The Effects of Doubling and Surrendering in Blackjack

Published: April 3, 2014

The two most aggressive plays that you can make in blackjack are doubling and surrendering. We call these plays aggressive in this context because you have to be extremely sure of yourself to make them because of how drastically they affect the bet size being used and how static of a situation they create. In short, these two plays can cost you a lot of money if you're wrong, and you can get yourself into a bad scenario with them very quickly if you aren't careful. A lot of people use these two plays in the wrong situations, and we think that understanding the effects that these two plays have on the game will help you to use them more correctly.

When it comes to surrendering, this is a play that can only be used in the most disadvantageous situations possible. What basically happens is that you have to expect to gain, on average, less than half of your bet back through hitting or standing. This is when it makes sense to give up half of your bet right away in exchange for having no chances to win the hand. If you have a hard 16 against a ten or an ace, that's usually going to be a good situation for surrendering because you are at such a large disadvantage.

Doubling is a little bit different, but it has the same general idea. To successfully double, you have to believe that hitting a single time without a chance to do anything but stand afterwards is going to yield a net advantage over the dealer. In other words, if you were to immediately hit once and then always stand after that and always gain back more than your original bet on average, then you have a situation where you should be doubling.

In most blackjack games, a hard ten or eleven is an extremely strong hand against most dealer cards, and you'll definitely have the advantage if you double. A lot of soft hands have this type of advantage when you're up against a weak dealer card, but there are some situations where you have a small advantage with the ability to hit without enough of an advantage to justify always standing immediately after. This is why you can have situations where you have the advantage hitting but would not have the advantage doubling in the long run.