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Blackjack is the favorite casino game for many casino enthusiasts. It features a low house edge, dynamic gameplay, and huge rewards if played well. Additionally, this is a game of skill and chance, which means your decisions can affect the outcome of every hand.
While the right strategy goes a long way in blackjack, a casino’s specific rules can also affect the house edge, tilting it to, yes, you guessed it, favor the house.
One of the easiest ways to increase the house edge is to add multiple decks of cards; the more decks there are in the game, the lower your chances of winning, which is why the most common blackjack variations involve six or eight decks.
Therefore, it is a reasonable question to ask how many decks of cards can be used in blackjack. KT11 will answer this question in the following lines and shed light on other reasons for using multiple decks in blackjack and how the multi-deck variant differs from single-deck blackjack.
Blackjack: How many decks of cards can be played?
Blackjack rules do not specify a maximum number of cards in a deck; in blackjack, the game can have an unlimited number of cards, as long as you have big enough “shoes” to shuffle the cards.
In fact, casinos offer blackjack with up to eight decks. A blackjack table with more than eight decks is simply impractical: shuffling so many cards would require huge “shoes” and tables to accommodate so many players.
Shoe blackjack, which is what casinos call multi-deck blackjack, is most often played with four, six, or (up to) eight decks of 52 cards.
As the number of decks increases, the odds change, which is why understanding the decks and base odds is one of the basic blackjack skills you should master.
Why do casinos use more than one deck of cards?
The most obvious reason why casinos increase the number of blackjack decks is to make the game more exciting and attract more players. However, there are several other reasons why blackjack’s maximum deck size changes:
card counting
Card counting is the best strategy in blackjack: anyone can learn it, and it’s the most tangible because it doesn’t rely on luck.
To stop players from counting cards, casinos add more decks, making the strategy more difficult to implement. But memory is elastic: If you keep practicing, you can memorize hundreds of cards and still have the upper hand against the dealer.
shuffle
The more blackjack hands that are dealt, the greater the casino’s profit. Therefore, using multiple decks of cards means the game is more dynamic and more hands can be played in an hour.
Suppose the dealer is dealing with only one deck of cards; they deal the cards quickly and need to reshuffle the cards frequently, slowing down the pace of the game. With multiple decks of cards, the dealer can mix the cards less frequently, thus increasing the number of cards in the hand.
Increase house edge
It’s no secret that casinos are always looking to increase their profits. When you host a game that’s known for having one of the lowest house edges (0.16% for single-deck blackjack!), it doesn’t take long for you to look for ways to increase the house edge.
The easiest way is to add more decks to the shuffle! If you look at the numbers, you’ll see that the house edge increases quickly with each deck: adding just one deck increases the house edge to 0.46%.
Four decks of cards gives you a house edge of 0.60%, while eight decks of cards gives you a house edge of 0.66%.
Single deck blackjack
Single-deck blackjack, often called pitch blackjack, sounds great due to the low house edge, but that’s why it’s so rare these days.
Card counting, combined with the rules you can learn from blackjack strategy charts about when to stand or hit cards, provides a reliable way to beat the dealer.
However, you should know that the single-deck version usually comes with a stricter set of blackjack rules due to the advantage it gives the player.
For example, natural blackjack will offer a payout of 3 to 2 in a multi-deck game. Converted to a house edge percentage, you see 1.39%.
Multi-level blackjack
Multi-tier blackjack is a game you’ll commonly see in land-based venues and online platforms. Casinos do this to prevent players from keeping an accurate count, making the game more profitable and dynamic.
Most casinos offer six-deck and eight-deck games because these two games have the highest house edge (0.64% and 0.66% respectively) and the highest number of cards (312 and 416 cards). In addition to making players think more carefully about their budgets and strategies, these variations also make card counting more challenging.
This brings us to the silver lining of four-deck blackjack: with four decks, you can keep your house edge relatively low while counting fewer cards (208). However, this variant is uncommon but worth looking for.
Does deck size matter in online blackjack?
Since there are no dealers in real life, you might be asking yourself: How many decks of cards are used in online blackjack? The number of cards in the deck does not matter in online blackjack because online casinos use a random number generator (RNG) to shuffle the cards after each hand.
In other words, the software randomly draws cards from any number of decks of your choice and reshuffles them immediately when a player wins or loses a bet. In other words, when you play blackjack online, the number of decks and your memory ability make little difference; instead, you should focus on other aspects and rules of the game, such as doubling, re-splitting, and surrender
The above is the blackjack introduction brought to you by KT11, please continue to pay attention to the articles provided by KT11
