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Comment by FireBeyond | Hacker News Reader

I once watched a new (I assume) dealer make two large mistakes at a blackjack table, in Vegas, of all places.

One, I had put down $500 in twenties, and he was giving me chips, except he was going to give me $1,250 in chips, like he thought they were fifties. Pit Boss looked at him, looked at the chips, "What are you doing??", let him fix the error.

A couple of hands in, dealer gets an Ace, so he checks the hole card. Satisfied, he continues, and we all bet and play out the hand, until he goes to turn over the hold card... and has Blackjack with a King.

Pit Boss again, situation explained, voids the hand and returns everyone's stake to them.

What blew my mind was that after two mistakes like this in a matter of minutes, the dealer wasn't pulled off the table.

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Based on the second mistake, on pure speculation, I think that might've been a dealer who recently came from Eastern Europe, where typically dealer blackjacks are not announced until the end of the hand (a significant loss in EV for the players). Since never exposing a card early is the one thing that's most drilled in, exposing one is counter to training, and that might be a hard habit to break.

A lot of Eastern European casinos don't even deal the "down card" for the dealer until the players have finished.

Then why would he have checked the card?

There are some places I've seen in Europe that do deal the hole card, and check it (for reasons unknown), but they don't stop the hand and flip it if it's a blackjack. They just ask for insurance, and the insurance sits there while they let the hand play out. It's quite disconcerting.

> typically dealer blackjacks are not announced until the end of the hand (a significant loss in EV for the players).

That’s not just Eastern European, it’s European in general. In fact, that ruleset is well-known as ENHC (European no-hole-card) among blackjack players.

> after two mistakes like this in a matter of minutes, the dealer wasn't pulled off the table.

Does anyone know what the dealer training looks like in practice? I assume people will make silly mistakes for a while. Are they expected to practice until perfection before they start working?

Especially when the pit boss catches it and it costs the casino nothing except perhaps annoying some gamblers and a few cents of expected earnings. A trained dealer must be worth much more than a few voided rounds of blackjack.

Dealing requires an exceptional amount of concentration. You need to do every player's calculations faster than they do, while also controlling the game. But it's a lot of rote repetition, physically and memorization. Any person can be taught to deal over a week or two, if they can concentrate. It's just practice. But like suddenly driving a car on the other side of the road, it's hard to switch your automatic reactions. I grew up in a family of Vegas dealers, part of the genesis of my conversation with the guy who got me dealing poker. Blackjack is the easiest... mostly it's just simple additions, which you do the moment you deal the cards. Poker is much more about nuance and controlling and monitoring the game.

Would love to have a properly trained Vegas dealer weigh in here.

Would you mind explaining the second story? I don't play casino blackjack. Isn't the goal of the house to get blackjack? So if the dealer had Ace face up and King down, isn't he assured to win the hand and collect all the stakes?

If he has ace face up and checks and sees a king he is supposed to flip it over, show his blackjack, and take everyone's money. He instead let them play the hand out as if he didn't have the king.

Minor point of clarity... it doesn't have to be a king... in blackjack, a 10, jack, king, and queen all have the same point value (10), so any one of them paired with an ace makes a blackjack.

If the house starts with a blackjack they collect the initial wagers from anyone who doesn't also have a blackjack.

Yes... and this is a net benefit for players who might otherwise double down or split without knowing they were already beaten. Some parts of the world take away this player advantage.

I thought tie goes to the dealer, so they collect from everyone regardless?

A tie is a “push” where neither the player nor the dealer wins. Everyone keeps their money (you keep your money and the dealer doesn’t pay you).

Except in some European casinos, which don't check for dealer blackjacks before play. Under those rules - someone may correct me - a blackjack outranks any other 21, and if the dealer has a blackjack and you made a 21 with more than two cards, I believe it's not a push and the dealer wins. I could be wrong, it's been awhile since I played over there.

They often weight the rules back towards the players in other strange ways, like, being able to double down at any time (even on the 3rd or 4th card), resplit aces, as well as surrender.

Your $500 is such small potatoes to them they literally do not care. There’s probably someone betting $10,000/hand 20 feet away in the high stakes room. You can be sure that dealer never makes it to that room.

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