(Yet Another) Blackjack Guide

Did we really need another blackjack guide?

I love gold more than this question.	44.7%	[ 620 ]
I've never seen another guide!	30.6%	[ 425 ]
I've seen some, but this one was still helpful.	12.8%	[ 177 ]
I will hunt you down like the dog you are and make you PAY!	11.9%	[ 165 ]
Total Votes:			[ 1387 ]

[Dilettante]

Want to beat the dealer? Read on.

Blackjack

Yes, it's another Blackjack tutorial. A little different from the others I've seen, this one uses some probability math to figure out the best strategies and gives some idea of how to parlay your game into some cold, hard cash.

It's also meant for beginners and intermediate players. If you know the rules, you may still learn a few things here - but if you've been playing and winning for years, you may want to try another guide, such as The Definitive Gaia Blackjack Guide.

I: Rules of the Game
II: Strategies for Winning: Knowing when to hit
III: Strategies for Winning: Doubling Down
IV: Strategies for Winning: Cheating & Common Sense
V: Winning and Making Money
VI: Notes and calculations
VII: FAQ

SUMMARY

If you don't have time to read this guide, here's the advice I would give any blackjack player, in order of importance:

i. Act like the dealer: hit if you have less than 16, stand if you have 17 or more. With a 16, check out the dealer's face card; if it's a ten or an ace, hit. If it's a five or a six, stand.

ii. Never play your winnings! Change them into tickets and sell them in the marketplace.

iii. Only double down on a 10 or 11, if you double down at all. Never double down if you have 12 or more.

iv. Remember that a 10 is four times as likely to be dealt than any other card.

v. Use your cheating when it matters. Wait for pushes or use it when the dealer is showing an ace or a ten. Let the dealer go bust if you happen to know she's got a 15 or 16.

LINKS

Prize and Joy: the place to redeem tickets for prizes.

Casino Gambino: the place to buy tokens.

the Blackjack FAQ: if it's not in my guide, try this one - written by one of the developers of Gaia's blackjack system!

The Definitive Gaia Blackjack Guide: If you've mastered this guide, it's time to move on to some pro advice - written by a professional gambler, it gives you the strategies that will make a difference.

[Dilettante]

I: Rules of the Game

Blackjack is a popular card game worldwide. It has very simple rules, which is part of its attraction.

The Basics

The dealer deals every player one card face up which everyone can see, and a second card face down (the hole card) which only that player can see.

Each card has a value from 2 (a two) to 10 (a ten, jack, queen or king), with the four aces being worth either 1 or 11, whichever is better. The object of the game is to get as close to 21 as possible without going over. If you do go over 21, you go bust and lose the hand. This is where aces can come in helpful: an ace and a seven are worth 18 alone, but if you draw a five, the total becomes 13, not 23.

An ace and a seven give you 18
This hand could also be worth 8,
but an 18 is better right now

Playing the Game

If the first two cards you are dealt add up to exactly 21, you have gotten Blackjack and win that hand automatically (this happens around 1 in 40 hands). If you get blackjack, you win twice as much as usual - that's 4 times whatever you bet!

If you don't get 21 right away, you may either stand with the cards you have and hope you beat your opponent (by having a higher score than his or hers) or hit and ask for another card. Be careful, though - you may go bust if you hit! If you don't go bust, the dealer gets the chance to hit or stand as well.

Winning and Losing

At the end, whomever has the higher score, without going bust, wins (if one player goes bust, the other automatically wins). If the result is a tie, the winnings are pushed to the side and whomever wins the next hand wins it as well as the new pot.

You may see other players making these faces when they play

The pot (the winnings from a single hand) are always double what you bet. If you bet 1 token, you lose that token if you lose the hand, while you get 2 winning tokens if you win the hand. You may bet as many as 3 tokens at once, but no more (unless you double down, doubling your bet by asking for one - and only one - more card immediately after receiving your first two cards).

[Dilettante]

II: Strategies for Winning: Knowing when to hit

The Basics

Since the most a single card counts as is 11, you should always hit when your hand is worth 10 or less. Since an ace can count as one, however, there's no risk of going bust if you get an ace when you hit, so you should always hit when you have 11, too. And, of course, if you have 21, any card at all will push you over the limit, so you should never hit if you have 21.

But what about other hands?

