How to use insurance in blackjack

Like splitting sevens in blackjack when the dealer has a six showing or doubling on a 10 against a dealer five. The only bet they print right on the blackjack layout, that the dealer always asks if you want, is insurance. Nobody hypes insurance to do you a favor. It's high-profit for the house. Except under certain circumstances. In the case of a player with a blackjack if the player has a blackjack versus an ace, what you can do, there are two ways to do it. Some casinos will actually require you to pay insurance. I believe Atlantic City has that rule where you have to put up the money to get insurance to get your money back. You can buy insurance in the case he has 21. This means that if you wagered $10 where an additional $5 bet is made. If the dealer does have blackjack then you lose the $10 bucks, but keep the $5 and in some rounds you may come out even thus not losing any money at all. It is important to understand insurance. Taking insurance at the blackjack table is a bad bet most of the time. If you’re a basic strategy player or a seat of your pants player and don’t count cards, your best play is to always decline blackjack insurance. When you buy insurance, you are practically betting your dealer has a ten-value card in the hole next to their Ace for a blackjack. You can insure any two-card hand against a dealer blackjack by betting up to half of your original wager. The chips for the insured bets are placed within the semicircular stripe that runs across the table.

It is blackjack that stick to the beat casino favourite where gamers are vying for that 21-card defeat the dealer hand. And in blackjack there are various struts and strategies of how to not only play the game, but also win.
Any credible blackjack bettor knows the ins and outs of the blackjack bonanza. But for the novice players, it is important for them to know that blackjack is more than just trying to count one’s cards to make twenty-one.
Here’s something most people playing blackjack have ever even heard of or hardly even used, but it is informative and perhaps you will want to use it in the future.
This is blackjack insurance. Insurance is something someone can buy is the dealer’s up-card is an ace so that if the faced-down card will give the dealer blackjack you will only end up losing half of the pot rather than totally losing out. Using insurance in a low-wagering game perhaps is not profitable, but for those who have huge amounts at stake, it is definitely worthwhile.
Let me give you all out there learning to use insurance and example. Let’s say you as the walloping wagerer who has 19, but the dealer is showing that flashy ace. You can buy insurance in the case he has 21. This means that if you wagered $10 where an additional $5 bet is made. If the dealer does have blackjack then you lose the $10 bucks, but keep the $5 and in some rounds you may come out even thus not losing any money at all.
It is important to understand insurance. Insurance can work against you and your play if not administered correctly. First of all don’t use insurance if you have no idea what it is or how to use it properly. Unfortunately when you buy insurance it can also function in a negative manner before you. While you may think that the insurance will pay 2 to1 it actually ends up being more of something like 9 to 4 depending on the number of decks being used.
In order to use insurance properly you have to be an efficient and effective card-counter and determine the number of players in the game along with the number of decks. If there are more players and no player holds a ten card you would want to make the insurance bet because the chances of the dealer drawing a ten are 2 to 1.
Even the big-time gamblers of blackjack have used insurance and it is through using insurance that they perhaps won all those other blackjack rounds.
Using blackjack insurance can be profitable, but it is perhaps more important that you learn the basics of using insurance in blackjack.
In some countries there is no up card where everyone can see, this makes your chances of winning at blackjack all the more difficult. It is risky business using insurance, but perhaps even riskier not knowing how to use it properly in blackjack games.

I’ve written a few articles in the past that included advice that said you should never take insurance when you play blackjack. I stand by this advice because, for over 90% of the players who read my articles, the advice is 100% correct.

But I also need to present the other side of the argument to give you a complete understanding of insurance. The truth is that insurance is the correct play in a few specific situations. Most of these situations only become apparent to professional card counters, and because counting pros spend most of their time beating the casinos and not reading my articles, my advice of never taking insurance is correct for everyone else.

So why am I writing an article about taking insurance?

As you’re getting ready to learn, there are a few situations while playing blackjack when clearly it seems that taking insurance is a good bet. The odds are good that these situations are going to surprise you because they’re not why most players take insurance.

The Argument Against Insurance

The reason why taking insurance is a bad decision most of the time can be explained using simple math. But, as you’re going to see in the next section, this same simple math is used to show in a few situations that insurance is a good bet.

When the dealer has an ace, he or she offers insurance to the payers at the table. Insurance costs half of your original wager and pays 2 to 1 when the dealer has a natural blackjack. The only way the dealer has a natural blackjack is when his or her down card is worth 10 points.

