On the surface, the idea of ??a no-bust blackjack strategy makes sense. The idea behind no-bust blackjack is to stand on any hand that breaks - that is, any hand with a total of 12-16. The goal of the no-bust strategy is to force the dealer to draw by winning or losing. If you've never come close to bankruptcy, the philosophy is this, you should be able to take a little house edge from the house.

You probably already know that the no-busting strategy doesn't work. Later in the post, I'll explain in detail why this is the case. But as an exercise in blackjack strategy, I thought it would be cool to run 100 hands on the no bust principle and analyze my results.

The Blackjack Philosophy That Does Not Go Bankrupt

In blackjack, a hand with a total of between 12 and 16 is called a dead hand. At a total of 11, the player cannot actually go bankrupt by hitting the ball. Once you hit 12 points overall, the odds of getting hit and miss start to get scary. With 12 points, you have a 48% chance of getting hit. At 13:00, the chance rises to 52%. When your hand is worth 16, you have a 61% chance of being out by being hit.

So how often do dealers go bankrupt? The dealer has about a 33.15% chance of busting each hand, which means he avoids busting and is likely to beat unbusted players more than two-thirds of the time (66.85%).

What is the house advantage against a player who is not broke? We have to consider how often players are dealt these busts, not how often players lose.

Example: In a typical jiliko blackjack game, about 38% of the time you'll get a hand totaling 12-16 points and lose 66.85% of those hands again. This means that the house has a built-in advantage of over 25% against no-busting games.

You can't beat the house at your own game. They have rules and are very aware of all the ways you intend to try to get around them. Avoiding busts will give you worse odds in the long run, although casinos are happy to let you test it out for yourself.

My Tumbler Blackjack Test

I started with $1,000 in fake cash and played fake money at my favorite casino.

I chose to play the site's standard blackjack game. It's a 6-deck game, with natural blackjack odds of 3:2. You can double any two cards and shuffle them after each round of play.

I chose a standard bet size of $10. At $10 per lot and with a budget of $1,000, I expect to see at least 100 results. I wouldn't change my bet - $10 a lot anyway.

As for my no-busting strategy, I decided to stand on a total of 15 or higher. Some no-busting advocates say you should stand at 16 or higher. This is not how most non-busters play, so I decided to stick with 15. I would follow the best blackjack strategy except busting, like most players who don't bust.

Here are my top ten results:

-10 (standing on 15 vs 10, dealer draws 20)

+10

+10

+10

-10 (standing at 15 against 9, dealer draws 17)

+25

-10 (standing on 17 vs 5, dealer draws 19)

+10

+10

-10 (standing on 17 vs 4, dealer draws 19)

I ended up with the first ten results for $35 and felt great. But I knew in my heart that the game's inherent variance would come back to bite me at some point, pushing my numbers back to the average.

Here are the next ten results:

-10 (standing at 15 against an ace, dealer draws 19)

-10 (15 for standing against the king, 20 for the dealer)

+10

-10 (standing on 16 vs 3, dealer draws 17)

-10 (stand at 15 against 8, dealer draws 17)

+10

-10 (dealer natural)

+20 (made hand 21, dealer draw 17)

-10 (fail, standing at 20, dealer draws 21)

+10

Now, after 20 results, I am only up $25.

Interestingly, we also saw the first dealer naturally - it seemed that the odds were tilting in favor of the dealer.

Here are my next ten results using the no-bust strategy:

-10 (standing on 12 vs 10, dealer draws 17)

-10 (standing at 17 against 9, dealer draws 18)

-10 (standing on 16 vs 10, dealer draws 18)

-10 (standing on 19 vs 8, dealer draws 20)

+10

-10 (standing on 17 vs 3, dealer draws 19)

+25

-10 (standing on 15 vs 2, dealer draws 19)

-10 (standing on 19 vs 3, dealer draws 20)

+10

After 30 results, my money was flat and sitting at $1,000, exactly when I started. Notice the four losses in a row? This is a somewhat common result.

For a typical blackjack game, your odds of losing four times in a row are 1/16, or about 6%. Keep in mind that ups and downs are common in blackjack and players have about a 42.42% chance of winning each hand.

Before I give my final results (and some further thoughts on using a no-busting strategy in blackjack), I want to show the next ten results, because some interesting things start to happen:

-10 (standing at 12 against 8, dealer draws 17)

+10

-10 (standing at 15 against 7, dealer draws 17)

+10

-10 (standing on 12 vs 10, dealer draws 20)

+10

-10 (standing on 12 vs 7, dealer draws 19)

+10

+10

-10 (standing on 12 vs 4, dealer draws 21)

See what's going on there? The back-and-forth on this part of the results has me completely balanced. After 40 results, I still had $1,000 in chips, just like when we started.

It was a shuffling session, a series of results, and I felt like the math underpinning the game was steady, working to average, and pulling me back and forth on the saw blade. I probably won't win, but I'll definitely have fun watching the non-bankrupt strategy fall apart.

Overall Results of My Bustless Blackjack Test

After 100 results, I ended my session with $25 in chips and $975 in chips with no surprise on my face.

That victory feels related to some amazing things you've done, not because the randomness of math happens to stop things in your favor. This is an important driver of gambling behavior, for better or worse.

Losing $25 on 100 results means I lose about $0.25 per hand, giving the house about a 2.5% advantage over my no-busting strategy.

But I noticed one thing - I had a lot of fun when I gambled. Hiding behind my strategy mask, anticipating wins and losses, taking notes of meetings, and taking the time to appreciate the way the game affects me enhances my enjoyment of the game, even if only temporarily.

I also think there are some benefits to playing blackjack without breaking the bank as a way to reposition the game's best strategy. As I play, I keep a basic blackjack strategy map handy and mentally note how my not breaking game runs counter to traditional gaming philosophy.

In conclusion

Sitting down and hoping the dealership goes bankrupt is a lot more fun than I thought. But you shouldn't use this as a real strategy in a real game with actual cash. As an exercise in statistics and applied game theory, it's fine. As a means of beating the casino, it doesn't work.

If you want to improve your blackjack game, you'd better study strategy charts and practice those difficult middle cards that sometimes come up, like in jiliko blackjack, and of course you can take advantage of their Great bonus to play jiliko's famous poker game. There is no easy way to deduct points from the casino's blackjack edge.