Section
Rules Desk
Short entries stating one published rule convention each, with the arithmetic that follows from it.
Rule entry
Dealer stands on soft seventeen
A single line on the felt, and one of the larger arithmetic differences between two otherwise identical blackjack tables.
A soft hand is one containing an ace counted as eleven. A soft seventeen is therefore an ace with a six, or an ace with cards totalling six, and it cannot be broken by drawing one more card.
Rule entry
House edge is arithmetic, not luck
The edge on a wheel is a property of the gap between the number of pockets and the payout offered on hitting one.
House edge is not a force acting on a session and it is not a description of how a night went. It is a subtraction, and it can be carried out in a line.
Standing entries
Conventions in brief
The felt states whether the dealer stands or draws on a soft seventeen; the two are different games.
A single-zero ring holds thirty-seven pockets and a double-zero ring holds thirty-eight, at the same payout.
Banker wins carry a stated commission, printed with the rest of the table terms.
Surrender, where a table offers it at all, returns half a wager against the dealer’s up card.
A paytable states combinations and multipliers; the reel strips that set their frequency are not published.
The puck records the round: dark face up for a come-out roll, light face up on an established point.