Blackjack Odds: Win Rates, Bust Odds and House Edge

With good rules and perfect basic strategy, blackjack has a house edge of roughly 0.3% to 0.6%, which makes it one of the cheapest games in any casino. That does not mean you win often: on a six-deck game with good rules, the player wins about 42.4% of hands, pushes 8.5% and loses 49.1%. The gap is closed by the 3 to 2 blackjack payout, doubling and splitting, and the rules printed on the table decide whether the edge stays near 0.3% or climbs past 2%.

This page is the maths: win, loss and bust rates, what each rule change costs, and how to turn a house edge into an expected cost per session. If you still need the rules and the order of play, start with how to play blackjack.

Odds vs house edge: two different numbers

“Odds” in blackjack usually means the probability of an event: being dealt a blackjack, the dealer busting with a 6 showing, or busting yourself when you hit 16. The house edge is something else. It is the average share of each initial bet the casino keeps over the long run, after every outcome and payout is counted, including the extra money you put out when doubling or splitting.

A 0.5% house edge means that over a very large number of hands you can expect to lose 0.5 units per 100 units of initial bets. It says nothing about the next hand. Return to player (RTP) is the same idea from the other side: a 0.5% edge is a 99.5% RTP.

Win, push and loss rates

The Wizard of Odds has simulated blackjack outcomes for a six-deck game where the dealer stands on soft 17, doubling after a split is allowed and late surrender is offered, played with basic strategy:

You lose about 6.7 percentage points more hands than you win, yet the edge is only 0.28%. Three things make up the difference: blackjacks pay 3 to 2 instead of even money, doubles win more money in the spots where you are most likely to win, and splits turn some bad hands into two better ones. The same source gives a standard deviation of about 1.142 units per hand, which is why short sessions swing far more than the edge suggests.

The odds of being dealt blackjack

A natural needs an ace and a ten-value card (ten, jack, queen or king) as your first two cards. With d decks there are 4d aces and 16d ten-value cards in 52d cards, so the probability is 2 × (4d/52d) × (16d/(52d − 1)).

That roughly one-in-21 frequency is why the payout matters so much. Each blackjack at 3 to 2 pays 1.5 units; at 6 to 5 it pays 1.2. Losing 0.3 units about 4.75% of the time costs around 1.4% of every bet, which matches the 1.39% the Wizard of Odds measures for a 6 to 5 table once dealer blackjacks are allowed for.

The dealer’s bust odds by up card

The dealer has no choices: they draw to 17 and stop. So the up card tells you a lot. These are the dealer’s chances of busting in a six-deck game where the dealer stands on soft 17, after checking for blackjack (Wizard of Odds):

The split between 2 to 6 and 7 to ace explains most of basic strategy. Against a 4, 5 or 6 the dealer busts around four times in ten, so standing on a stiff 13 to 16 is right. Against a 7 or higher the bust chance falls to about one in four, and standing on 16 means you win only when the dealer busts.

Your bust odds when you hit

Your own risk of busting on one extra card depends only on how many card ranks push you over 21. Ignoring the few cards already on the table (a fair simplification with six or eight decks), the numbers are:

• Hard 12: busts on any ten-value card, 4 of 13 ranks, about 31%.
• Hard 13: busts on 9 or a ten-value card, about 38%.
• Hard 14: busts on 8 or higher, about 46%.
• Hard 15: busts on 7 or higher, about 54%.
• Hard 16: busts on 6 or higher, about 62%.
• Hard 17: busts on 5 or higher, about 69%.

Hitting 16 against a 10 still beats standing, because standing on 16 wins only when the dealer busts (about 23% of the time). Where the rules allow it, giving up half the bet can be better than both: see when to surrender in blackjack for that decision in detail.

How rule changes move the house edge

The Wizard of Odds measures each rule against a baseline of eight decks, dealer stands on soft 17, double on any first two cards, double after split allowed and splits up to four hands. These are the effects in percentage points (positive helps the player):

The lesson is that the payout and the soft-17 rule matter far more than the number of decks. A single-deck game paying 6 to 5 is worse than an eight-deck game paying 3 to 2: +0.48 does not make up for −1.39. When you sit down online or at a live table, read the rule panel first. “Blackjack pays 3 to 2” and “dealer stands on soft 17” are the two lines to look for.

