This is kinda lol. I assume someone is forgetting to adjust for $ wagered as fixed.

The dealer is playing only one hand. When there are seven players, the dealer plays a single hand against all seven players -- that was my message to OP. I agree that dealing to a number of hands produces less variance than dealing to a single player wagering with the same combined stakes.

It's not at all uncommon to have tables that lose money over an entire shift -- this isn't really noteworthy when you're spreading multiple games. But then, it's extremely uncommon to have a losing shift. The same is true for the player, playing a fixed amount spread over multiple hands instead of one will reduce their variance. OP's experience was losing when more people joined the game.

The house really needs to spread multiple games to have the same "limited risk" advantage.

i'm not sure what you're trying to say here, but the fact is that anything a player does to reduce his variance will reduce the house's variance by the exact same amount.

Just get 6 decks. The rest of the advice itt is pretty good, with regards to the odds.

This is true only in respect to that player -- not to the game.

"Just get 6 decks."

Bad idea. While it would increase the house edge, it would also take way more time than dealing single deck. Actually what the OP should do is preferential shuffling, but that's also a douche move.

I'm totally lost wrt this now about variance.

Variance is a secondary argument here. A player could reduce variance simply by deliberately losing every hand.

That's true as well. The point is that it's not a fixed value -- a player can influence it. And while it's reciprocal between the dealer and player, the dealer cannot influence it.

I guarantee that this is a profitable situation just because there's no chance in hell that 7 friends playing .50 blackjack in a home game follow anywhere close to basic strategy. Wouldn't surprise me if your native edge based on their skills alone was 7-8% or higher.

I would estimate 10-13% with average Joes.

ya tough to say. There are average joes that don't know what to do with 99 vs 8 but know all the other easy stuff and then there are average joes who refuse to hit 12-16 ever

"average joe's" blackjack range is so damn wide

12% they would have to be REALLY terrible; even mimicing the dealer is not nearly that bad.

It's not mimicking the dealer -- it's missing double, split, and double after split opportunities. The average game is pretty bad when you're playing against Joe. On the game circuit, you spend a lot of time playing a break-even or losing game.

wizard of odds say mimick the dealer is 5.48% house edge

never bust is lower, but thats assuming correct doubling and splitting unlike mimick the dealer. I guess maybe a really bad player would be over 10% but even just from blackjack scenes in movies I'd think average joe could do better