Modern
Blackjack
How Blackjack Works
Unusual Effects
What is the effect of the cut card?
Some single-deck games and all shoe games deal to a specified point and then shuffle at the end of the round. Some single-deck games deal a fixed number of rounds depending on the number of players. The cut-card effect is the effect on advantage caused by dealing to a fixed point instead of a fixed number of rounds.
www.qfit.com/book/z203Chart.gif
This chart compares using a cut card with dealing a fixed number of rounds in a single-deck game with one player using Basic Strategy. The red bars show an even 0.2% house advantage for all hand depths when dealing a fixed number of rounds. The green bars show the enormous increase in house advantage in the late rounds when using a cut card. There is a reason for this difference, related to card counting even for a Basic Strategy player. In this game, if you deal to a cut card you may get five, six, or seven rounds depending on the cards. This is because the player and dealer can have hands of two cards or many cards. If there are many high cards (e.g., tens) dealt, we will end up with two- and three-card hands. If there are small cards dealt, we will end up with hands with many cards. So, if we are dealing to a fixed point, and we are dealt a lot of large cards, then we will use fewer cards per round and get an extra round or two. The problem is that these extra rounds will be dealt from a deck with fewer tens because they have been used up. And we know that a deck with few high cards is bad for the player.
© 2009 Norman Wattenberger
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