u/monodactyl

So I like to play blackjack a fair amount. Due to some rule differences in Macau, basic strategy might not be the same as what you on general blackjack sites.

https://blackjackmacau.casino/

I wanted this to be more confident that I was making the right moves, but also to see how "expensive" some mistakes were. Additionally, I wanted to have a reference to point to when some psychic Auntie tells me I shouldn't have hit my 16 against a 7 after the fact.

That being said, it would also be fun for me to know how other people play, so if you could actually NOT look at the above chart yet, and instead do this quiz of commonly misplayed hands first: https://blackjackmacau.casino/#quiz I'd greatly appreciate it! I'll share the results in an edit. So far, people are doing pretty well with these hard questions - about a 77% accuracy rate, though I have just been sending it to degenerate blackjack friends.

TLDR:

• Wynn and Galaxy have the lowest house edge.
• Sands is the most generous room comps (Unsurprising given their huge inventory)
• MGM is pretty generous with food if you get set menus.
• Despite the low house edge at Galaxy, the rating system seems a little harsh.

My comp data is small, but hopefully I can update it over time and have it converge at more accurate values. Blackjack comp data is very noisy unlike baccarat.

My personal favorite comp combo

If you can hit 150 points at sands (this is a guideline and subject to availability), you can get a pretty amazing suite on the weekday at four seasons grand suites. The four seasons site lists it at USD 3,000.

150 points will cost you about HKD 4,200 in theoretical losses. In blackjack, this will be about 1.1 million in wagers. In baccarat this will cost you about 340k in player bets.

I was pretty impressed by this as I would never really spend 3000 USD on a room. That being said, you don't really use much of it and it's a lot of space. So despite the sticker price, it's arguable whether its really worth that much.

Blackjack in Macau has a few different rules compared to the US, I see a lot of people using basic strat for common US rules that aren't appropriate for Macau, so I tried creating a basic strat card for Macau. Rules seem not bad at a house edge of only 0.3-0.4%.

Here it is: https://blackjackmacau.casino/#quiz (I linked to the quiz because I'm curious how you would do without the basic strat, but you could just tab away to the strategy card.

That being said, I have major confusion about one hand and could use some help.

The rules in Macau are:

• 8 Deck CSM
• S17
• Split up to 3 times
• DAS
• No drawing to split Aces.
• No Resplitting Aces
• Double on Any 2
• Early Surrender Except against A.

Most importantly:

• ENHC
• Original and Busted Bets only (OBBO) - (So it is not like Dealer Peeks effectively created by OBO)

I used Michael Shacklefords spreadsheet here as a starting point, and adapted it for Macau rules, making it ENHC and OBBO, unfortunately I used an infinite deck assumption instead of 8 decks with card composition considerations just to simplify, I was mainly concerned with one hand:

Player 88 vs Dealer A.

My calculation yields an EV of splitting of -0.5805 vs hitting with -0.698.

However, this thread is showing something else: https://www.blackjacktheforum.com/showthread.php?8741-festerr-Splitting-8s-v-10-adj-no-for-OBBO-rules

It's suggesting hitting 88 vs A. Unfortunately, I cannot find the original math that they are citing in the thread because it is very old. It's very interesting. they take into account that because of OBBO, you might want to play your second hand from splitting and not bust, so you wouldn't do what basic strat would say and hit your 15 or 16 against a dealer A as this would remove the OBBO protection that made it effectively dealer peeks.

If anyone can help me out it would be greatly appreciated!