A few years ago, a new form of blackjack began to arrive on the Las Vegas Strip, at casino hotels like Paris Las Vegas, Bally’s Las Vegas, Flamingo Las Vegas, and others. This form of blackjack was the “Pays 6 to 5 on Blackjack” variety. In many cases, it was brought in as a rule on a “single deck blackjack” game. I was hoping it was just a short term trend. It wasn’t, and those games remain to this day.

The casinos must be making a fortune, because whenever I’m in Las Vegas these tables always seem full. And I for one, can’t understand why. I’m assuming these are just “new players” to the game, who perhaps don’t realise that the true odds paid on a blackjack should be 7.5 to 5, also expressed as 3 to 2. Or maybe these players been told that single deck blackjack is a better game for them to play than multi-deck blackjack – and under NORMAL rules that’s true. However, under the “6 to 5” rules it’s quite the reverse.

Why? The typical house edge on a single deck blackjack game that you’d find in downtown Las Vegas in casinos like the El Cortez has a long term house edge of about 0.18%. With the casinos downgrading the payout for a blackjack from 7.5 to 5 down to 6 to 5, that long term house edge becomes 1.45%! That’s SEVEN TIMES WORSE than a “normal payout” single-deck game. Compare this to an 8-deck “normal payout” shoe-dealt game with a long term house edge of about 0.56%, and the “6 to 5 single deck game” still has a long term house edge about 3 times as high.

Let’s see what time means in practice: If you’re playing $10 per hand, a standard blackjack game will pay $15 for a blackjack. On the “6 to 5” games, you’re only getting paid $12 (or, in effect, 20% less than you should be). If you play an average of 60 hands per hour, then on a normal single deck blackjack game you’d expect to lose $600 x 0.02% = $1.20. On a normal eight-deck blackjack game you’d expect to lose $600 x 0.56% = $3.36. But on the 6 to 5 single-deck blackjack game, your expected loss is $600 x 1.45% = $8.70. See the big difference?

To clarify my thoughts on this matter, YOU SHOULD AVOID the 6 to 5 Blackjack ANYWHERE you see it offered. It’s a bad bet indeed!