The Dealer's Strategy

The dealer has a simple strategy: she always hits when she has 16 or less, and always holds when she has 17 or more. This is a very simple strategy that pays off. But why 17? Let's look a little closer.

A hand of 16 is the absolute worst hand you can have. Why? Because the dealer will never stand with 16 or less; she will always hit until she has 17 or more. That means that your chance of winning with 16 is no different from your chances if you had a hand of 4 - only if the dealer goes bust will you win. This happens 25% of the time (based on 184 hands).

The Rule of Tens

A ten is the most common card in the game, since tens, jacks, queens and kings all count as ten. This means whenever you hit, you have around a 31% chance of getting a 10, which will make a lot of players go bust. With 16 in your hand, a card worth 6 or more will make you go bust, and that happens almost 62% of the time! (based on a 52-card deck, not including cards in hand).

A note about the rule of tens: it's a pretty reasonable assumption that the dealer has a 10 or an ace as their hole card (there's a 38% chance of this!) so if you see that the dealer is showing a ten as their face card, there's a very good chance she's got 20+ already. When you see that, standing on a 16 or 17 doesn't seem like such a safe choice anymore.

On the other hand, the rule of tens can work in your favor. If the dealer is showing a 4, 5 or 6, there's a very good chance they'll have a 14, 15 or 16 and go bust on their own! That's a good time to hold if you have a bad hand.

Why Seventeen?

All of this means that if you have a 16 in your hand, you're probably not going to win this hand. But which is worse - to stand or to hit? If you stand, you've got a 75% chance of losing, while if you hit, you've got a 62% chance of going bust.

Your chance of going bust if you hit on a sixteen is huge - much bigger than your chance of getting a nice hand.

But even if you hit and don't go bust, you may not win the hand if the dealer has a higher hand. In fact, the chance of you winning outright if you hit is only 21%, although if you include the chance of tying the dealer it rises to almost 27%. Since you can (and should) cheat after you push, this isn't a bad strategy. But if you're hoping to win outright, standing on 16 is a better strategy in the long run. One thing is clear, though: you're three times more likely to lose with a 16 than to win. Luckily, that applies to the dealer, too, if she has a 16 showing.

In the end, it's your decision; personally, I stand on a 16 if the dealer is showing a 4, 5 or 6, and hit otherwise (Since Jinx can use fresh start to replace a bad hand, I don't do this with her). I still lose more than I win with a 16, but at least I'm beating random chance.

This 16 is an exception to the rule:
The ace will count as a 1 if you get a 6 or more,
but an 11 if you get a 5 or less. You can't lose, so go ahead and hit!

At seventeen, however, the numbers look very different. Because the dealer will stand at 17, you know that if you have 17, there's a good chance you'll at least tie the dealer - and you'll also win outright if the dealer goes bust. Should you stand? Chances are better you'll win if you stand than if you hit.

Hard Numbers for your Hands

15
Hit me!: 54% chance of going bust
Stand: 25% chance of winning (dealer goes bust)

16
Hit me!: 62% chance of going bust
Stand: 25% chance of winning (dealer goes bust)

17
Hit me!: 69% chance of going bust
Stand: 25% chance of winning, 14.7% chance of pushing

18
Hit me!: 77% chance of going bust
Stand: 39.7% chance of winning, 10.8% chance of pushing

19
Hit me!: 85% chance of going bust
Stand: 50.5% chance of winning, 16.8% chance of pushing

20
Hit me!: 92% chance of going bust
Stand: 67.3% chance of winning, 21.7% chance of pushing

21 (but not blackjack, e.g. three or more cards)
Hit me!: Automatic bust if you hit. Don't do it. Just. Don't. Do. It.
Stand: 89.1% chance of winning, 10.9% chance of pushing

Your Strategy

The dealer's strategy is a winning strategy, and most of the time you want to play by her rules. Hit when you have less than 17 in your hand and stand whenever you have 17 or more - but don't react like a robot. Let common sense guide you!

[Dilettante]

III: Strategies for Winning: Doubling Down

What is doubling down?

After your initial two cards have been dealt, you have the option of asking to double down instead of hitting or standing. If you accept, you double the bet and ask for one more card, then automatically stand (you may not ask for more cards). If you choose to hit instead, you can't double down later.

Essentially, a double down is an all-or-nothing bet, and over the long run, double downs are chancier than usual, because if you get a very low card, you'd normally choose to hit again - not possible with a double down. However, by doubling down only when the odds are in your favor you can earn a lot of tickets quickly!

