The Value of Surrender in Black Jack
A move that is not available in every online casino is the surrender. Prominent mostly in online black jack games, the surrender allows you to give up – plead “no contest” in exchange for a lesser penalty, f you will. The surrender is taken when conditions are not favorable to the player. For this reason, many casinos do not offer the surrender as an option.
Types of Surrender
The two types of surrenders offered in black jack are the early surrender and the late surrender. The early surrender calls for the player to surrender before the dealer checks for black jack. The late surrender forces the player to wait until blackjack is verified before making a decision on whether or not to throw in the towel. Either way, surrender must be declared prior to the player acting on their hand.
Why Surrender?
When you surrender, you are booking a loss. The cost of surrender is one-half of your original bet. If you have a bet of $50, and decide to surrender, the dealer takes half your bet or $25 and pushes the remaining $25 to you as a refund. When you surrender, you forfeit interest in the rest of the hand. This means if the dealer goes bust, drawing over 21 – you are entitled to nothing money-wise.
How to Use the Surrender
The surrender, when offered is a valuable weapon in the strategic online blackjack player’s arsenal. We use the surrender when conditions are not suitable to continue. Generally, we utilize the surrender when our expected return is less than half a bet.
When the black jack rules state the dealer stands on soft seventeen, it is advantageous to surrender when we hold sixteen (without the presence of an ace), regardless of the combination of cards when the dealer shows an ace, a ten or nine. The cost of continuing in the hand results in an expectation less than half our bet, so we are best served surrendering, as that is the most profitable option available.
In addition, when we have a hand valuing fifteen (again without the presence of an ace), we are correct in surrendering when the dealer shows ten. This is because the upside expectation of continuing is less than half a bet.
When we surrender in black jack, we give up in the hand because the results over time suggest we will lose more than one-half our bet. By surrendering, we limit our losses to merely a half bet, which gets us out of an unfavorable match-up at the blackjack table.