That came about simply because state regulations didn’t allow ‘peeking’, so a dealer didn’t know what his hand was until all the players had made their playing decisions. In A.C., the type of surrender was ‘early’ which meant that you could give up half your bet before the dealer knew if s/he had a ‘natural’. Those terms refer to whether or not a dealer checks to see if s/he has a blackjack (when an Ace or 10 is showing) before you may make the surrender decision. (Ignoring pushes, an expected loss of over 50% means you are more than 75% likely to lose the hand.) There are two types of surrender: early and late.

For the mathematically inclined, you can see that for those hands where your expectation is to lose more than 50% of your bet, surrender is a good deal. When allowed, you may elect to give up half the amount you’ve bet rather than play out the hand.

If you play thousands of hands, giving up 50% of the bet on some of them is actually the cheaper alternative to playing it out.įor those of you who aren’t familiar with surrender, it’s a player option that some casinos offer. What I mean by that is it’s true that a player could win or lose any one given hand, but he didn’t carry the thought far enough. One time at a table, some other player summed it all up when he declared: “Surrendering is nuts! Why give up half your bet when you could just as easily win the hand?” To a degree, he was right. Most players dubbed surrender as a sucker bet. At least we thought it was weird until we figured out what a huge advantage it gave to the player who used it correctly! The one casino that was open at the time (Resorts International) had to offer a Blackjack game where the rules were established by the Casino Control Commission and that included a weird rule called ‘surrender’. I can well remember the good ol’ days in Atlantic City when casino gaming first began there. Lesson 24 – Understanding the Surrender Option Last Updated: February 18, 2020

Lesson 24 : Understanding the Surrender Option.

Lesson 23 : Beating the Double-Deck Game - Part 3.

Lesson 22 : Beating the Double-Deck Game - Part 2.

Lesson 21 : Beating the Double-Deck Game - Part 1.

Lesson 20 : A Field Trip with the GameMaster.

Lesson 19 : Advanced Single-Deck Blackjack - Part 2.

Lesson 18 : Advanced Single-Deck Blackjack - Part 1.

Lesson 6 : Card Counting - Single Deck Play.

Lesson 4 : Card Counting - How to Do It.

What does surrender mean in blackjack