When should I double down?

a good time to double down

The best time to double down is when you have a total of 11 in your hand. Remember when I said that a ten is the single most likely card you will receive? With 11 in your hand you cannot go bust from a single card (an ace will be counted as a one, giving you 12) and a ten, which comes up 31% of the time, will give you a 21 - almost guaranteed to win the hand. Be careful, though; if the dealer is showing a ten or an ace, it might be a good idea to play your hand normally (or cheat) instead of doubling down.

The odds are stacked in your favor if you double down on an 11; six out of thirteen times you'll get a 19 or better - and it's impossible to go bust.

It's also possible to double down on a 10. This gives you a small chance of getting a 21 and a reasonable chance of getting a 20, with no chance of going bust. It's not quite as good as an eleven, but it's not bad.

Playing anything else, however, just isn't worth the risk.

When shouldn't I double down?

Avoid doubling down when you have over 11 in your hand. Because a 10 is the most likely card, having 12 means a 31% chance of going bust - and only an 8% chance of getting a 21. Doubling down with a 12 or more not only gives you a very good chance of going bust, it gives you very little chance of having a nice hand.

Compare this to the table above; hitting with a 12 in your hand gives you a decent chance of going bust and a much smaller chance of getting a good hand!

[Dilettante]

IV: Strategies for Winning: Cheating & Common Sense

Cheating

You and the dealer both get to cheat in Gaia just like real life. The more you lose, the more your rage meter rises until a flashing 'cheat!' sign appears for you, and the more the dealer loses, the more her meter does the same. Click on the flashing button to use your cheat.

If you see this icon, you can cheat

Each dealer has a different cheat: Russel Ace uses Pocket Ace, the ability to add an ace to his hand (only used when the dealer has between 6 and 10 in their hand). Jinx uses Fresh Start, the ability to start her hand over (only used when the dealer has two cards in her hand equalling 14 to 16). The Cardbot can use either fresh start or pocket ace, whichever is better, making it a tough opponent. On the other hand, the Cardbot also deals twice as fast, so we still love it. Right? biggrin

When you cheat, you get to turn over the dealer's hole card. This can be useful, but not with every hand. Save it for when it matters! The best time to use it is when a lot is riding on the hand - after you've pushed, for example.

With the pot up to 12 tickets, it's time to use your cheat

Common Sense

Although I listed probabilities of winning a hand with different hands, that was for blind luck. If you have a 19 in your hand, you've got a 50% chance of winning against a randomly determined hand for the dealer - but that chance is exactly zero if the dealer is already holding a 20.

You can increase your odds of winning if you play selectively - by looking at the dealer's face card, you can decide if a 17 might just cut it, or if you're going to need a higher hand. Chances are good that if the dealer's face card is an ace or ten, she has a 20 or 21! In that case, standing with a 17 is throwing your money away.

Cheating now would tell you if
the dealer has a 12 or a 21

This would be a great time to use your cheats! Turn that hole card over and you may end up relieved. If the dealer is showing a 15 or 16 she'll probably go bust on her own. If it's a lower number, you might squeak by with a 17. And if it's a 20 or 21...all you can do is pray and ask for more cards.

This is a perfect example: With 12 tokens at stake, I used my cheat to check the dealer's hole card and found it had 15. If I do nothing, the dealer has 54% chance of going bust! On the other hand, my hand is so low that I can't lose by taking one more card. It's tempting to double down, but I'll have better luck if I hit selectively - only hit as long as my total is under 12.

Playing the Odds

Also, probability math is hard, but if you really need an ace, and you can see two of them in play...chances are almost zero that you'll get one when you hit. This comes into play more when in face-to-face blackjack games where a single deck might be used for several players at once, but it can still be useful.

Finally, remember that you don't need to win them all - or even half your hands - to come out a winner in blackjack.

[Dilettante]

V: Winning and Making Money

How to Break out of a Break-even game

A lot of new players complain about how badly they're losing because they're barely breaking even. Chances are good that even if you follow the strategies in this guide, you'll only win about as much as you bet. So why bother playing at all? Isn't blackjack just a way to pass the time?

Never play your winnings!

The secret to making money in blackjack is to never play with your winnings! Convert them into tickets instead. Since there are some items that you can only get with tickets, there are always players willing to pay to buy tickets. In fact, the going price for tickets is between 2 and 2.2 gold per ticket! If you buy 1,000 tokens and end up with 1,000 tickets, you've doubled your money!

