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Simply,taking insurance means betting that the dealer will have blackjack. In blackjack, when the dealer is showing an Ace and before they show their hole card, a side-bet called insurancebecomes. Apr 30, 2014 This Blackjack tutorial will run you through the option that you have of placing Insurance in the game. This is when you protect your bet from the Dealer drawing 21. 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. Insurance, also known as a Side Bet, is a widespread feature popular among table game fans and Blackjack players in particular. You are allowed to take advantage of it whenever dealer's face up card is an Ace.
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- 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.
- Blackjack Insurance is a hotly contest subject among Blackjack players, with some condemning it as a bad bet, while others swearing by it. We have all the information you need to know about Blackjack Insurance, so that next time you are sitting at a table that offers it, you can make your own mind up!
- Serious blackjack players should know when to use insurance and when to pass it up. Taking insurance at the right time can reduce the house edge by a small margin. What Is Insurance. Insurance is the act of protecting your hand against the possibility that the dealer has blackjack.
Insurance, also known as a Side Bet, is a widespread feature popular among table game fans and Blackjack players in particular. You are allowed to take advantage of it whenever dealer's face up card is an Ace. In other words, you are betting that the dealer will have a Blackjack.
The dealer will ask all players as to whether they would like to place a Side Bet and you will hear them saying “Insurance Open”. In case you decide to use the Insurance option, you will be prompted to place half of your bet in the Insurance spot before the dealer says “Insurance Closed”. In case the dealer has a Blackjack indeed, you are paid 2-1 on your Side Bet. If the dealer does not have a Blackjack, you lose your Insurance bet and continue the game with the regular hand you have been dealt.
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If you play Blackjack online, you have to keep an eye for a pop up or a notification prompting you to confirm or deny the Insurance bet.
If the player says that they take even money, that means the player is forfeiting the 3-2 Blackjack bonus with the aim of making sure they will win their original wager back.
Basically, they put up the Insurance and if the dealer hits a Blackjack, they win on the Insurance. If the dealer does not have a Blackjack, the player loses the amount of the Side Bet but gets a compensation when they are paid 3-2 for the Blackjack.
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However, players should carefully consider the situation before taking an Insurance bet.
Although it seems like the best possible solution if the dealer has an Ace, taking advantage of Insurance might lead to considerable losses in a long term.
Basically, there are only four cards that make Blackjack for the dealer and nine that do not.
Yet, taking advantage of a Side Bet is recommended if you have placed a large bet or you are about to hit a target and you will achieve your goal by taking even money. However, you have to think twice before including Insurance into your Blackjack strategy.
Let's presume that a 2 Deck Blackjack game has a house edge of 0.45 and the dealer hits on soft 17. doubling down after splitting is allowed although players cannot take advantage of late surrender or re-splitting aces options.
Microgaming Blackjack
RTG Blackjack
NetEnt Blackjack
Double Down
Blackjack Insurance
Playing Blackjack on a Mobile Device
RTG Blackjack
NetEnt Blackjack
Double Down
Blackjack Insurance
Playing Blackjack on a Mobile Device
![When to use insurance in blackjack When to use insurance in blackjack](/uploads/1/2/5/2/125249258/172644677.jpg)
A 0.45% house edge is pretty reasonable but if you take Insurance, the house edge would jump to 6.79%. The house edge varies depending on the number of decks played. A one deck game means you will have to play against a house edge of 5.88%. A 4 deck game gives a house edge of 7.24%. A six deck game makes you play against a 7.39% house edge. An eight deck shoe gives an Insurance bet house edge of 7.47%. In other words, the more decks in the shoe, the weaker your chances of turning a profit become.
Blackjack Insurance is defined as a bet on the odds of probability. There is a one-third probability the second card of the dealer to be a 10. The player loses the Side Bet in case the dealer does not have a Blackjack, but it has yet another chance to turn a profit as the original bet remains valid.
As mentioned above, most Blackjack variations offer Insurance bets, but it is not applicable to Super Fun 21. There is no need to offer Insurance as the rules are liberal enough and players' Blackjack always beats dealer's.
However, it is important to know that unlike most Blackjack games Super Fun Blackjack pays even money.
How Side Bets Work
The Blackjack game begins when all players place their bets. In order to place a bet, you have to put the chips you would like to wager into the specified square or circle. Before you “sit” on a Blackjack table at an online or land-based casino, you have to check out the minimum and maximum bets allowed for that table and adhere to the preset limits.
The dealer deals the cards from the shoe when all players have placed their bets and each player is dealt two cards. Touching your cards is prohibited, otherwise you might be considered a cheater.
One of dealer's cards is face down unless you play the Double Exposure variation. If the dealer's card that is face up is an Ace, you are provided with the opportunity to take Insurance bet.
The Side Bet must be placed as soon as you got your two cards. Basically, the Side Bet means you are betting the dealer will have a Blackjack and dealer's Hole card will be a 10. Insurance is an additional bet, so you do not have to necessarily accept it.
Then, the dealer turns the hole card and in case of a Blackjack, you are paid 2:1.
