Pharaoh’s Single Deck Day 8 of 10 (again!)

Oops! Yesterday’s entry was titled as day 8, and it wasn’t until today that I realized it was actually day 7. Well, the real day 8 went quite a bit better, right from the beginning.

The early part of the hour at Pharaoh’s Casino today had me drawing blackjacks while the dealer went through a blackjack drought. The dealer finally had a blackjack on hand 62, after I had tallied six already. The extra 3:2 payouts helped out today, as I logged an $85 profit on the day.

I had a few interesting hands today. Twice more I made that peculiar basic strategy split of (3,3) vs dealer 8. But again I came up dry, losing all four resulting hands. I’m now 0 for 6 on those split hands. I still haven’t had a chance to make the other odd play that is appropriate in this game, which is splitting (7,7) vs 8.

One of the common mistakes I see at the tables when I play in land-based casinos is the reluctance of many players to split (8,8) vs a dealer ten. In fact, it is number 6 on the Top Ten Basic Strategy Mistakes list that subscribers to my newsletter get for free when they subscribe. While this is a losing hand regardless, splitting is cheaper than either hitting or standing. It’ll save you about 5.2% of your bet size to split the 8s. I split 88vT in today’s session, and had a really nice outcome. I made two 3-card 21s to beat a pat dealer 20. It’s nice when it works out like that.

Today’s summary (the _real_ day 8):
Starting Bankroll: $570
Low Point today: $550 (-$20)
High Point today: $755 (+$185)
Ending bankroll: $655 (+$85)

278 hands@ $10 each

My blackjacks today: 19
Dealer blackjacks today: 13
(No tied blackjacks today.)

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Overall results after 2157 hands: A profit of $455