Play big, or don't play at all

One piece of advice for people who want to make money: buy at least 500 tokens. It's not hard to get 500 gold, and it does make a difference in two ways: first of all, most items in the casino cost thousands of tickets, so people aren't likely to waste their time bidding on 3 lousy tickets. The bigger the package of tickets, the more people are willing to pay - as much as 3 gold per ticket for really large sales! They'll also bid against each other for massive groups, in which case you can earn truly obscene profits.

There's another reason to play big: whenever you beat one of the three dealers you get a number of free tickets: 25 for Russell, 50 for Jinx and 100 for the Cardbot! These numbers go down if you don't have a full green bar of health, and they go up if you have a gold or platinum bar instead. You get better bars as you win more tickets than what you started with - one reason to consider playing your winnings (or at least not having many tokens).

You can see the beginnings of a gold bar here, meaning that I've won more tickets than I've lost

These tickets are above and beyond the number you won from each hand. Since it takes dozens of wins to beat each dealer, you'll want a few hundred tokens to beat each one. If you're playing well, those 500 tokens should let you beat two dealers, and that's another 100 tickets to help you beat the odds!

Don't worry, you can keep playing. The Cardbot just hates to lose.

You can tell how close you are to beating a dealer by looking at the colored bar in the upper right. The lower the bar gets, the fewer hands you need to win before they give up.

If you don't enjoy blackjack, don't play

Spending 1,000 tokens should only take you an hour if you're quick (more likely an hour and a half), and should result in a net gain of around 1,200 gold, somewhere between 600 and 1200 gold an hour.

That's comparable to other ways of making money on Gaia; you can earn a few thousand gold in a day if you spend several hours, but it's no get-rich-quick scheme. Answering polls, writing posts, rating art and fishing are all other ways to earn gold that give you a good return. Blackjack is better than them if you enjoy playing cards and perhaps chatting with other players as you play. Otherwise, it's easy to turn blackjack into a mindless waste of your time.

[Dilettante]

VI: Notes and calculations

Statistics

Because the dealers on Gaia cheat, it's hard to use conventional probability theory to predict the hands they'll get. Instead, I chose to use observed results and hope that a large enough sample would cancel out enough randomness to be useful. To get a large enough sample, I played through several hundred hands until I defeated all three dealers. In that time I played 184 hands in which I did not go bust or get blackjack, e.g. the dealer was forced to hit or stand and their cards were visible.

Since the dealer will always hit if her hand is under 17, I only had to record the possible hands 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 and Bust (over 21).

Out of 184 hands in which the dealer played:
17 came up 27 times (14.7%)
18 came up 20 times (10.8%)
19 came up 31 times (16.8%)
20 came up 40 times (21.7%)*
21 came up 20 times (10.8%)
The dealer went bust 46 times (25.0%)

* The peak here can be explained by the high likelihood of receiving a 10 as any given card.

We can use these figures to determine the chance of success with a given hand, or even the likelihood of a hit 'paying off'!

Probabilities of winning

To find the chance of winning if you hit with 16, I used expected value theory to come up with the probability, using the general rule: pA*vA + pB*vB ... + pZ*vZ where p = probability (0 - 1) and v is the value, in this case, the chance of the dealer going bust or having a worse hand, then combined it with simple game theory to predict the dealer's likely hand, all to come up with the chance of winning or pushing:

(0.077)(25) + (0.077)(39.80) + (0.077)(50.5) + (0.077)(67.3) + (0.077)(89.1) = 20.92% and the chance of the dealer having the same hand (push) = (0.077)(14.7) + (0.077)(10.80) + (0.077)(16.80) + (0.077)(21.7) + (0.077)(10.9) = 5.76%

Probabilities of a card being drawn

For other calculations, I used simple probabilities based on a 52-card deck with four suits and the cards: ace, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, J, Q, K. Ignoring the cards visible to you for ease of calculation, we can determine that the chance of getting a 10 (of any suit and any type) is 16 out of 52, or 30.7%, and the chance of getting any other number is 7.7% each.

This is a simplified version of probability theory; if I wanted to be more accurate, I should have added the math to include the different ways you could have received the two cards you did, then remove them from the deck before determining the chance of receiving your next card. For most practical purposes, the effect of this is negligible, not to mention time consuming, so I left it out.