The Side Bet is not related to your original wager. You can win the Side Bet and win the original or vice versa. You can also lose both, but in most cases, it is not possible to win both. The only chance to win both bets is to play a Blackjack variation where players win Blackjack ties.
Let's presume you make a bet of $10 and dealer's face up card is an Ace. You are given the chance to take Insurance and if you accept, you will be required to place a $5 Side Bet. The dealer turns the second card face up and it is a King, which therefore gives him Blackjack.
In this case, you are paid $5 on your Insurance bet, but your original $10 bet is lost as the dealer had Blackjack. Up to now, the Insurance does not look like a bad decision, right?
However, there is another side of the coin. Let's presume that dealer's Hole card did not give him a Blackjack. In this case, your Side Bet is lost but you can continue playing as you keep your original $10 bet.
How to Take Insurance
You are allowed to take Insurance only if the dealer has asked you as to whether you would like to place a Side Bet. Each of the players on the table will be individually asked whether they would like to take Insurance. If you decide to take advantage of that option, you have to place the respective number of chips at the designated area on the table. For example, if your original bet is $10, your Side Bet must be $5.
If you play Blackjack online and dealer's face card is an ace, a pop-up window with the word Insurance will be displayed on your screen and you will be prompted to take or decline the Insurance.
Pros and Cons of Taking Insurance
No matter whether you play online or you prefer to visit land-based casinos, you must have noticed that the Insurance is an available option in most Blackjack games. The main reason for that is many players prefer to take Insurance, but according to experienced players taking Insurance is a bad bet in most cases.
As mentioned above, taking Insurance can pose a threat to the condition of your bankroll, so if you are unwilling to examine the scenarios when Insurance would be beneficial, you'd better refrain yourself from taking it.
Nevertheless, it seems the Insurance bet can be useful to card counters as they are believed to have a better idea as to when taking advantage of an Insurance bet would lead to the desired profits.
If you are a card counter who keeps track of the cards that remain in the deck and you are offered an Insurance, you should be aware as to whether there are any 10s left in the deck. If there aren't any, you would not take Insurance, right? There is no chance for the dealer to have a Blackjack. However, if there are only 10s left in the deck, dealer's hand invariably beats yours.
If you are not a card counter, then, you should dedicate some time to learn and apply an effective strategy for taking Insurance. If you are not prepared to effectively apply the Insurance bet, the most sensible solution is to avoid using it.
At a first glance Insurance seems a reasonable strategy aimed at protecting your funds. As a matter of fact, it does not insure anything. You just place a bet as to whether the dealer will have a Blackjack or not.
According to various statistics, taking Insurance is rarely beneficial to the player and over time losses cannot be compensated.
Although all Blackjack experts are convinced that taking Insurance is not the best solution, there are some cases when you might want to make sure your own Blackjack would have a positive return. If both you and the dealer have Blackjack, this is known as a push. The hand ends a tie and you are not paid for your Blackjack.
In this case, if you have taken Insurance, you will not get any money for the Blackjack, but you will get paid 2:1 on your Insurance bet. If the dealer does not have a Blackjack, you will not get paid on your Insurance, but you will accumulate winnings for your Blackjack.
Let's presume you place a bet of $20, you get Blackjack and you take Insurance. In this case, there are two possible outcomes.
If the dealer has a Blackjack, you get paid $20 for your Insurance bet. If the dealer does not have Blackjack, you win $20.
If you do not take Insurance and you and the dealer both have Blackjack, the hand ends a tie and nether of you win. If the dealer does not have Blackjack, you are paid $30.
Although the first scenario seems more appealing, the majority of experts recommend avoiding Insurance bets unless the specific situation requires it.
If you play Blackjack with a standard 52-card deck, you have three face up cards (dealer's face up card and both cards dealt to player). Let's assume dealer's face up card is an Ace and you have a total of 49 cards turned face down. As many as 15 of them have a value of 10 (if the player has not been dealt a 10-value card), 34 of them have a value that is not 10. Statistically, there is a 70% probability that the dealer will not have a Blackjack.
If players take “even money” they win one unit ($20 according to the aforementioned example) every time they have Blackjack regardless of dealer's hand value. This makes a total of 49 units. However, if the player declines the Insurance offer and opt for the eventual 50% extra money they can earn in case the dealer does not have Blackjack, they have the chance to have 34 winning hands of $30 each.
I’ve written a few articles in the past that included advice that said you should never take insurance when you play blackjack. I stand by this advice because, for over 90% of the players who read my articles, the advice is 100% correct.
But I also need to present the other side of the argument to give you a complete understanding of insurance. The truth is that insurance is the correct play in a few specific situations. Most of these situations only become apparent to professional card counters, and because counting pros spend most of their time beating the casinos and not reading my articles, my advice of never taking insurance is correct for everyone else.
So why am I writing an article about taking insurance?
As you’re getting ready to learn, there are a few situations while playing blackjack when clearly it seems that taking insurance is a good bet. The odds are good that these situations are going to surprise you because they’re not why most players take insurance.
