What Is Buying Insurance In Blackjack
Apr 1, 2014
Sometimes during a hand of blackjack, a dealer will offer the player the option of insurance, but is this a good idea?
Buying insurance is a side bet which is available when the dealer's up card is an Ace. When you are buying insurance you placing a bet that the dealer has an face card in the hole, giving the dealer a Blackjack. What insurance is, is a side bet that the dealer has a 10 point card in the hole. It is offered when the dealer already has an ace up, so it wins in the event that the dealer gets a blackjack. The insurance bet can be made for up to half of the player's original bet and it pays two to one if it wins.
Insurance is a side-bet that dealers offer to players whenever they have an ace showing. The idea behind insurance is to protect your bet just in case the dealer has a blackjack. How Does Insurance in Blackjack Work? When a dealer has an ace showing they’ll ask you if you want insurance. With insurance, you're locked into $10 all 13 times, a total of $130. Without insurance, you could win up to $15 all 13 times, a total of $195. Or you could tie 13 times and win nothing. This is blackjack insurance. Insurance is something someone can buy is the dealer’s up-card is an ace so that if the faced-down card will give the dealer blackjack you will only end up losing half of the pot rather than totally losing out.
Generally speaking, insurance is a good thing to have. Travel insurance, car insurance, home insurance, and most notably life insurance, all play an important role in millions of people’s lives around the world when things go wrong. Taking out an insurance policy is a form of risk management, transferring the risk of loss from you onto someone else – the insurance company – for a fee that represents a fraction of the full potential loss. A $100 policy can sometimes be the difference between managing to salvage a decent holiday and spending an entire week on the beach in the same pair of underwear.
However, when offered blackjack insurance at the casino is it as worthwhile to take the insurance, or just take the risk? Let’s take a look at the casinos only offered insurance policy, and what your best option is.
What Even is Blackjack Insurance?
The main thing to know about blackjack insurance is that it’s only offered in one circumstance and involves someone – probably – having a blackjack.
Blackjack do’s & don’ts:
What Is Buying Insurance In Blackjack For Real
• Never split 10s
• Avoid betting irregularly high when you’re on a ‘streak’
• Always learn basic strategy
Insurance will become an option when the dealers’ showing up-card is an ace; already holding an ace, there’s a good chance that their second card will have a value of 10, which will give them a blackjack; the actual probability of this happening is around 1 in 3. So, when the dealer has an ace, players are offered the opportunity to place an insurance bet; these are secondary bets, and can be made up to half the value of their original bet.
If you opt to place the insurance bet the dealer will check their hidden card – the hole card – and if they have a blackjack then the insurance bet will be paid out at odds of 2:1. Naturally if this happens, you will lose your original bet unless of course you are also holding a blackjack in your hand.
The purpose of the insurance is to allow the player to break even on their hand, by betting the dealer will have a blackjack when it is probable they will.
So, Should You Take It?
However, players will only break even if the dealer does indeed have blackjack; assuming the player had a worse hand than blackjack and subsequently lost their original bet, and that they placed the insurance bet at half the value of the original.
Unfortunately, if the dealer isn’t holding a blackjack you lose the insurance bet and the initial bet will continue to be played out. So, is it worthwhile to take insurance? Usually, no it’s not.
Basic blackjack strategy players should simply never take the insurance bet, because usually they’re just throwing their money away. Although the idea seems appealing, because you still get something if the dealer is holding the all-powerful blackjack hand, it’s isn’t actually very favorable to you as a player.
The insurance bet is always given at odds 2:1, but the chances a dealer has a 10 as their hold card is almost always greater than 2:1; so, as you’re only offered these 2:1 odds you don’t get a fair betting value and shouldn’t bet. Ultimately, even if you did win an insurance bet a few times, you’ll end up losing money purely because of the pay-out odds and the chances of winning it.
Exceptions
As with all blackjack rules, there are exceptions and sometimes it can be favorable to take the insurance bet; however, the conditions in which it’s okay to do so are pretty specific.
First of all you wouldn’t be just playing blackjack, you would be counting cards and as such you would have a good idea of what was likely to be the dealer’s hole card. If you’re counting and know that the more than one third of the remaining cards have a ten value, then it’s more likely that an insurance bet will be a profitable one.
For a card counter, insurance is one of the most favorable play variations possible; interestingly though, it’s almost the most-important tip-offs a counter can give to the casino that the odds are no longer stacked in their favor. Counters can’t afford to ignore the option of an insurance bet, but should be careful as to how they go about it.
