House Edge for 3rd Player in Single-deck BJ

[aka23]

Some online SWs offer multi-player single-deck BJ. You could bet the house min on the first two hands and use the cards played during those hands to modify play for the 3rd hand. I'm not sure how much of an influence knowing the cards played on hands 1 and 2 would have on the overall house edge.

I'd like to estimate the house edge for the 3rd player under the following rules:
--Single Deck
--Stand on Soft 17
--Double on 9-11
--No Double After Split
--No Resplits
--Shuffle After Each Hand

Any ideas?

 

[RJT]

aka,

I couldn't give you a precise figure, but i can say that you're not going to have an edge over the house.What you're talking about is a technique called Depth Charging but for it to actually work you need some pretty good rules and as far as i'm aware, the rules below just aren't good enough.
You'd be able to do a little better if you played at a full table on 3rd base and could see every other player's hand, but this wouldn't make enough of a difference to give you an advantage, just reduce your disadvantage a little.
This might be a good idea for bonus hunting. It could reduce the house advantage a little, but i've not heard of many online casinos that will let you use a single deck game for the play through.

RJT.

 

[aka23]

Thanks. I found some more info after searching for "depth charging." But still no house edge estimate. Even Wizard of Odds neglected to list a specific house edge when asked this question in his Q/A column.

Yes, I am thinking of bonus play rather than gaining an edge over the house without bonuses. One example of a casino where this could be useful is VC Casino. The bonus is £250/$450 (bad exchange rate on bonus). You must wager 20xbonus to cash it out. Single-deck BJ is allowed and has a multi-player feature. By playing a single hand, the house edge would be approximately 0.2% . So, the expected gain is over $430. You could increase the expected gain slightly by betting $1 on hands 1 and 2, then betting your usual amount on hand 3. However, gaining an extra $10? or so of expected value might not be worth the time and effort.

Microgaming has apparently considered "depth charging" when designing their games. Multi-hand Classic blackjack has 5 decks, instead of 1 for single-hand.

 

[c_st]

Any edge is non-existent due to

"Shuffles after every round" and house rules.

If you see six player cards and the dealer's up card, you got a significant advantage for insurance decisions for all three players. Otherwise, you are relying on indice plays and the TC adjustment factor ("AF") isn't that significantly different than "1" since the AF is 52/45.

For depth charging to work effectively, you need to see more cards.

 

[c_st]

House edge is 0.17%

This assumes 3:2 for BJ and standard rules (i.e. no dealer holecard). I used BJ Edge to come up with the house advantage.