I’ve written before about the best single deck blackjack game available on the Internet.
It’s available at Pharaoh’s Casino, powered by Boss Media software.
It’s dealt from a single deck, the dealer stands on all 17s, and you are allowed to double any two cards including after splits. It’s also a full ‘peek’ game, meaning that you know whether the dealer has blackjack before deciding to double or split.
All that adds up to a PLAYER advantage of 0.11%, for just using the correct basic strategy.
I’ve always wanted to spend some time documenting an actual series of sessions at this game, so that players who are new to the game might gain an understanding of what kinds of ups and downs to expect when playing a game like this.
Tonight I began that project. I plan to play this game for one hour each day for the next ten days. Each day, I’ll make a post here describing the day’s action.
The setup: I bought in $200 to start with, and I’ll buy an additional $200 any time my balance drops below $40. I’ll be flat-betting $10 each and every hand. I’ll play exactly one hour each day and stop, win or lose. I’ll use a total-dependent basic strategy, like the one you can produce for this game at the Blackjack Basic Strategy Engine.
I could squeak out an extra few hundredths of a percent at this game if I were to use a strategy that used information about the cards in my hand, such as standing with 16vT if my 16 has 3 or more cards, etc. But, I want to stick to the simplest strategy possible, so I’ll forgo those extra tweaks in the strategy.
So, on to the first day’s play:
I had a brief $10 profit in the first few hands, but that was short-lived. The first half-hour of play was a slow but steady loss. Nothing too drastic, just a string of more losses than wins. At the low point of the session, my starting bankroll of $200 had dwindled to $110. After that, I started to make up some ground.
On hand 132, I doubled A5v4 and won it to get back to my starting bank of $200. After that, I went on a great run that lasted for the rest of today’s hour. My bankroll peaked at a healthy $490, and settled in for a finish of today at $450. Nice start, eh? I’ll definitely take a profit of $250 for day one. I expect I’ll be needing that extra buffer if I hope to make it through without having to deposit more money later.
Today’s summary:
Starting bankroll $200
Low point today: $110
High point today: $490
Ending bankroll: $450
One hour of play, 246 hands @ $10 each.
My blackjacks today: 15
Dealer blackjacks today: 12
(One blackjack was a push.)
Tune in tomorrow for more results from Pharaoh’s.
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