big a chip, and on how many hands?The hour above is an example bet on every single hand. Half the hands is half the hour, and a smaller chip is a smaller hour.
None of this makes a side bet a mistake, and none of it makes a side bet a plan. All side bets are a risky gamble, meant for fun, and the hour worked out above is what the fun costs at the pair bet.
There is one use a side bet never has, and it is the one people reach for. Using side bets to get even when down in chips is never advised — and the two shares above say why: money put on the pair bet is taken faster than money put on the hand, so an hour spent chasing a loss on the side bet makes the hole deeper on average, not shallower.
Mayaformer floor supervisor · manners, money and breaks
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 run of hands that took your chips is not a debt the table owes you: putting more money down to get it back only makes the hour dearer, and the side bet makes it dearer faster than anything else on the felt. 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.
If it stops being fun
If gambling stops being entertainment, help is available. 19+ in most of Canada; 18+ in Alberta, Manitoba and Quebec. More on responsible gaming.
The pay table on one card
That is the lesson. The Perfect Pairs pay table is on one card: print it, or keep it on your phone.
| Kind of pair | Pays | Share of two-card starts |
|---|---|---|
| Perfect pair | 25 to 1 | 1.61% |
| Coloured pair | 12 to 1 | 1.93% |
| Mixed pair | 6 to 1 | 3.86% |
| No pair at all | The chip is taken | 92.60% |
Of every chip, the house keeps 6.11% on Perfect Pairs and 0.53% on the hand played by the full chart.
19+ (18+ in AB, MB, QC) · Set a limit before you sit · Play responsibly · help, day or night: Gambling Support BC 1-888-795-6111, 24 hours
Practice table
The table below deals hands from a shuffled shoe and checks your first decision on each hand against the chart for the table rules you pick. 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.
It deals no side bets, and that is not an omission. Once the chip is down on a side bet there is nothing left to decide: the cards come out and the pay table settles them. The three decisions a side bet does take — what it asks of the cards, what it pays, and how big a chip goes on how many hands — are all made before the chip goes down, and a dealt hand cannot practise them. What the table below practises is the other chip, the one on the hand, where a decision moves the price.
Rules differ by province. Pick the rules closest to the table where you play; this table then answers by the chart for those rules. The bet is only an example for the amounts shown, not a suggested bet.
Dealer
You
Lesson done
Review my mistakes (0)
Progress stays in this browser; nothing is sent anywhere.
The practice table needs JavaScript. Here is one hand from it, with the answer.
Dealer shows a 7
You hard 16
The chart says: Hit.
Hard 16 against a 7: The dealer card is strong: standing on 16 loses whenever the dealer finishes on 17 or more, 73.8% of hands against a 7.
Average result per hand on an example bet of $10 (a minus means money lost): stand −$4.77 · hit −$4.09 · double −$8.17 · surrender −$5.00. Standing instead costs about $0.68 more each time.
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.
And the question at the start
What a chip on the side bet costs is worked out from two printed things: what that side bet pays for each way of doing what it asks, and how often a shoe does it. For the pair bet on this page that comes to several times what the same money costs on the bet on the hand, hand for hand and hour for hour. That is why the pay table is worth reading before the chip goes down rather than after: change the numbers printed on the felt and the price changes with them.
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
Rules, numbers and hosts
Where this happens. Every table on this page is a table in a room you can walk into. The share of each bet on the hand is worked out for the table rules this page is set to, which are the rules published for B.C. casinos; the side bet priced here is priced from a pay table published by an Ontario operator. A table in another province may print other numbers for the same side bet, and then the price is the one on that felt.
Numbers. The share of a bet on the hand is worked out when the page is built, by the same engine as our blackjack strategy tool, assuming the full chart. The share of the pair bet is worked out from its published pay table over every two-card start a six-deck shoe can deal — the same count that stands behind the pair-bet row of our house-edge tool. The hour is the example bet, times the hands an hour of the rating table, times the share.
What is deliberately absent. No hour price is worked out here for the 21+3 side bet. One published pay table for it pays 50 to 1 for a flush and 30 to 1 for a straight flush, while of the 5,013,320 three-card combinations a six-deck shoe can deal, 292,896 are a flush and only 10,368 are a straight flush. A pay table that pays more for the commoner hand than for the rarer one cannot be taken as printed, and a price worked out from it would be a number about nothing. There is also no list of which side bets stand in which Canadian rooms: no operator we could read publishes one, and the games on a floor change.
Hosts. Maya is an illustrated character. Her backstory, a former floor supervisor, is written for the course: she is not a real person and does not speak for any casino. The rules and numbers on this page come from the sources it cites, not from her experience.
No promise. Blackjack is played against the house, and a side bet is played against a pay table. Nothing on this page makes either of them free of cost, and nothing on it says how an evening will end.
The three kinds of pair
There are three different types of pairs and the payout odds vary accordingly.
Section Perfect Pairs
Side bets are offered at some tables
King’s Bounty is optional
In our words: King’s Bounty is a side bet you can add to a blackjack hand if you want to.
Section 2.0 King's Bounty
BCLC · Rules of Play for Table Games — Blackjack · read
King’s Bounty needs a bet on the hand
In our words: King’s Bounty is open only to players who also have a regular blackjack bet down.
Section 2.0 King's Bounty
BCLC · Rules of Play for Table Games — Blackjack · read
King’s Bounty is settled on its own
In our words: Your main hand and the King’s Bounty side bet are settled separately; one result does not change the other.
Section 2.0 King's Bounty
BCLC · Rules of Play for Table Games — Blackjack · read
The game does not change
There are no changes to the regular rules of Blackjack.
Section Side bets
Three kinds of pair
There are three different types of pairs and the payout odds vary accordingly.
Section Perfect Pairs
What King’s Bounty asks
Players wager on whether their first two cards equal 20.
Section King's Bounty
What the cards are worth
In our words: You choose whether each ace is worth 1 or 11.
In our words: Jacks, queens and kings are each worth 10.
In our words: Every other card is worth the number printed on it.
Section 1.0 Basic Blackjack, 2.1 to 2.2.1
BCLC · Rules of Play for Table Games — Blackjack · read
An ace can count as either 1 or 11 points, face cards are worth 10 points, and all other cards are worth their face value.
Section The cards
Following the chart lowers the cost of play
By following basic strategy you can reduce the house advantage and your cost of play.
Pace: hands an hour
This table was given to me anonymously by an executive with a major Strip casino and is used for rating players.
Table “Hands per Hour and Average House Edge”, row “Blackjack”, column “Hands/Hour”: 70
What the table posts
Minimums and maximums, and maximum payouts are posted at the table.
Section Blackjack
What a side bet is
All side bets are a risky gamble, meant for fun.
Section Variations and side wagers
What a side bet is not for
Using them to get even when down in chips is never advised.
Section Variations and side wagers
A printed 21+3 pay table
Flush (three cards of the same suit) = 50:1
Straight Flush (all the same suit, in sequential order) = 30:1
Section Variations and side wagers
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