In my last post I gloated about how much superior playing surrender strategy was in blackjack. I ran a test shoe with the cards in the exact same order once with surrender rules and the 2nd round without surrender. In that session the surrender round was $250 better in terms of final results.
As we all know, one shoe does not make for a definitive result. So I ran the same test again last night – playing a shoe with surrender and non-surrender rules with the cards and wagering kept consistent for both.
The results this time around were firmly in the favor of the non-surrender strategy. Using surrender the first run through the shoe resulted in 3 surrender hands and a final result of a net $75 loss from the starting $300 buy-in.
Keeping that 6-deck shoe of cards in the same order and betting values equal without using surrender the final result was a $205 win or +$280 above the non-surrender deck.
In two duplicate tests on separate shoes the results were almost exactly opposite. I will continue to run this test whenever I have down time available to keep a running tally. My hypothesis stands that surrender strategy is superior, but I will say that this shoe has allowed a little doubt to creep into my mind.
Blackjack ROI 