The odds of the face down card being worth 10 points are 9 to 4 against. This is a percentage chance of 30.77% that the dealer has a blackjack. The reason why the odds are 9 to 4 is because of the 13 total card ranks, four of them are worth 10 points, and the other nine aren’t. The four 10-point value ranks are the face cards and the 10s.

When you compare 9 to 4 against the payout of 2 to 1, the casino has an edge. For the bet to be fair, the chances of the dealer having a blackjack need to be the same as the payout. The payout of 2 to 1 means that the percentage chance of the dealer having a blackjack needs to be 33.33%.

Blackjack Should You Buy Insurance Coverage

In any situation where the chance the dealer has a blackjack is over 33.33%, the insurance wager is a good bet.

The problem is that most of the time, the dealer doesn’t have a 33.33% or higher chance to have a blackjack. This goes back to how you compute the dealer’s percentage, or odds, based on the normal makeup of a deck of cards.

Determining the odds or percentages based on a normal distribution of cards in the deck sounds correct, but it assumes you don’t know the value of any cards. This is the safe way to do it, especially in a shoe game because a single card doesn’t change the odds or percentages much.

But what happens if you take the knowledge of cards played and remaining available in the deck or shoe into account?

Is there a way to use this information to determine when taking insurance is a good bet?

When You Should Take Insurance

Now that you understand how the math behind the insurance bet works, let’s look at a specific example where the bet changes from bad to good.

You’re playing in a single deck blackjack game.

• On the first round of hands, you see the value of 14 cards. Only one of them is worth 10 points, so the remaining cards have 15 cards valued at 10. With 14 cards played, the deck has a total of 38 cards.
• The second round of hands is dealt, and the dealer has an ace face up. You haven’t seen the value of the other player’s cards at this point, and you have a king in your hand. Now you’ve seen the values of 17 cards when you include the two in your hand and the dealer’s ace.
• The remaining unseen cards total 35 and 14 of them are worth 10 points. This means that the odds of the dealer having a 10-point value down card are 21 to 14 or 3 to 2 against. In other words, 40% of the time the dealer is going to have a natural blackjack.

A winning insurance wager pays 2 to 1, so the odds are better than that in this hand. The 2 to 1 payout means that the chance of a dealer blackjack needs to be at least 33.3%, and in this example, the chance is 40%.

While this example is an extreme one to show when insurance is a good bet, you can also learn something from it. Now that you know that the chances of the dealer having a natural blackjack need to be 33.3% or higher, you can use this information in any single deck blackjack game. You can even use it in a double deck game if you do a good job of tracking cards.

This is much like card counting in that you don’t have to memorize every single card that’s been played. All you need to do is keep track of the ratio of total cards played to 10-point value cards. This even works in shoe games, but the truth is if you’re able to keep track of this ratio in shoe games, you should be counting cards.

How Important Is This Knowledge?

Blackjack Should You Buy Insurance Online

While it’s important to recognize and use every small advantage you can find, the truth is that the opportunity to take insurance with an edge is rare. If you play in single and double deck games often, it’s something that you should watch for.

But you should only concern yourself with profitable insurance opportunities after you do a few other things to lower the house edge. The first thing you should do is find blackjack games with good rules. The next thing every blackjack player should do is use basic strategy. It’s a waste of time and energy to worry about insurance before you do these two things.

Once you learn about the rules and learn how to use perfect strategy, then you can start looking for opportunities to take advantage of insurance. But even in this situation, I recommend looking for insurance opportunities as an introduction to learning more about counting cards.

When you start tracking card ratios, which is at the heart of determining when taking insurance is a good bet, you’re starting to use the same techniques card counters use. And the fact is that most popular card counting systems include a breakpoint where players start taking insurance.

If you’re looking for every possible edge at the blackjack table, understanding how insurance works and when you should take it is important. But if you don’t want to do the extra work, then stick with good rules and proper strategy. By declining insurance every time, you’re not going to make a mistake often. When you do, it’s only going to cost you a small amount over time.

It’s a much more costly mistake to take insurance when you shouldn’t than to miss an opportunity to take insurance every once in a while, when it’s the correct play.

Conclusion

Taking insurance at the blackjack table is a bad bet most of the time. If you’re a basic strategy player or a seat of your pants player and don’t count cards, your best play is to always decline blackjack insurance. But as you can see from the numbers included in this article, there are certain situations when insurance goes from a bad bet to a good one.

Once you master basic blackjack strategy, start looking for opportunities where insurance is a good bet. When you start recognizing these opportunities, it’s a good sign that you’re ready to investigate card counting. It’s a small step from understanding and using what you learned above to become a successful card counter.