Blackjack Switch

Review of Blackjack Switch by Playtech

One of the oldest casino tricks in the book is to cheat by playing multiple hands of blackjack and trying to switch cards between those hands to create more favourable situations. Playtech decided to embrace this cheating technique and turn it into a game mechanic with their Blackjack Switch game. This is a fairly unique game that you can only find in a few places outside of Playtech-powered online casinos, and it’s very interesting from a strategic standpoint because of the new dynamic of learning when to switch cards.

How Switching Works in Blackjack Switch

You’ll always play two hands at a time in this game, and before you get your normal strategic decisions, you’ll be given the option to switch the second card dealt with each hand. The second card dealt to hand A trades places with the second card dealt with hand B in this scenario. You’ll have this as the leftmost option beside of hit, stand and double, and if you accidentally press the button once, then you’ll have the option to press it again to switch back to your original cards. Once you choose any other action, however, you are no longer able to switch.

We want to note that the minimum bet size in this game is €1 per hand, but you’ll actually be playing for a minimum of €2 each time you play because you have to play two hands at a time.

Other Important Rules

From a strategic standpoint, there are a few other rules that players will want to know about. First, you can always double on any two cards, and switching to blackjack will count as a total of 21 instead of a natural blackjack. If the dealer gets a 22, then it pushes against all non-blackjack hands that do not bust, and that’s a big one that affects strategy quite a bit. You can double after splitting anything but aces, and you will see that the dealer peeks for blackjack, which allows you to be much more aggressive when facing a dealer ten or ace. This is also a six-deck game, but the cards are shuffled after each hand, so there’s not much of an effect from knowing exactly how many decks are used in the shoe.

Switching Strategies for This Game

There are two basic strategies that you’ll use with switching in Playtech’s Blackjack Switch game. If you’re up against a dealer showing a medium-strength card like a 7 or an 8, then you want to take a balanced approach with the hand values. You do this by switching only if it will result in both of your hands being stronger than whatever your weakest starting hand happens to be.

If you’re up against any other card, however, then you’ll do the exact opposite. The basic idea here is that you’ll switch if the best hand you end up with is better than both of the hands that you start off with. This is a more aggressive approach that works best against both the weaker hands and the stronger hands compared to the mid-strength dealer cards like a 7 or 8 that you can run into.

15 May. 2018, by Ari Waknine