Betfair BlackJack - too strange !!!

**poser** · 2nd June 2008, 06:23 PM

Hi,

I just had my strangest BJ experience I ever had:

Playing normal BJ at Betfair Casino:

In 36 hands, the dealer had 12 times a natural BJ, nearly all with a Ten showing, getting an Ace as second hole card.

Plus, the dealer had extreme good luck in drawing cards, eg, 5 times to 21.

I won 5 hands of those 36 (2 pushes) !!

Too bad that the history doesn't show the exact cards.

This is the first time, I really think a game is broken. If you had this, you'd believe it too...

**chuchu59** · 2nd June 2008, 07:01 PM

Drawing 5 times to 21 out of 36 hands is not impossible but 12 natural BJs out of 36 is near impossible. How many BJs did you get? If none at all, you might consider quitting this game altogether.

**james01** · 2nd June 2008, 09:01 PM

that does seem fixed, but.. here's the thing. In the lottery, the chances of the numbers being 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 are exactly the same as them being any other combination.
36 hands just isn't a large enough sample to "prove" that it's fixed. Still, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, I wouldn't be surprised if it has webbed feet.

**Jufo** · 2nd June 2008, 09:14 PM

I had very unlikely losing session at Betfair Zero Blackjack too, which I posted in Games with 'par' odds thread. Although unlikely results can happen sometimes, the frequency with which they occur on Chartwell software (the one Betfair uses) does really raise the question of the randomness of this particular software.

**poser** · 3rd June 2008, 05:48 PM

Hi,

@ Chuchu59: I had some BJs too, near all were pushed.

belive it or not, my brother played on Betfair Black Jack today too, as he had the same bonus as me.

I told him before of my experience and I was on the phone when his game went stranger and stranger too. Dealer had too many BJs, many 21s (6+T+5...), and he had a series of 20 hands with NO wins at the end of his play (4 ties)....

I was playing at Betfair before and NEVER had this...

Now, thats really suspicious...

I know: small sample size. But I play A LOT BJ, so I know bad streaks, but I really couldn't believe it, when I played that session...

EDIT: Just realized, that my history stops at the middle of my last session !!!!! Can't believe it.

**chuchu59** · 3rd June 2008, 05:56 PM

Throw your brother's experience in and combined with mine and you start to believe that chartwell BJ is well, really streaky. My experience was over a year ago when I lost ten straight hands after raising my bet to $5 per hand at a poker room that used chartwell. I shrugged it off believing it was purely back luck then.

**Jufo** · 3rd June 2008, 07:43 PM

Originally Posted by chuchu59

Throw your brother's experience in and combined with mine and you start to believe that chartwell BJ is well, really streaky. My experience was over a year ago when I lost ten straight hands after raising my bet to $5 per hand at a poker room that used chartwell. I shrugged it off believing it was purely back luck then.

I would like to correct one misconception here. People seem to think that a game can be "streaky" and fair and random at the same time. That's not mathematically possible. If the game indeed is streaky and gives results outside 1 Standard Deviation more than 31.7% of the time, then it has to have some non-random element to it and it is the same thing as being rigged. In other words: A fair Blackjack has to behave exactly the same independent of software used.

**james01** · 3rd June 2008, 07:56 PM

Originally Posted by chuchu59

Throw your brother's experience in and combined with mine and you start to believe that chartwell BJ is well, really streaky. My experience was over a year ago when I lost ten straight hands after raising my bet to $5 per hand at a poker room that used chartwell. I shrugged it off believing it was purely back luck then.

Chuchu: were you playing poker? Because poker is a whole different ball game - presumably you're playing against other players and not the site.

**NewOrleans** · 23rd October 2008, 11:34 PM

Well live blackjack is not software operated so at least you would have peace of mind...8 deck blackjack i would stay away from live or not

**aka23** · 24th October 2008, 12:36 AM

Originally Posted by poser

Hi,

I just had my strangest BJ experience I ever had:

Playing normal BJ at Betfair Casino:

In 36 hands, the dealer had 12 times a natural BJ, nearly all with a Ten showing, getting an Ace as second hole card.

Plus, the dealer had extreme good luck in drawing cards, eg, 5 times to 21.

I won 5 hands of those 36 (2 pushes) !!

Too bad that the history doesn't show the exact cards.

This is the first time, I really think a game is broken. If you had this, you'd believe it too...

I assume by natural BJ you mean only 2-card 21s (not any hand with sum of 21). With this assumption, I get a 1 in ~18 million chance of 12+ out of 36 being BJs. And a 1 in ~45 billion chance of 12+ out of 36 being 10 first BJs.