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Online Blackjack Insurance: Should You Go for It?
It takes real talent to take a simple concept like counting to 21, and making one of the best casino games of all time out of it! Blackjack has been played and refined for years! The rules may change ever so slightly, but its core has been thoroughly studied.
This has led to almost every aspect of blackjack being thoroughly explored. If you know how many decks a casino uses, you can easily find the perfect blackjack strategy. In fact, this release is one of the few where you can calculate the most optimal move with each combination of cards you have!
Of course, mainline strategies usually deal with standard bets. They’re concerned when you should hit, stand, split or double. Side bets are usually shunned. While they provide a slightly win increase, the odds they offer usually aren’t as great as standard blackjack. Today, we’ll take a look at one such side bet, and see if it’s worth playing or not.
What are Insurance Bets?
As anyone with blackjack experience will tell you, the goal is for the sum of your cards to get as close to 21 without going over. If you get exactly 21, then you win a Blackjack! This is usually paid a 3:2 prize when won. Some tables may offer 6:5 instead, but we advise skipping out on those.
Now, this is what happens when a player wins blackjack. What about when the dealer has it? You’d think it’d be an instant win for the casino. But the operator gives you a chance to win back some of your losses. All you have to do is accept their Insurance bet!
The insurance bet appears when the dealer has an ace as their face-up card. When this happens, you’ll be given an option to bet half of your existing wager to mitigate the loss. Let’s use an example to make it clearer. Let’s say you’ve played ₹300 on a round, and the dealer draws an ace. You’d then bet ₹150 extra to get the insurance bet! You’d lose your main hand, but insurance will pay 2:1, or ₹300 in our example.
What is insurance option in online Blackjack and is it good for you?
What happens if the dealer doesn’t have blackjack, however? Well, in that case, your insurance bet is lost! Insurance is betting that the dealer’s two cards give them a Blackjack win. If the dealer doesn’t have Blackjack, then you lose the insurance bet.
Should You Take it?
One thing almost every seasoned blackjack punter will agree on: don’t take insurance bets. Does losing to a dealer blackjack suck? It absolutely does. But betting against yourself in such a manner will only sabotage you. And we’re not only talking about your luck or confidence either. Like everything else related to blackjack, this is something people have proven using math!
As we already mentioned, Insurance blackjack bets pay 2:1 if you win. Even then, you only win the money for the insurance itself; the wager for the regular round is lost. If the dealer’s first hand is an ace, there are only four ten cards he can draw to form a Blackjack. In contrast, there are a lot more cards he could draw that would result in an insurance bet loss.
Looking at the math, the chances of the dealer getting Blackjack are 9:4, meaning you will lose more than half of your insurance bets. If the side bet paid more, maybe it would be worth it. But with a 2:1 payout, you will lose more money than you will gain in the long term.
But wait, what about real-life card counters? Well, that is a possibility, but our main focus is on online blackjack. And brick-and-mortar operators are getting smart about combatting card counting by using shuffling machines and multiple decks.
Closing Thoughts
There’s one thing we’ve learned writing Online Casino, Online Gambling & Variations content over the years. No online casino or software provider are doing anything out of the goodness of their hearts. Any additions to their releases are there because they’ve been carefully calculated ahead of time.
Blackjack insurance bets are no different. They can seem like a lifeline, especially under threat of a dealer Blackjack. But it’s better to just take the loss than to use the insurance bet. You’re more likely to lose even more than to get back a portion of your funds.
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