You get paid 3-2 on your blackjacks, not on every win

You will never win over 50% of the hands -- on average, or on specific counts.

Where did you get that number from willyc?

I am no expert, but if you lose 48%, then you have 52% to be split up between wins and pushes. So, it would make the most sense that you win a fair bit less than you lose and push the rest. This would explain why the house would still have an edge despite paying you 3:2 on some of your wins, etc.

-RMJ

1 in 9 or 10

Player win streaks are short and infrequent, while dealer winning streaks are long and frequent.

obviously, which is why I said "sometimes"

the guy who mentioned the pushes, I forgot about that, hard to believe it is as high as 4% of the time or so, but I don't know the maths so I won't argue.

i guess a way to figure this out would be to run a simulation seeing how many individual hands you win both counting splits as additional hands and not counting splits as additional hands and the number is somewhere in between.

I didn't really know either, I just inferred that pushes had to play a large enough role. Anyway, I was curious enough to google for an answer. No idea how legit, but the 48% figure lines up with what the other guy said...

"The casino usually wins 48% of blackjack hands on average, players win 43%, and 9% of hands are a push. A player’s 5% disadvantage in win frequency is offset by payouts for naturals, and extra profit on splits and doubles."

-RMJ

100% if you tried to lose every hand

I ran a couple of large samples using the percentages above (48%L, 43%W, 9%T - I have no idea if these numbers are accurate).

Anyway, I ran 11 samples of 25K hands, and the number of series of 10 consecutive losses within that sample ranged from a minimum of 6 to a max of 27. Not a lot of testing, but seems pretty likely over that size sample the odds of losing 10 in a row at one point are 100%.

I cut a second sample down to only 2500 hands, which I think is about what someone who plays only a few times a year would actually play. I ran 100 samples at this size:

n=100 (samples)
mean= 2.1 (series)
stdev=2.63
min=0, max=12

I should run more, but the likelihood is that even if you play recreationally only a few times a year you will still in all probability have this happen to you at least once.

I really think you need to run it without the ties, so that a majority of the hands are losses. From a betting standpoint there is no difference between LLLLLTLLLL and
LLLLLLLLL

effectively they are both 9 consecutive losses

If you lose 5 in a row, stand up, take a break cool down for a bit then come back to the table. You wont lose the next 5.

It isn't very rare to have 10 hands losing streak.

Played 3000 hands the weekend before and had

1x 9+ hands losing

1x 11+ hands losing

6x 11+ hands not winning

Sure, but LLLL-WLL-LLLL is also effectively 9 consecutive losses then.

I'm thinking OP is trying to calculate the "Martingale system."

Bet 1- $5 - lose.
Bet 2 -$10- lose.
Bet 3- $20- lose.
Bet 4- $40- lose.
Bet 5- $80- lose.
Bet 6- $160- lose.
Bet 7- $320- lose.
Bet 8- $640- lose.
Bet 9- $1280- lose.
Bet 10- $2460- win/ not really thou. Because table max was $1500, and casino not let you place $2460 bet.