Blackjack Do Players Bust More Often Than Dealers

By Travel Tunica on Monday October 19, 2015

betting, betting-blackjack, betting-strategy, blackjack

If you play blackjack, no doubt you’ve have one of those days. Every time you hit on a 14, 15 or 15, you bust. Every time the dealer starts with a 5 or 6, there’s a low card face down to turn it into a good starting hand, or a slew of low cards appear, turning a seemingly weak hand into a table-killing 21.

 A reader who had one of those days emailed recently to ask just what was going on:

“What is it about blackjack that makes players bust so much more often than dealers?” he wrote. “ There must be a cause. It can’t all be luck.”

Actually, players bust less often than dealers – a LOT less.  And there’s a little perception bias going on in that we see only one dealer card at the start of a hand. We know that when we start with 15 or 16, it’s going to be tough to make a pat hand, but when the dealer starts with 5 or 6, we don’t see the face down card and we read it as a hand that should bust more often than it actually does. The dealer makes a 17 or better 58 percent of the time when starting with 6 and 57 percent of the time with 5.

As for overall bust rate, in a common six-deck game, dealers bust about 29 percent of the time if they stand on all 17s, and just under 30 percent if they hit soft 17. Basic strategy players bust about 16 percent of the time.

That’s because players hit fewer hands than dealers do. If you have 16 and the dealer has a 6 face up, you can stand. If the dealer has 16, he has to hit, no matter what the players have.

It can seem like you bust more often, because every time you bust, you lose. The dealer can bust and lose to some players, but all the players who already have busted still lose. That’s where the house edge comes from in blackjack: Players risk going best before the dealer hand is played.

Players don’t bust more than dealers. Player busts just hurt more.