hey all, quick question, we are changing rules/procedures in my (tiny) room, a few questions regarding blackjack :

if only one player is sitting at the table, can he only play one square or is it standard to make him bet at least 2 squares?

what is the max number of squares he can bet?

what is a typical min bet-max bet spread and what would be the lowest bet you can find live?

Currency we have (the currency equivalent) of a table buyin of 80$ in buyin, in bet 8$ max bet 40$, 2 squares to be played minimum.

A lot players who are waiting around to play our 1/3$ hold'em game are afraid to sit down at the blackjack table because they could lose 600-1000 bucks in no time.

I was thinking of making it a 30$ entry, 1 square possible, min bet 3$ max bet 40$ but I don't know if that makes sense as I'm not familiar with the game at all

Never heard of such a thing.

Blackjack?

Yes, blackjack, is it unusual to have a buyin? So someone doesnt have a table opened and only be able to play 2 hands?

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Is this blackjack game in your basement?

I don't understand this. Isn't the dealer already just standing there waiting for someone to play? What harm does it do to have her deal two hands?

Also, what does "buy in for $80" in blackjack?

Haha, kind of. I run a tiny room in the middle of nowhere in West Africa and the people who set this place up didn't really have any experience with casinos. I've been working on improving things for a long time, but since I myself don't have specific casino training (was an online player mostly and came to Africa for different reasons), some of our procedures are probably very uncommon/illogical.

The way we work is we have 1 stud poker table, 1 blackjack table and 1 NLHE cash game table. On any given night we only have 3-5 dealers available, and the cash game table runs every night but there isn't much blackjack. Stud is mostly on weekends.
When someone wants to play blackjack, we call an available dealer over, he/she shuffles the cards and the player buys in at the table. When I got here the procedure was for the player to buy a certain amounts of chips (80$), as is the case as well for the stud table, I never really considered the possibility of dealers just standing there waiting for potential players, didn't know that was how things worked usually...

1 or 2 minimum squares is casino dependant, the more boxes open, the better for the house.

No max on amount of squares per player.

Min bet, whatever you like, $5, $10? The max would usually be around 100/200x the minimum but something tells me you don't want a $1000 max bet.

Unlike poker blackjack doesn;t require multiple players ... so gneerally there is no reason not to keep the game available for the single player who wishes to bet even just one hand and be done. The only consideration is the labor costs.... but if you have a dealer on payroll anyway ... why not have them earning you money even if they only deal a couple of hands that is better than none.

Generally players do not have to play more than one hand. If you need more money bet just raise the minimum bet amount.

in fact I generally see the rule that if a player wants to bet two for two seats they must bet double the minimum bet on each space.

Oh. So you've never been in a casino before? This is strange.

I'm having Tworooks flashbacks!

That was the name I was trying to remember when I asked about the basement.

This is a must unless you have almost zero players wanting to play BJ. It will also do away with your need for min/max buy-ins. You want to accept all bets.

As psandman said it is very common to let players play as many "squares" as they want, but it is usually required they double the min bet if they play a 2nd square.

Thanks all for you insight. We currently have very few people playing BJ, they just walk past the table to go to the Hold'em game, but I'm going to have dealers ready at the table and get rid of the min buyin to accept all bets and see how it goes, should create some action.
What is the procedure if all the players quit the table, I imagine the dealer reshuffles all the decks under floor supervision so the game is ready to go for a new player?

I'm not a blackjack dealer but If the game is from a shoe I would not expect the cards to be reshuffled at that point.

The floor doesn't need to see you shuffle the decks. However, you'll want to clean up your tray which does require floor approval. If you haven't had any new players by then, then shuffle the deck.

What are your blackjack rules in terms of hitting / standing soft 17, doubling down after splitting, re-splitting aces, surrendering, etc? How many decks, and generally what percentage of the cards are dealt before shuffling?

In our house :

dealer stands on soft 17, you can double after splitting, you can double any 2 cards, aces can be resplit once (for regulars, otherwise no resplitting), split aces can't be hit, blackjack paid 3 to 2, no surrender, we play 4 decks, with about 85 percent dealt before shuffling....

I'm revamping/questioning all our rules though.

What is most common in a shoe, 4 decks or 6 decks? Should I use 6 decks to make people play tend to play a little longer and increase the house edge a little bit?
Should I let players re-split aces or is that giving them too much of an advantage? Should I let them re-spilt once or twice?

With those rules, the game is beatable but I really doubt there will be anyone in your game that plays close to optimal. Blackjack is similar to poker in that if you deviate from the standard line, your chances become significantly worse. While theoretically it is a low edge game, often the players are so bad, true house edge might be close to double digits.

So instead stressing over your house rules, pay close attention to your players and that should be easy considering you only have one table running blackjack. If they are horrible, you can be rather lax on the rules. Just keep them happy, thats probably more important than a 0.20% rule change.

Thanks @Calkid

Another random question. I have some doubt regarding correct procedure paying out bets at the end of the hand.
I have read that you are supposed to deal with each bet individually starting from the dealers right.
But I have seen videos where the dealer seems to first pick up all the losing bets and then pay off the winning ones?
How would I handle say 6 bets that go WIN LOSE WIN LOSE LOSE WIN?

I'd like to come to Africa to play your game. Four decks used to be very common when shoes became the norm in the late 1960s or early 70s. Today, 4 decks are rare, and 6 decks are the most common shoe size. Re-splitting aces is becoming less common also. I wouldn't have different rules in this regard for regulars vs newcomers. No RSA is probably the way to go.

To your bet payout question: You may be confusing taking the cards of busted hands before finishing the round and paying out. Otherwise, the dealer should start from his/her left and go clockwise around the table. Blackjacks, if the dealer does not have one, can be paid immediately before players make their actions.

As with the spirit of CalKid's response, it's kind of whatever you can get away with. The rules you cite are in licensed, regulated Western casinos where a governing body has unquestioned authority.

The standard I've seen is to settle each player, win orlose, and scoop their carda into the muck to indicate to the camera that everything is settled. But you can do it however you want / however the governing authority will let you.