What Would Happen if We Changed the Rules?

By John Grochowski on Friday June 8, 2018

blackjack, casino, casino-floor, casino-games, casinos, craps, table-games

My mailbag — or email box or social media messages — occasionally brings inquiries and theories about changes to the games we play.

Two of those arrived in the last few months, one was from a craps player, the other from a blackjack aficionado.

The craps player asked, “You can take down most craps bets if you have to leave, but not pass or come. I’m told that’s because of the house edge. What would you have to change to let players take down the bets?”

The reason pass/come players must leave bets in action until there is a decision is that players have the edge on the comeout, where there are eight ways to win (six ways to make 7, two ways to make 11) and only four ways to lose (two ways to make 4, one each to make 2 and 12).

If you let players take down their bets after the comeout, they’d always be playing with an edge. The house, which isn’t in business to give money away, can’t permit that.

If someone really wanted to allow pass players to take down bets after the comeout, the easiest solution without disrupting odds for other players would be to charge a commission for taking down those bets so the house would still get its edge. I don’t see any great demand for such a move.

Meanwhile, the blackjack player wanted to know, “What would be the effect on blackjack if Aces counted only as 1 and not as 1 or 11?”

The result would a completely different game and new strategy calculations would be necessary.

There is a game with similarities to blackjack called 7 1/2. It’s popular in Italy and had a short run in Las Vegas casinos in the early 1990s. It counts Aces as 1 and faces as 1/2, with face values on 2 through 7 and no 8, 9 or 10. Instead busting at over 21, you bust at over 7 1/2.

So a game similar to blackjack with Aces as 1 is workable. But it’s not really blackjack, it’s a different game.