Winning Blackjack Sessions

How many Blackjack sessions should I win?

So now that we have an advantage, how many sessions will we win? Clearly that depends mostly on the length of a session. This chart assumes a six-deck Las Vegas Strip game with a spread of 1-15 using Hi-Lo. With a session length of 50 rounds, we win only 52% of our sessions. With a session length of 500 rounds, we should win 56% of sessions. Our win rate climbs as session length increases because the more we play the closer to the long term we are. But, we can never expect to win a large percentage of sessions. Card counting is a slow grind.

How many trips should I win?

A trip is made up of many sessions and therefore more Blackjack rounds. This chart simply expands the x-axis to 1,000-10,000 rounds. Now we start to see more reasonable win rates. We should expect to see 75% of trips of 10,000 rounds win. Still no guarantee, but more reasonable sounding.

Note that these sims include only good rules and error-free play. This may not be possible. On the other hand you can improve these numbers by leaving the table in bad counts. The fewer hands played at a disadvantage, the more likely you will win a session.

These charts were created using simulation data and then checked against calculations using a formula in Don Schlesinger's Blackjack Attack. The sims and calculated results were very close.

Sim details

• Six decks, S17, DAS, LS, 4 players, spread 1-15, Hi-Lo Sweet 16 and Fab 4 indexes, 4.81/6 penetration
• 20 sims varying session length
• 250 million rounds each