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21 Burn Blackjack
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Introduction
21 Burn Blackjack is a blackjack A variant provided by Betsoft, a developer for online casinos. This game resembles traditional blackjack, but players can exchange their second card for a random one, known as 'burning'. To do this, they must place a Burn wager equal to half their initial bet. Note that blackjacks in this variant only pay even money.
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Rules
Following are the rules:
- Six decks.
- The dealer hits a soft 17.
- The dealer looks at their hole card for blackjack. This inspection occurs before the player has an opportunity to act. Similar to traditional blackjack rules, players can make an insurance bet if the dealer’s face-up card is an ace.
- A winning blackjack pays even money.
- Players are permitted to double down on any pair of cards, even after splitting them.
- Player may split once only.
- No surrender.
- After assessing their opening hand and the dealer’s visible card, players can opt to place a Burn bet, which should be exactly half of their original wager. This bet allows the player to burn their second card and receive a random replacement.
- The payout structure for the Burn bet is detailed below.
- An ace combined with a 10 after burning a card is regarded as a blackjack.
- Players are not allowed to burn cards after executing a split.
Burn Bet Pay Table
| Burn Card | Pays |
|---|---|
| Ace of spades | 7 to 1 |
| All other aces | 2 to 1 |
| All other cards | Loss |
Strategy
The Burn wager has a significant negative expectation. Specifically, players can expect to lose 67.31% of their Burn bet, not accounting for any potential gains from their original blackjack wager. Since they must wager half of their initial bet on the Burn option, it's advisable to consider using this option only when it can enhance the expected value of their blackjack wager by 33.65%. The following strategy outlines scenarios where burning offers a greater value than this threshold.
- Opt to burn if your first card is a 7, your second card is an 8 or 9, and the dealer's up card is a 7.
- Burn if your first card is an 8, 9, 10, or ace according to the parameters laid out in the following table.
- Do not burn in all other situations.
Following this, the playing strategy conforms to standard blackjack rules:
Analysis
Taking into account an infinite number of decks and the possibility of infinite re-splitting, I’ve determined a house edge of 0.64%. In contrast, the house edge for traditional blackjack is roughly 0.1% lower in a six-deck game compared to infinite decks, leading me to estimate the true house edge to be approximately 0.54%. This suggests that for every dollar initially wagered, a player can generally expect to lose about 0.54 cents.
