Betting multiple hands at blackjack
There is no mathematical calculation for this misleading beleif that by switching from one hand to two at a time, you will “change the flow of cards,” and that by so doing you will change your luck at the blackjack table. What will happen, specifically on a Blackjack game that uses an automatic shuffler, is that you will be dealt far more hands per hour, with the casino edge munching contentedly on your bankroll at a much faster clip. Let’s run some numbers.
Say, for example, you are a basic Blackjack strategy player and your average bet is $10 per hand. To play two hands at a time, many casinos will make you double that amount per betting circle, so you are in fact betting $40 per round. Now let’s put Joe to the right of you, Josephine to your left, with four bets in play.
When you’re playing with two other Blackjack players on an auto-shuffled game, the game can be expected to average at least 600 decisions per hour, you seeing half, or 300 of them. Betting $40 per round means you will be betting a total of $12,000 over the course of an hour.
With the casino having a 0.5% edge against the basic Blackjack strategy player, and you decreasing your decisions per hour to 200 with just one hand at $5, your predicted hourly loss is just five buckaroos. But, by playing two hands at a time ($40) instead of one ($10) and at 300 decisions, your expected hourly loss drastically jumps to $60. You could always check and see whether your friend would give you a ride home before you decide to ride two horses at once.
The only advantage I see to playing two hands at a time is that if you are a card counter, because when your count gives you a clear edge, it would be to your advantage to play more than one hand. Counters playing heads-up against the dealer know that by playing two hands at a time, they have twice the chance of getting the high value cards as the dealer has. But, these newer automatic shufflers that randomize the cards after each hand make card counting futile, so you won’t see card counters playing on them, and neither should you. Not because you don’t count cards, but these shufflers that randomly shuffle the discards after every round played makes for a game that flows much faster, which in turn increases your theoretical loss by the same measure.



