Inside Asian Gaming

May 2011 | INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 41 “W e’re gonna get the money anyway” he says as he dismissively gestures with his hand at the notion that some change should be made to increase the hold on blackjack. He says it with such confidence as though he has tried a hundred things, measuring each one meticulously, but always getting the same result—change doesn’t matter. So is he right? Is BJ hold at casinos across the world just stuck where it is, and are attempts to speed up, secure, and increase the house advantage on the game merely futile? On the surface it could make some sense. The logic being that these changes only allow the casino to get the money quicker, but do not increase the overall win. If that is the case, then such changes could even be harmful as the playing experience will be shorter and therefore less enjoyable. Usually when someone is making this case, he will follow it up with an overly- confident, “My players won’t like the change anyway.” But wait, if that were true then wouldn’t all casinos have similar hold percentages on BJ, and wouldn’t 6/5 BJ hold as much as 3/2, double deck as much as a continuous shuffler, BJ Switch as much as normal BJ, and so on? Of course they don’t all hold the same, which is why this outdated belief has largely gone the way of the coin slot machine and the use of shills. Where the blackjack hold is 31% Let’s take a look at a market where all the casinos routinely hold 31% on blackjack. The market is Macau, and you may be surprised that almost every game in this market stands on soft 17, allows early surrender, and has rules that yield a house advantage below 0.20%, which is lower than almost every game in America. They also have two other major enhancements on every BJ game in Macau: a prominently displayed pair bet and a continuous shuffler. While I sometimes hear people say that players in Macau are poor BJ players, there is no evidence to support this claim. What is generating the 31% hold is that the casino managers in Macau are savvy enough to make the side bet as much a part of the game as the main bet, and that they ensure the game never stops and with the use of the shuffler can never be beaten by card counters. These casino managers who are running the biggest, best performing casinos We’ll Get the Money Anyway Todd Haushalter explores the belief that hold percentages on table games are immovable