This means that 68% of the time you’d either win or lose 1.14 units, and 95% of the time win or lose 2.28 units.īut again, statistics also shifts depending on how many hands you play, and the more hands you do play mean that you get closer to the average. This means that in a game with a 0.5% house edge, the standard deviation marks the odds to win and lose on both sides of the bell curve. If you account for all the blackjack rules and basic strategy of blackjack, the standard deviation of the game falls at the value of 1.14, in general. Standard deviation and its effect on blackjack Mathematically, this also means that 95% and 99.7% of the outcomes will fall within 2 and 3 standard deviations, respectively. The standard deviation is essentially the number marking the number of units falling to each side of the average, which means that 68% of the outcomes will fall within the standard deviation of the average. In statistics, probability is not an act of chaos with no pattern, but rather follows a bell curve, where the middle corresponds with the average, and the distribution shows all the possible outcomes and their probabilities. However, real life is not as simple as that, since there is always room for a variation, which mathematically is deemed as the “variance”, which is calculated by measuring the standard deviation.

Double a hard 10 or 11 if more than the dealer.

Always stand on a hard 17 and on any combination above 18.

When you use strategy to lower the house edge down to 0.5%, theoretically this means that after playing a certain amount of time, you’ll lose 0.5% of your money, which goes back to the casino.

The secret behind blackjack lies in the mathematics behind statistics, in the variance and its standard deviation. The house edge alone is not a determining factor in whether you win or lose, since the unexpected always happens in cards, which is why it’s called gambling in the first place, but there is a mathematical area for deviation that can give you an insight into your winning and losses. It doesn’t take long to learn perfect basic blackjack strategy, and if you know what you’re doing you can even get as far as lowering the house edge to 0.5%. While poker requires people reading skills to win and roulette just requires a hell of a lot of luck, blackjack on the other hand boasts one of the lowest houses edges in the casino, making it the game to place your bets on, but how can you use mathematics to your advantage?

Blackjack betting deviations