Dear Mark,
Using Atlantic City Blackjack rules with my computer,
I ran an experiment and I played many hundreds of hands.
When I was dealt two hard tens and the dealer had either
a five or six showing, instead of standing pat, I split
the tens and doubled down. At least 75 percent of the
time the dealer broke, and I won on both hands. I realize
this is an unorthodox play, but it seemed to work, at
least when I do it on the computer. I also have done
it at Atlantic City much to the chagrin of other players,
and I would guess I have won about 75 percent of the
time there too.
Am I on to something good or should I revert to the
standard play of standing with this hand? Morris S.
Except
for John Scarne, all gaming writers I have ever read
recommend against ever splitting 10s in the standard
version of blackjack. But John Scarne¹s book, Scarne
on Cards, was first published in 1949, well before computers
could analyze blackjack with multi-million hand simulations.
Consequently, since 1962, when Edward Thorp, (the first
blackjack specialist using a computer (IBM 704)) published
his book, Beat the Dealer, no blackjack author recommends
splitting 10s under
any circumstances. Our friend Scarne stands alone
except for you, of course.
While running a couple hundred computer hands can
warm up your fingers, it¹s no way to accurate
evaluate splitting 10s.
Heck, you can flip a fair coin 200 times and have
it come down heads 75% of the time, but we both know
that in the long run,
it¹s a 50/50 proposition.
But your question
is an intriguing one, Morris, so I¹ve gone a
step further and took the liberty of running a 20
million-hand simulation test using a piece of software
called BJ Trainer. The results clearly favored no
splittum, the technical term for leaving those 10s
alone rather than splitting them against a 5 or 6.
There is, however,
one time when it is proper basic strategy to split
10s and that is on a Face-up Blackjack game. In Face-up
Blackjack, all the cards dealt are exposed, including
both of the dealer¹s cards. Only here does correct
strategy call for splitting 10s against a dealer¹s
13, 14, 15, or 16.
