This article first appeared in the May/Jun 2012 issue of World Gaming magazine.
All blackjack players are familiar with a common dilemma: should they open one box or more than one? On most blackjack tables there are seven boxes (also known as spots), each fighting against the common enemy, the dealer. The question is, should a player put his entire bet in just one of these seven boxes or is it better to split the same amount over two or more boxes?
For experienced players who almost always know how to play the hands they are dealt, it doesn’t make much difference in the long run whether they open one box or multiple boxes. However, the issue of opening or closing boxes is a much-discussed topic at blackjack tables. Is there any point to this discussion?
A blackjack player with a hangover
Actually, there is. Let’s take a betting amount into consideration in order to discuss the matter. Suppose you decide to bet $1,000, and play one box only. You have one single hand competing against the dealer’s hand. The hand on that single box decides whether you win, lose or push. If you spread that $1,000 over two boxes, you have two hands competing against the dealer’s hand. In this case, there are more possible outcomes. You can win both, lose both, win one lose one, push one win one, push one lose one, or push both. If you spread that $1,000 over three or four boxes, there are even more scenarios.
We previously mentioned that in the long run, the number of boxes we play doesn’t really affect our chance of winning. This conclusion is based on always playing the hands you are dealt in certain ways, and taking a long-term perspective on the game. As we have discussed before, every hand you play has a “fair value”, and if you play in the optimal way you will always receive that fair value in the long run. If we play and think long term, the fair value will become the overriding factor and it will diminish the effect of playing multiple boxes. In the long run, opening multiple boxes is just like multiple results of opening one box. To fully understand the concept of fair value, refer to “Blackjack: the concept of expected value” in the Nov/Dec 2010 issue of World Gaming, available on our website – just type “concept of expected value” (with the quotes) in the search box on the wgm8.com home page.
However, there is one thing worth mentioning. When you have a certain amount of chips on the table, putting all of them in one box is considerably riskier than putting them in multiple boxes, despite the fact there is considerable correlation between the results of separate boxes on the same table. It’s not hard to understand this based on our earlier analysis of the possible outcomes of playing one box or multiple boxes.
So what is the best choice while playing blackjack in a casino?
Everyone is different and my suggestion is to do what suits you. If you are a frequent and experienced player with a very solid understanding of the game, the difference in the degree of difficulty between playing one box and multiple boxes is negligible. The decision comes down to how much risk you are willing to take. If you want to lessen the fluctuations in the game (for example when your average bet is a relatively large proportion of your buy-in), you can divide your bet into a few small units.
If you are a beginner and not yet very familiar with the game, I suggest you open as few boxes as possible, probably just one. In this case, it doesn’t hurt to put all your eggs in one basket. This strategy helps you gain some experience easily and become familiar with the game. When you play more boxes, you will be faced with more decisions and you are therefore more susceptible to making mistakes, and your chance of losing increases.
There’s one final thing to mention in this discussion. Sometimes a player will open or close a box and the dealer will get a strong upcard (like a 10 or ace), when he would have got a weak upcard (such as a 4, 5 or 6), had the number of boxes not been changed. At this point, players will often criticize the player who opened or closed the box. To be honest, this criticism is totally unjustified. Just as often as this situation occurs, the opposite situation arises where the dealer would have received a strong upcard but gets a weak one instead. Human nature being what it is, players tend to remember the former situation much more than the latter.
