1. Lucky Stiff Blackjack Game
2. Lucky Stiff Blackjack Casino

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You can look at 15 & 16 as a stay vs. 10 without guilt.

I can answer this one

Thanks Charles, I was hopeful the expert would step in....please correct me if I have misstated any of the previous facts.

Thanks Charles, I was hopeful the expert would step in....please correct me if I have misstated any of the previous facts.

Everything else looks absolutely correct to me. And congratulations on getting the game in this far. I wish you nothing but success, and like the Wizard said, you got this far, which is already far ahead of the game.

The non-basic BJ strategy moves to minimize the Lucky Stiff HE on a 'hit soft 17' set of rules is as follows (per our report from Charles Mousseau):
1) Stand on a hard 12 vs. a 3
2) Stand on a hard 12 that is not a T-2 vs. a 2
3) Stand on a hard 15 vs. T
4) Stand on a hard 16 vs. a 9 or T
The HE rises by 0.3% - 0.4% from the base 6 deck house edge of 4.05% if these adjustments to basic strategy are not followed. However, following these changes gives up 0.1% - 0.2% on your main BJ wager. Otherwise you may want to change BS in these 5 situations (out of 360 possible beginning hands).
If your base wager is at least twice the size of your Lucky Stiff wager, correct strategy to minimize the HE over all all your bets will be to play basic strategy.
Other than hard core BJ players (which probably aren't playing any side bets to begin with), 99% of players will simply play basic strategy and be looking at a slightly higher 4.35% to 4.45% HE on Lucky Stiff. Of course that assumes that they are playing basic strategy to start which is not always a reasonable assumption.

You say to stand on 16 vs 9, discount gambling says to hit 16 vs 9 so it must be a very close play.

Lucky Stiff Blackjack Game

I can answer this one.
In regular blackjack, if you traded a 2% extra chance of pushing for a 1% extra chance of winning and a 1% extra chance of losing, it would net break even.
On the lucky stiff wager, this would obviously be much to your advantage, since that 1% extra chance of winning pays at greater than even money.
To give an example of 16 vs 10 from an infinite deck model:
Standing:
Win: 22.98%
Lose: 77.02%
Push: 0%
Hitting:
Win: 20.05%
Lose: 74.03%
Push: 5.92%
In regular blackjack, the results are +1 for win, 0 for push and -1 for loss. This gives:
Standing: -54.04%
Hitting: -53.98%
... so here you can see that hitting is marginally better.
However, when wins pay 5:1, and your EV = (5 * %WIN - %LOSS), the fact that you're likelier to win the hand (versus non-wins) now makes standing correct, to wit:
Standing: +37.87%
Hitting: +26.20%
Long story short: the changes are a result of the increased value of winning the hand at any cost; if a push was as bad as a loss, you'd naturally stand on more stiffs. Well, the Lucky Stiff rule makes the pushes 5 times closer to being as bad as a loss, so a lot of that reflects in the basic strategy here.
And just to be finicky, I have to point out that my findings for AP play were about 1/20th, not 1/100th. 75% pen on 6 and 8 deck shoes, perfect use of a count (1 unit with any edge, 0 units with no edge) and no count-based adjustments to play strategy yielded an overall player edge of 0.09% - 0.15%, which I put relative to a 2-3% range in regular blackjack under similar conditions.

Thanks a lot CRMousseau, that was the explanation I was looking for!
Now all that's left is to get it to Vegas before my next trip... Main Street or California or Mirage would be nice. ;-)

And just to be finicky, I have to point out that my findings for AP play were about 1/20th, not 1/100th. 75% pen on 6 and 8 deck shoes, perfect use of a count (1 unit with any edge, 0 units with no edge) and no count-based adjustments to play strategy yielded an overall player edge of 0.09% - 0.15%, which I put relative to a 2-3% range in regular blackjack under similar conditions.

Thanks for correcting my AP vulnerability mistake and for your thorough explanation of the basic strategy changes, Charles.
And let me thank ALL of you who have taken the time to review the Lucky Stiff bet and offer your much valued opinions and/or well wishes.

Lucky Stiff Blackjack Casino

I believe H17 is the norm in WA as well so I imagine all Lucky Stiff tables will be H17

I've yet to see a S17 game in WA state. I haven't played everywhere, probably not even 25% of the casinos (card rooms + tribal), but I would seriously doubt they exist it all.

Unfortunately our initial installation of Lucky Stiff ran into some bad variance and due to the resulting overall poor hold percentages during the 35 days of operations, the game was removed.
The table drop and level of player participation in the side bet were well within the property's expectations, but the hold was not.

Sorry to hear this, but it sounds like you're still quite optimistic, still congratulate you!
Lucky Stiff is a BJ side bet, isn't it? How did you separate the hold of the main from the hold of the side bet? Did U have two BJ tables next to each other to make the comparison?

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