Press Deal. You'll get one card: then hit, stand, or double as often as you like.
Select a chip, then click a betting spot to add it.
Chip values are fun credits. Each double doubles the whole wager; you can keep hitting afterwards. Keep credits available for additional doubles.
The dashed gold line is the published house edge for the selected version. Watch the average final wager settle near 1.57×, that's the unlimited doubling at work, and it's why the two edge figures differ so much.
Our strategy is derived by the engine, not copied from a published chart. Measured across six million hands it lands on the published Version 1 figure within noise, and within 0.08 points on Versions 2–3 (the residual runs in the safe direction, it can only overstate the house edge). Expect the curve to wander: the geometrically compounding wager makes per-hand variance unusually large, so even a million hands can sit a tenth of a point either side.
The trade at the heart of the game
You get something genuinely rare, unlimited doubling, and you may still hit after you double. The house takes it back with one line of small print: a dealer 22 is a push, not a bust. Everything below is that trade, priced.
The three licensed versions
Casinos choose a version; they differ only in the blackjack payout, and it matters a lot. Two figures are quoted because unlimited doubling makes them diverge: the house edge is per your opening wager, the element of risk is per dollar actually put at risk.
| Version | Blackjack pays | House edge | Element of risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Version 1 ⭐ | Suited BJ 2:1 · unsuited 3:2 | 0.95% | 0.61% |
| Version 2 | Suited BJ 3:2 · unsuited 3:2 | 2.07% | 1.32% |
| Version 3 | Suited BJ 3:1 · unsuited 1:1 | 2.07% | 1.32% |
Version 1 costs less than half what Versions 2 and 3 do. Before you sit down, look at the felt: if a suited blackjack doesn't pay 2:1, you're playing the expensive game.
Where the dealer's 22 comes from
The push-22 rule bites hardest against the upcards you were happiest to see. A dealer 6 busts often, but a healthy slice of those "busts" are 22s that now push instead of paying you.
Read as: the share of hands where the dealer lands on exactly 22. Those are the wins the rule quietly converts into pushes.
The Push 22 side bet
If the rule is going to happen anyway, the felt invites you to bet on it. Don't.
At 11:1 you need it to land more than 8.33% of the time to break even; it lands 7.36% of the time. That gap is a 11.72% house edge, roughly 12× the cost of the main game. It's the most expensive thing on the table.
Published figures: Wizard of Odds (six decks). Our engine's independently computed dealer-22 probability is 0.07357, which reproduces the published side-bet edge to within a rounding step, see methodology.
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