So, unless you know the bet is favorable, you should ignore the possibility of placing an insurance bet; it’s just not a mathematically sound strategy to exercise the insurance betting option if you are not an expert player.
Counters, stick with the travel insurance though, because you wouldn’t want to end up in Vegas with only one change of clothes and none of your carefully-planned master disguises.
Tags: basic blackjack strategy, basic strategy, Blackjack, blackjack hand, blackjack insurance, Blackjack rules, blackjack strategy, card counter, Card counting, Casino, counting cards, even money, insurance bet, Las Vegas, mathematically sound strategy, Nevada, pay-out odds, Probability, split 10s, Vegas
Related posts:
- Play Blackjack from the Pool at Caesar’s Palace
The gambling industry is a raging one in its entirety and that means that between... - Venetian Casino in Las Vegas Loses $500,000 to Bad Blackjack Debt
California blackjack card game player won a fortunate round in U.S. 9th Circuit Court of... - The Ace of Spades: How Blackjack Got its Name
Blackjack has a long history and has been called many names, so where did the... - How Blackjack Can Help You Buy a Secondhand Car
How effectively can blackjack be used to help with the purchase of a secondhand car?... - The Hipster Guide to Blackjack
We’ve got the ultimate hipster guide to blackjack; straight from the source....
Insurance is a word that most people are familiar with. You buy insurance just in case you get in a car accident with an uninsured driver, just in case you die and just in case you break your arm after falling off your ladder while hanging Christmas lights. You pay a premium up front and if or when the inevitable happens, the insurance companies takes care of (most of) the cost.
With traditional insurance in mind, I think a lot of players confuse what insurance is as a side-bet in blackjack. Insurance (in blackjack) is not as good as it appears. My goal for this article is to explain exactly what blackjack insurance is, and why you should avoid it like the plague.
Insurance is a side-bet that dealers offer to players whenever they have an ace showing. The idea behind insurance is to protect your bet just in case the dealer has a blackjack.
How Does Insurance in Blackjack Work?
Blackjack Insurance Bet
When a dealer has an ace showing they’ll ask you if you want insurance. This is before they check for a (natural) 21. If you take the insurance you can wager as much as half of your original bet. For example, if your original bet was $10 you can pay as much as $5 for insurance.
Once the insurance bet has been placed the dealer will then check for a blackjack. If the dealer has a blackjack you’ll be paid 2-1 on your money (insurance bet). If you wagered $5 you’d receive $10. However, unless you have a blackjack, too, you will still lose your original bet, breaking even overall. If the dealer doesn’t have a blackjack, you’ll lose your insurance bet and will still have the opportunity to play your hand like normal.
Another insurance-like situation you may find yourself in is if you have a natural blackjack and the dealer has an ace showing. The dealer will offer you even money on your bet. In other words, if you bet the maximum of $5 insurance on a $10 bet and the dealer has a 21, you’ll push on the blackjack, but win 2-1 on your insurance. So you’d be up $10. However, if you take the insurance and the dealer doesn’t have a blackjack, you’ll lose your $5 bet and win 2-1 on your blackjack ($15) for a total of $10. Either way, you walk away with an even money win.
So… Should You Take Insurance or Even Money Side-Bets?
No. Experts recommend that you pass on insurance bets.
The reason why passing on insurance in blackjack is recommended is because the dealer will only show up with a blackjack 30.87% of the time. However, to breakeven on the insurance bet you need a 10-point card to show up 1 out of 3 times (33%). So every time you take this bet you’re taking a minor loss over the long run, assuming you max your insurance bet (half the original).
There are exceptions, of course. For example, if you’re a card counter than you would know how many 10-point cards are left in the deck. So if the deck is rich with 10-point cards it would make sense to take the insurance bet. If the deck is poor with 10-point cards you’d pass on insurance.
You could even make the argument that you don’t have to be a card counter. In fact, if you simply pay attention to the cards dealt and notice that there are more 10-point cards then you could pass on insurance, or vice versa. The difference here (from counting cards) is that you’re not as accurate, and would likely be making a breakeven play, or at best a slight win/loss.
At the end of the day, though, taking insurance is going to be a -EV bet for the majority of players. To give you a better idea of how insurance affects the house edge, just look at these numbers:
- 1 Deck – 5.88%
- 2 Decks – 6.8%
- 4 Decks – 7.25%
- 6 Decks – 7.4%
- 8 Decks – 7.47%
Not very appealing, right? So unless you know how to count cards you should avoid taking the insurance bet in blackjack like the plague. Unless you like losing, of course.