Blackjack insurance is one of those game rules you’ll find in almost every version of twenty-one you’ll play, whether you play online or in live casinos. The main reason blackjack insurance is offered is that many players take insurance. Almost 100% of the time, this is a mistake. Insurance in blackjack is a sucker bet–you should never take it. A few exceptions to that rule exist.

Sometimes during a hand of blackjack, a dealer will offer the player the option of insurance, but is this a good idea? Generally speaking, insurance is a good thing to have. Travel insurance, car insurance, home insurance, and most notably life insurance, all play an important role in millions of. Blackjack what is insurance Caribbean Poker This is the third popular category of table games.Best UK Online Slots Below is a list of what we would consider the best UK online slots, ones where you have a chance of winning with a super high return to play percentage.Tribal casinos in Minnesota operate under a combination of state blackjack what is insurance law, tribal ordinance, and tribal-state compacts.

One gambling expert wrote “insurance is for cars and card counters”. While I can think of a few other cases where insuring oneself is a good idea, that’s a good quote to remember when you enter a casino. When you’re counting cards, you’ll encounter the rare occasion when the numbers indicate taking insurance is a good bet. Other than those cases, blackjack insurance is always a bad idea. Here’s why.

1:1 Insurance – Hedging Your Bets

When you get 1-to-1 insurance on your bets, you’re essentially saying you’ll get a paid back if the dealer hits a blackjack. If you take insurance every time, then you’re always paying in. If insurance paid off at 2:1, this might be a good idea. If a natural twenty-one happened 50% of the time, insurance also might be a good idea. Since it doesn’t, you always pay extra, but you’re not getting paid back enough to make it worth your while.

If your card is an ace, you need to ask the players if they want to purchase insurance. If they do, take each player’s insurance (it should be half of their original bet) and flip over your second card to see whether or not you have a blackjack. If you have a blackjack, collect bets from anyone that didn’t buy insurance.
What is Blackjack Insurance? Blackjack insurance is an optional extra bet that players can make when the dealer’s face-up card is an ace. Insurance can be taken for half of the player’s original wager. In this situation, players are betting that the dealer’s face-down card will be a 10, thus giving the dealer blackjack.

Think about the chances of the dealer hitting a natural 21. Of the 52 cards in a deck, 16 of them have the value of 10: four tens, four jacks, four queens, and four kings. That’s 16 of 52 or 30.7% of the cards. So between 30% and 31% of the time, when the dealer is showing an ace, they are going to hit a blackjack. This means nearly 70% of the time you’re buying insurance, that insurance isn’t going to be useful to you. Insurance is just a bad bet, plain and simple.

Card Counting and Insurance

Those wondering why a card count should matter must understand that card counters are trying to keep track of the percentage of high cards remaining in the deck. In a basic card count, the player counts -1 when an ace or ten-card leaves the deck (is dealt), while the player counts +1 when a low card (2 through 6) is dealt. The sevens, eights, and nines don’t count for either side (again, in the basic count). When your count goes into the positive numbers, this means a lot of 10s, jacks, queens, kings, and aces are still in the deck. When enough of these remain, it actually makes sense to take insurance–but that number has to be high.

For most blackjack players who use basic strategy, but don’t count cards, it’s a good rule of thumb to just avoid insurance. In most cases, blackjack insurance is going to be a sucker bet. If you don’t want to spend the time and energy learning when insurance is an advantage play, don’t take it at all. That way, you won’t have to wonder what the player next to you (or the dealer) is smirking about.

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Michael Shackleford: Hi guys, this is Mike and the purpose of today's Wizard of Odds Academy lesson will be to explain why you should never take insurance in Blackjack. What insurance is, is a side bet that the dealer has a 10 point card in the hole.

It is offered when the dealer already has an ace up, so it wins in the event that the dealer gets a blackjack. The insurance bet can be made for up to half of the player's original bet and it pays two to one if it wins.

I'm going to…

…put a two for the pace if the dealer has a 10 point card in the hole and a negative one if the dealer has an ace and a nine which represents that the player lost his insurance bet.

Let's assume six packs of cards, shall we?

Assuming no other information other than the ace up the dealer already has, there are 96 winning cards for the insurance bet, 16 times 6 out of 311 left. There's 311 because a full six-deck shoe is 312 cards and we take one out because of the dealer's ace, and there are 215 cards that will cause the insurance bet to lose.

Let's take the product of the win and the probability.

2 times 96 over 311 is 61.74% and 215 divided by 311 times -1 is -69.13%. In other words, the player can expect to win 61.74% of his bet and lose 69.13% of his bet. We take the sum which is -7.40%. That means that for every dollar the player bets on insurance, he can expect to lose 7.4 cents or 7.4% of whatever his insurance bet is.

7.4% is a pretty high house advantage and consequently, I recommend that you say no to insurance every time. Before someone says in the comments, 'Mike, what if the count is good? What if I'm counting cards?'

Yes. Then, of course, there are exceptions. If you've been counting cards and you know that the remaining cards are very 10 rich, but for the recreational player that's not counting, insurance is a terrible bet and, again, I recommend you decline it every time.

'What about even money?'

You might be asking me. Well, let me explain to you first of all, that the even money offer is the same thing as taking insurance. It's only offered when the player already has a blackjack and the dealer has an ace up.

Let's look…

…at what would happen both ways if the player has a blackjack and takes insurance. If the dealer ends up getting that blackjack, the main bet will push, so it wins nothing, but the insurance but will win one unit because the player bets half a unit on insurance. The insurance but pays two to one on the winning blackjack. One-half times two equals one.

Next…

If the dealer does not get that blackjack, the player's main wager will pay one and a half but he will lose half a unit on the insurance. The combined when between the main wager and the insurance wager is one unit when the dealer does get a blackjack and one unit when the dealer does not get a blackjack.

It doesn't make any difference whether or not the dealer gets a blackjack. If the player has a blackjack and takes insurance, he wins one unit either way and what the dealer is essentially saying is, 'Look, if you take insurance, you're going to win one to one regardless if I have a blackjack. I may as well just pay you now before I even check what I have.”

It sounds attractive but let's do some math and see if you should take it. Let's evaluate the situation where the player has a blackjack, the dealer has an ace up and the player declines insurance. If the dealer has a 10 in the hole, then the player will win nothing because it will be a blackjack against blackjack tie, in other words, a push. If the dealer has anything else in the hole, the player will win his full three to two on his wager or 1.5.

Let's assume:

knowledge of no other cards in the shoe other than what's already on the table. There are 309 cards left out of the 312 card shoe, less than three cards already involved, the player's ace and 10 and the dealers ace.

The probability that the dealer has a 10 in the hole is 95 divided by 309. Like I just said, there's 309 cards left, the shoe started with 96 tens but the player has one of them. The

What Is Insurance Blackjack