Southern California Blackjack
California Blackjack is unique in that the games are banked by the players, as opposed to the house. This is due to state laws prohibiting casinos from banking their own games. So, players fund the games. You’re not forced to, though. Those are Ultimate Texas Hold’em, EZ Baccarat, PaiGow Poker or No Dust Blackjack. The Southern California Harrah’s Casino & Hotel is located in Valley center and provides not less than 1,700 slot machines including games such as Dungeon & Dragons, Pin Panther, Colossal Diamond and Sphinx 3D.
if you bust by less than dealer: PUSH
blackjack: 6 to 5
Surrender after first card
Double down on any two starting cards
No cards after split aces
split up to four times, double after split if not aces
continuously reshuffled deck
dealer hits on soft 17
Anyways, I was evaluating the odds of standing on a 12 vs. 12-16 and found you should hit on any up card with a hard 12. As I looked further though, I found that you should stand with a 13 vs 4-6. I was wondering if anyone has done any simulations and gotten different results? I have seenbut this is for a different variant with jokers. I.e, 14 vs 5 on 50,000 iterations yielded:
HIT
Win: 15752
Push: 7019
Loss: 27229
Stand
Win: 21452
Push: 0 (EDIT LOSS TO PUSH)
Loss: 28548 (EDIT PUSH TO LOSS)
so you would lose 4381 less on this iteration by standing instead of hitting.
in pseudo code
I generate a deck as such:
size= number_of_decks*52 #number of cards
shoe= (1..size).to_a.shuffle #creates an array of size that I can apply a modulo operator on
player draws two cards that you input
dealer draws two cards, one card is your input
I run one simulation where I hit, and one where I stand and see how they compare
Dealer plays out like this:
while scoreHand(@dealerHand)<17 (scoreHand(@dealerHand)17 && dealerHasAce)
@dealerHand<<@deck.pop
Anyways, Thanks for Reading!!
I came to find that the no bust rule gives a very significant shift in the house advantage, so much so that the gave is brought from over a 2.4% house advantage down to a 1.4-1.45 house advantage. It's similar to the issue the wizard of odds described with craps, where its approximation is really somewhat subjective. I chose to calculate both for the sake of argument. The decimal on the wins accounts for the 1.2 payout on blackjack. House edge approximation 1 is with pushes factoring into the house edge, house edge vs. 2 is without. As you can see, this game is an awful bet, and I didn't even factor in the house commission yet. Anyways, maybe someday someone will find this calculation interesting. I'll probably spend a little more time manipulating my results, but I am more excited by the fact that I now have my own program specifically developed for blackjack odds approximation, which can easily be adapted to a number of different situations.
HERE ARE MY RESULTS:
Out of 5,000,000 hands:
wins: 2,547,859.8
pushes: 512,096
losses: 2,624,329
Session Total: -76,469.20
House Edge: 1.478468844736075%
House Edge vs.2: 1.5293839999788905%
Non-Stop Action. The Pechanga Resort and Casino has the largest casino floor in California totaling 188,000 sq ft. The casino features over 5,000 slot machines, 158 table games, a non-smoking poker room with 38 tables, and an ultra-modern, 700-seat bingo facility. What I would like to do is to collect rule surveys of the lowest House Edge games in the Southern California Area. This would mean San Diego, Palm Springs, Los Angeles, Maybe even Arizona. Wizard of Odds has a rule survey for San Diego, but it hasnt been upated since 2009 and it does not include many of the Palm Springs area casinos.
I have made several programs that I modify per the situation, but have used to evaluate the advantage of games with this rule set, as played in the Normandie Casino in Gardena, CA:
if you bust by less than dealer: PUSH
blackjack: 6 to 5
Surrender after first card
Double down on any two starting cards
No cards after split aces
split up to four times, double after split if not aces
continuously reshuffled deck
dealer hits on soft 17
Anyways, I was evaluating the odds of standing on a 12 vs. 12-16 and found you should hit on any up card with a hard 12. As I looked further though, I found that you should stand with a 13 vs 4-6. I was wondering if anyone has done any simulations and gotten different results? I have seen http://wizardofodds.com/games/california-blackjack/ but this is for a different variant with jokers. I.e, 14 vs 5 on 50,000 iterations yielded:
HIT
Win: 15752
Push: 7019
Loss: 27229
Stand
Win: 21452
Loss: 0
Push: 28548
so you would lose 4381 less on this iteration by standing instead of hitting.
in pseudo code
I generate a deck as such:
size= number_of_decks*52 #number of cards
shoe= (1..size).to_a.shuffle #creates an array of size that I can apply a modulo operator on
player draws two cards that you input
dealer draws two cards, one card is your input
I run one simulation where I hit, and one where I stand and see how they compare
Dealer plays out like this:
while scoreHand(@dealerHand)<17 (scoreHand(@dealerHand)17 && dealerHasAce)
@dealerHand<<@deck.pop
Anyways, Thanks for Reading!!
FEE/BET = HOUSE EDGE
Your best bet is always to max bet, which would make that house edge about 1%, but it can be significantly worse if you bet the table minimum!!
You are much better off playing the baccarat game at the Normandie (or the Hustler Casino) and avoiding the fee to play.
Ya but they have that awful Dragon 7 variant, which is beatable but seems very annoying.
Southern California Blackboard
Southern California Blackout Map
- Page 1 of 2