The Argument Against Insurance
The reason why taking insurance is a bad decision most of the time can be explained using simple math. But, as you’re going to see in the next section, this same simple math is used to show in a few situations that insurance is a good bet.
When the dealer has an ace, he or she offers insurance to the payers at the table. Insurance costs half of your original wager and pays 2 to 1 when the dealer has a natural blackjack. The only way the dealer has a natural blackjack is when his or her down card is worth 10 points.
The odds of the face down card being worth 10 points are 9 to 4 against. This is a percentage chance of 30.77% that the dealer has a blackjack. The reason why the odds are 9 to 4 is because of the 13 total card ranks, four of them are worth 10 points, and the other nine aren’t. The four 10-point value ranks are the face cards and the 10s.
When you compare 9 to 4 against the payout of 2 to 1, the casino has an edge. For the bet to be fair, the chances of the dealer having a blackjack need to be the same as the payout. The payout of 2 to 1 means that the percentage chance of the dealer having a blackjack needs to be 33.33%.
In any situation where the chance the dealer has a blackjack is over 33.33%, the insurance wager is a good bet.
The problem is that most of the time, the dealer doesn’t have a 33.33% or higher chance to have a blackjack. This goes back to how you compute the dealer’s percentage, or odds, based on the normal makeup of a deck of cards.
Determining the odds or percentages based on a normal distribution of cards in the deck sounds correct, but it assumes you don’t know the value of any cards. This is the safe way to do it, especially in a shoe game because a single card doesn’t change the odds or percentages much.
But what happens if you take the knowledge of cards played and remaining available in the deck or shoe into account?
Is there a way to use this information to determine when taking insurance is a good bet?
When You Should Take Insurance
Now that you understand how the math behind the insurance bet works, let’s look at a specific example where the bet changes from bad to good.
You’re playing in a single deck blackjack game.
- On the first round of hands, you see the value of 14 cards. Only one of them is worth 10 points, so the remaining cards have 15 cards valued at 10. With 14 cards played, the deck has a total of 38 cards.
- The second round of hands is dealt, and the dealer has an ace face up. You haven’t seen the value of the other player’s cards at this point, and you have a king in your hand. Now you’ve seen the values of 17 cards when you include the two in your hand and the dealer’s ace.
- The remaining unseen cards total 35 and 14 of them are worth 10 points. This means that the odds of the dealer having a 10-point value down card are 21 to 14 or 3 to 2 against. In other words, 40% of the time the dealer is going to have a natural blackjack.
A winning insurance wager pays 2 to 1, so the odds are better than that in this hand. The 2 to 1 payout means that the chance of a dealer blackjack needs to be at least 33.3%, and in this example, the chance is 40%.
While this example is an extreme one to show when insurance is a good bet, you can also learn something from it. Now that you know that the chances of the dealer having a natural blackjack need to be 33.3% or higher, you can use this information in any single deck blackjack game. You can even use it in a double deck game if you do a good job of tracking cards.
This is much like card counting in that you don’t have to memorize every single card that’s been played. All you need to do is keep track of the ratio of total cards played to 10-point value cards. This even works in shoe games, but the truth is if you’re able to keep track of this ratio in shoe games, you should be counting cards.
How Important Is This Knowledge?
While it’s important to recognize and use every small advantage you can find, the truth is that the opportunity to take insurance with an edge is rare. If you play in single and double deck games often, it’s something that you should watch for.
But you should only concern yourself with profitable insurance opportunities after you do a few other things to lower the house edge. The first thing you should do is find blackjack games with good rules. The next thing every blackjack player should do is use basic strategy. It’s a waste of time and energy to worry about insurance before you do these two things.
Once you learn about the rules and learn how to use perfect strategy, then you can start looking for opportunities to take advantage of insurance. But even in this situation, I recommend looking for insurance opportunities as an introduction to learning more about counting cards.
When you start tracking card ratios, which is at the heart of determining when taking insurance is a good bet, you’re starting to use the same techniques card counters use. And the fact is that most popular card counting systems include a breakpoint where players start taking insurance.
In other words, a good counting system already has the insurance wager built in, so you know when to take it and when not to take it.
If you’re looking for every possible edge at the blackjack table, understanding how insurance works and when you should take it is important. But if you don’t want to do the extra work, then stick with good rules and proper strategy. By declining insurance every time, you’re not going to make a mistake often. When you do, it’s only going to cost you a small amount over time.
When To Take Insurance Blackjack
It’s a much more costly mistake to take insurance when you shouldn’t than to miss an opportunity to take insurance every once in a while, when it’s the correct play.
Conclusion
Taking insurance at the blackjack table is a bad bet most of the time. If you’re a basic strategy player or a seat of your pants player and don’t count cards, your best play is to always decline blackjack insurance. But as you can see from the numbers included in this article, there are certain situations when insurance goes from a bad bet to a good one.
Once you master basic blackjack strategy, start looking for opportunities where insurance is a good bet. When you start recognizing these opportunities, it’s a good sign that you’re ready to investigate card counting. It’s a small step from understanding and using what you learned above to become a successful card counter.