Gambling tips

It is conventional wisdom in gambling circles that when playing Blackjack, you must never split a pair of tens, the reason being that twenty is such a good hand that you can only reduce your chances of beating the dealer by splitting. This conclusion depends on a couple of assumptions and if either of them is false there exist circumstances where you should split your tens.

The first such assumption is that you do not know which cards remain in the deck. However, suppose that is false and consider the following case. You have a pair of tens, the dealer has a six and you have somehow deduced that all the remaining cards that have yet to be played are tens. Obviously, when the dealer plays he will go bust on twenty six and, whenever you split your tens, you will end up with two pairs of tens on the table. Therefore, to maximise your winnings, you should split as often as the house rules allow. It is thus imaginable that a sufficiently skillful card-counter will occasionally split his tens.

The other assumption is that you are playing Blackjack to maximise your winnings, or equivalently, and more accurately, minimise your losses. Other goals are possible, however. For instance, if you are trying to optimise your celebrity status, then I recommend that you split your tens.

So. Thursday night. Andy is playing Blackjack and has a ten dollar bet on the table. He is dealt a pair of tens and the dealer has a six. It is Andy's turn to play.

"I think I'll split."

Dealer gapes at Andy: "That's a pair of tens. Are you sure?"

"Yes. I'm going to split those tens."

Gasps of horror from the other players: "Oh no, you never split tens." "You're splitting a winning hand. Are you crazy?"

"Yes, I am crazy. I'm splitting those tens."

Dealer: "Okay. But hold on. I have to do something." Yells at the top of his voice: "He's splitting his tens!"

A nine is dealt on the first hand. Stand on that. A ten on the next. Split, obviously.

A stunned intake of collective breath around the table.

"He's splitting his tens!"

An eight. Stand. A ten. Split.

The crowd are used to it by now.

"He's splitting his tens!"

This is a four way split, the maximum allowed. The next two cards are both tens.

Andy has a nineteen, an eighteen, two twenties and forty dollars on the table.

The dealer has a six ... sixteen ... twenty six.

Andy wins forty bucks to rapturous applause.