Turning the edge into a cost per session

House edge applies to the total you bet, not to your bankroll. A quick example in crypto units:

• You play 0.001 BTC per hand for 200 hands, so you put 0.2 BTC into action.
• At a 0.5% house edge the expected loss is 0.2 × 0.005 = 0.001 BTC, the size of one bet.
• At a 6 to 5 table with the dealer hitting soft 17, the edge can sit near 2%, so the same session costs 0.004 BTC on average.

Because the standard deviation is about 1.14 units per hand, 200 hands can easily finish 15 or more bets up or down. The edge decides the long-run trend; luck decides tonight. Our bankroll management tips show how to size bets so a normal swing does not end the session.

Insurance and even money: the worst common bet

When the dealer shows an ace you may be offered insurance: a side bet of up to half your stake that pays 2 to 1 if the dealer has blackjack. In an eight-deck shoe, ignoring your own cards, 128 of the remaining 415 cards are tens, so the dealer has blackjack about 30.8% of the time. Insurance therefore returns 0.308 × 2 − 0.692 = −0.075, a house edge of about 7.5%. Six decks give almost the same result.

“Even money” on your own blackjack is the same bet in disguise. Unless you are counting cards and know the shoe is rich in tens, decline both.

Can you beat the odds?

Basic strategy gets you to the house edge; it does not remove it. Only two things have ever given players a long-run edge:

• Card counting. Edward Thorp’s Beat the Dealer (1962) showed that tracking the ratio of high to low cards lets a player raise bets when the remaining shoe favours them. It is not illegal, but land casinos can refuse your action and use countermeasures such as shallow penetration and frequent shuffles.
• Rule mistakes or overly generous promotions. These are rare and short-lived.

Counting does not work on RNG blackjack that reshuffles before every round, and live online tables usually cut the shoe well before the end. For most players the realistic goal is to play the best rules with correct strategy and treat the remaining edge as the price of entertainment. Some crypto-native blackjack games also let you verify the shuffle after each hand; our provably fair guide explains how.

Blackjack odds vs other casino games

Played well under good rules, blackjack beats almost everything else on a casino floor. For comparison, the Banker bet in baccarat carries a 1.06% edge (see our baccarat odds explainer), single-zero roulette 2.70% and double-zero roulette 5.26% (more in roulette house edge). The catch is that blackjack’s low edge depends on you making the right decision every hand, while roulette’s edge is the same however you bet. Our crypto blackjack hub covers the game variants you will meet online.

Frequently asked questions

What are the odds of winning a hand of blackjack?

In a six-deck game with good rules and basic strategy, the player wins about 42.4% of hands, pushes about 8.5% and loses about 49.1%. Payouts for blackjacks, doubles and splits bring the house edge down to roughly 0.3%.

What are the odds of getting a blackjack?

About 4.75% per hand with six or eight decks, and about 4.83% with a single deck. That is roughly one natural every 21 hands.

What is the house edge in blackjack?

With good rules (3 to 2 blackjack, dealer stands on soft 17, double after split) and perfect basic strategy it is roughly 0.3% to 0.6%. A 6 to 5 payout adds about 1.39 percentage points and a dealer hitting soft 17 adds about 0.22.

Which dealer up card is the weakest?

The 5 and 6. In a six-deck game where the dealer stands on soft 17, the dealer busts about 42% of the time with either card showing, against about 17% with an ace.

Is insurance worth taking in blackjack?

No, unless you are counting cards. In an eight-deck shoe the dealer has blackjack under an ace only about 30.8% of the time, so insurance at 2 to 1 carries a house edge of about 7.5%.

Do other players at the table affect my odds?

Not in the long run. Other players’ decisions change which cards you receive in a given round, but they are just as likely to help you as hurt you, so your expected result depends only on the rules and your own play.