Players should be aware of all the side bets offered in an online blackjack game, because there are so many of them, and so many of them tilt the house odds so far in its favor, the unsuspecting and/or ignorant player has no idea how much they’re hurting themselves by taking these bets. Blackjack by itself is a game that affords the player some of the best odds in the casino when facing a dealer, but if you start branching out to these side bets, that benefit quickly turns to a drain. Here are a couple more side bets to be aware of.
The first one is called Dare any Pair, and it’s fairly straightforward. You get an 11:1 payoff if you pair your first two cards, any pair. Might sound tempting, but if you know the odds vs. the advantage to the house, you’d laugh in it’s face. The odds of getting a pair is about 7 percent, which puts the house odds at 11 percent on a six-deck game. Those are astronomical odds against the player, and it only gets worse depending on the number of decks. An 8-deck game has a 10.4% house advantage, four decks is 13%, two decks is 14.5% and one deck is a whopping 29.5%. That’s not gambling, that’s just giving your money away.
Here’s another side bet that I don’t have quite as many harsh words for, called Lucky Ladies. In fact, I like the idea of it in principal, as it pays any player’s hand of 20. Getting a side-bet payoff is nice to take the sting off losing to a dealer’s blackjack, even if it doesn’t happen that often. As you can imagine, especially in larger deck games, there are tons of different combinations for getting to 20, so I’ll just go through some of the highlights and show you how far the payoff spectrum runs on this one.
And, as you could’ve guessed by the name, hands with Queens are worth even more. In fact, a pair of Queens of Hearts that loses to a dealers blackjack pays an incredible 1,000:1. Without a dealer blackjack it still pays 125:1. The odds are very slim, though, of that happening (try 0.0015%). Something to keep in mind. Then at the bottom, on a typical 6-deck game, the payoff for any unsuited 20 is 4:1. There are also various grades in-between.
Honestly, the house advantage is really worse for the player here than in Dare any Pair. In fact, if you happen to come across this in a one-deck game, the house edge is an unbelievable 38 percent. A six-deck game puts the house edge closer to 29%, and an eight-deck game drops to “only” 22%.
Both of these side bets reward pairs, but offer a horrible disadvantage to the player. With no skill involved, I can’t see a reason to recommend playing these at all. Stick with blackjack, or if you’re really craving some bad odds, at least go over to the Caribbean Stud tables.