In the
casino game of
blackjack,
early surrender
is the same as
late surrender with one important difference: In early surrender,
you have the opportunity to surrender BEFORE the dealer checks to see if
he has a
natural blackjack. Even if the dealer does indeed have a natural,
if you surrendered before he checked, you retain half your bet. This
differs from late surrender in that your bet would be lost if the dealer
pulled a natural, and
then on any other hand you may surrender for half your wager.
As you might surmise,
early surrender is a TERRIFIC rule for the player.
That's why, unfortunately, you almost never see it allowed in a casino.
In fact, even being a pretty avid blackjack player, I had never so
much as
heard of early surrender--much less actually seen it
offered--before reading a blackjack
FAQ detailed almost
to the point of obscurity.
While you might not think that early surrender isn't much different from
late surrender, saving yourself from an automatic loss when the dealer
has a natural is invaluable.
Numbers don't lie:
Playing with traditional
Las Vegas strip rules and six decks, , the house's
advantage is 0.5437%. If you allow
late surrender, the house's edge
drops nominally to 0.4744%. Allowing early surrender, however, lowers the
house's edge to
negative 0.0801%--
the player actually has a slight advantage!1
In fact, the only way under Vegas strip rules for the house to regain
the advantage while still allowing early surrender would be to play with
upwards of 50 decks (more decks is always worse for the player). Even
playing with the extremely crappy
Reno standard rules (no
doubling
down unless you have 10 or 11! ugh!), allowing early surrender with
six decks drops the house's edge from an astounding 0.9404% to a
much more reasonable 0.2307%.
I reiterate, this is why you never see early surrender offered.
Late
surrender is rare enough as it is. If you find a table somewhere offering
early surrender, I suggest you take advantage of it before the
casino manager
gets off the
crack and realizes how retarded he is for allowing it.
And, please, tell me where that table is!
1This, incidentally, is why most books on blackjack that claim to "Put the
odds in YOUR favor!" are such a scam--sure, the odds
could be in your favor
if the house was actually offering early surrender, but
none do2 so it's a moot point.
2The house always wins. ALWAYS.