[Dilettante]

VII: Frequently Asked Questions

Tokens and Tickets

Q: Where do I buy tokens?

A: You need to go to Casino Gambino to buy tokens. You can find the casino by going to Games / World Map / Isle de Gambino. Tokens cost 1g each.

Do not buy tokens from the marketplace unless they're selling for a good price. Some people like to put theirs up for sale at 50g each, because occasionally someone who doesn't know any better bids on them. You can buy as many as you like from Gambino for 1g each, so only if you see a better deal should you consider buying from someone else.

Q: What do tickets do? Why would anybody want them?

A: The shop Prize & Joy has a number of items for sale that you can only buy there. Unlike the other stores, Prize & Joy only accepts tickets.

The most valuable prize. Yes, you read the price right.

Q: Why do people pay so much for tickets? Aren't you ripping them off?

A: Some of their prices in Prize & Joy cost well over a hundred thousand tickets (the royal red crown costs a whopping 330,000 tickets!). Now, if I can win 1,000 tickets in an hour of frantically playing blackjack, then I might be able to win 100,000 in...about two weeks of eight-hour shifts. No chatting, no polling, no stopping to eat, just blackjack.

Many of the players who want one of the higher-end items (like a royal crown) have hundreds of thousands or even millions of gold, and are perfectly willing to pay somebody else to do the hard work for them. Not everybody likes playing blackjack - to some it is hard work. Even when it isn't, many people on Gaia have faster ways to make gold - by trading in the marketplace (buy low, sell high) or creating art for breedbable shops and commissions. If it took someone two hours to make one picture that they could sell for 20,000 gold...it would be a waste of their time to play blackjack for 10 hours to get 10,000 tickets.

Q: I can't sell my tickets - they don't show up at all in my store!

A: You need to have at least one unequipped item in your inventory for game items to show up when you're trying to sell in the marketplace.

Q: I should have N tickets, but when I look at my inventory I only have A tickets. What happened to the rest?

A: You need to 'cash out' or 'cash out and quit' before Gaia saves your winning tokens as tickets.

Also, the game occasionally adds your tickets twice in the game, but this doubling doesn't get translated into your inventory. I've played the occasional game where I was amazed to see far more tickets that I could possibly have won, but they never showed up in my inventory. In this case, the tickets in your inventory are the right number.

Gameplay Issues

Q: The game doesn't finish loading. What's wrong?

A: If you've waited more than 10 seconds (with a broadband connection) and the game is still loading, you may have a problem with it. This is a pretty common event, so don't worry.

Try opening a game again. If that fails, clear your cache on your web browser (or add space to its cache - if you have the space, giving it as much as 20 gigabytes will guarantee you don't see this problem again!). Finally, try restarting your computer. If all of these fail, you just need to give it some time - come back in a few hours and it should be fine again.

Q: Sometimes when I play blackjack there's a chat window, and sometimes there isn't. What gives?

A: I've seen that too, and I don't have an answer. I suspect it's related to cache problems, but I don't know. Anybody want to give it a try?

Q: The game crashed on me while I was playing, but I had a push I wanted to win! What happens to my bet?

A: The game will remember where you were, bet and all, and the next time you start playing you'll automatically go back to it. Bets, pushes and cards should still be the same unless something is really wrong.

Blackjack for Fun and Profit

Q: I've done everything you said, and I still can't make money!

A: You either have luck so bad that statistically you should be getting hit with lightning, or you didn't do everyhing I said. One of the most common mistakes people have is to confuse winning tokens with other tokens - don't play your winnings!. Cash them in and sell the tickets to other Gaia players on the marketplace, and don't accept less than 2g per ticket. That way, if you win only 25% of all hands and don't beat the dealers, you're still breaking even. With a good strategy, you should be winning around 40-50% of the time and beating the dealers regularly.

[Dilettante]

Please post your comments here.

Did this guide help you? Is there some way it could be improved? Is there something it didn't address? Are you now your school's reigning champion at cards?

Inquiring minds want to know.

[Passion_Dragon]

biggrin

Math is my worst subject, so all the statistics and probability stuff caused a massive *braintoot* but other than that, I like the guide. It really covers everything that I've had questions about, so far.

I only wish I had found this guide before I had to spend so much time searching for "how to play blackjack" online xd (I've never played the game before and was completely unfamiliar with the rules).