High-low side bet
By now, you’ve read through a small book of possible side bets while playing black jack online, with different offerings depending on where you’re playing around the world. Here’s another one to add to the mix, possibly the most simple we’ve talked about thus far.
The bet is simply this, your first up-card will be higher or lower than the dealer’s up card. You place your bet and make the call, and if you win the payoff is 1:1. Pretty simple, and the house edge is low enough, especially for a side bet, that it makes it worthwhile if you’re looking for something else to pump your money into.
Here’s the quick house edge rundown per deck. For a one-deck game, the dealer’s edge is only 5.4%. Two decks is 6.27, three decks is 6.54, four decks is 6.69, six decks is 6.83 and eight decks is 6.9. So as you can see, not only is the game winnable, but the increase in the house edge is slight, only 1.5% total difference from both ends of the deck spectrum. It’s not widely available, but if you find it and want to break up the monotony of straight blackjack, give it a try.
One more side bet, this one involving…jacks (how unique!). Called Jack Magic, it’s only been spotted at odd locations such as casinos in Oregon, but it’s another one that requires no strategy, so it’s worth mentioning in the same breath as high-low.
Typically played in a five-deck game, you make your bet and earn your payoff based on the combination of your up-cards and the dealer’s one up-card. Here’s the breakdown.
Three one-eyed jacks is the toughest to pull, as there are only 120 combinations, and it pays 500:1 on your bet – similar to what you might win playing online slots. Of course, the odds are 0.0041% that it’ll hit in the first place. Three jacks of any kind gives you 100:1 odds, with a probability of 0.035%. Two one-eyed jacks drops the payoff to 30:1, with a probability of 0.37%. One one-eyed jack pays 2:1, and one jack of any kind pays off 1:1. In case you were wondering, there’s a 10% chance on any hand that one jack will show up in a five-deck game. Probably worth knowing for regular blackjack play, as well.