Why aren’t you paid the blackjack bonus when you split your aces and get a face card? Susan G.
Splitting pairs, Susan, like doubling down, doubles your stakes in blackjack, giving you two chances to win, or lose. You can split only when you have two cards of the same value (as in your example: ace and ace). When you split your aces, you are wagering on each ace the same amount as your original bet. In reality, then, you are playing two separate hands. If you obtain a 10, Jack, Queen or King to make a blackjack on either hand, you are paid only even money, or 1:1 odds. Why? Because your original hand was not a “natural” blackjack, but just two aces. You got the blackjack only after splitting your cards. Only the natural blackjack is a special hand paying you 1.5 times your original wager (a 3:2 bonus).
There is one instance, though, where you might have been paid the blackjack bonus on splits; that is, if you happened to be on my blackjack game the first night I dealt cards. I was giving away the 3:2 bonus ($7.50 for 5) until a surly pit boss pulled me off the game by the ear and screamed “What the hell are you doing?”
You see, Susan, I didn’t quite know what all the hubbub was about because I never went to dealer school. I learned to shuffle and pay n’ take on an ironing board, and to pitch cards by tossing them into a hat across the room. I figured I could learn all the peripheral rules after I got my first dealing job. True understanding dawned through my earlobe 20 minutes out on my first shift.
And then there was the guy I gave the $100 chips to instead of…
Dear Mark,
Do you know anything about the Albert betting method used in roulette? By betting on outside wagers like red or black, how would you go about making each bet? Finally, does this system work? Marty C.
My guess, Marty, is that you are inquiring about the d’Alembert System, named after Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, an eighteenth-century French mathematician best known for formulation of the law of equilibrium.
The d’Alembert System is based on the assumption that when two events have an equal chance of happening, and one begins to occur more frequently than the other does, the alternative event will ultimately occur more often to achieve probability-balance. The betting method using the d’Alembert System is as follows:
You bet one unit (whatever amount you chose this to be).
Each time you win, you decrease your bet by one unit.
Each time you lose, you increase your bet by one unit.
The wager involved is based on your one-unit increases counterbalanced by your one-unit decreases, all of which brings you back to your starting one-unit bet. If and when that wins, you will have won a net profit of one unit for every win in the sequence. Although mathematically you might have lost as frequently as you have won, instead of breaking even, you make a one-unit profit.
Too good to be true, Marty? Yep! The d’Alembert System is based on a 먹튀사이트 theory that requires the wheel to come up with identical numbers of wins and losses. There is no law of nature that can make this happen. As stated plenty of times in this column, the wheel has no memory, so the previous spins do not affect the subsequent ones. True, d’Alembert looks yummy on paper, but you will never in one night of play see the wheel come up black or red equal numbers of times.
Gambling quote of the week: “It is not ridiculous devotion, to say a prayer before a game at the tables.” Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici (1642).
Quick side note, folks, from Yours Truly: Cardinal Richelieu held that wagering while at prayers was a No-no.
