What is insurance in blackjack? It means the same as playing in a casino without any risk on your side, but with a slight disadvantage for you. In casinos, there is always a possibility that something bad could happen while you are playing. It could be that a dealer will be robbed or even hit by a counter. So, it is better if you go with the idea of playing without any risk at all in a casino.
In a casino, it is very easy for a dealer to beat you in a game: All he has to do is to hold a certain number of cards and squeeze out his winning hand. Insurance in blackjack is an extra bet offered to the player to cover the risk that the dealer is going to use a quality card count, which is ten-point, in his hand. However, if you choose the insurance bet, you only get the opportunity to bet half your initial bet when you place your bet on the first round. You can’t bet more than thirty-five percent of your initial bet on the first round. Since the dealer is already up against it, this is actually a good advantage for him.
The reason why players are encouraged to play without any risk: when they are in a casino is because it lowers the house edge. In a traditional casino, there is a high risk factor for anyone who wants to gamble, because the house always wins. But in a blackjack room, since there are two people playing, each player only has one chance of winning. So there is no risk factor for the house. Thus, players benefit from lower house edges.
Another reason: why some players would want to play without any insurance in blackjack is because they do not want to pay for an already won amount. Let us say that Player A pays the dealer forty dollars and Player B bets forty dollars at the same time. Then Player A wins and so forth. Player A will have paid for both players’ bets, but Player B still gets paid. The difference between the winnings of A and B is the “insurance” money, which means that it is the difference between what A won and what B actually paid.
So now you know why players are encouraged to play without any risk: Of course, it is possible to lose money while playing blackjack and casino casinos do take legal action against players who bet above their house edge (as defined by the casino’s own rules). However, this is a rare occurrence. Most blackjack players win enough in the long run to cover the premiums on their bets.
As an example, Player A pays $4.00 per hand and player B bets $5.00: Player A makes a lot of high value bets and therefore incurs a lot of risk and loses quite a bit of money. But because he has made so many bets and spent so much on them, the house calculates Player A’s overall winnings at six hundred dollars, which is the casino’s normal house edge.
Consequently, Player A ends up paying the casino only about two percent of his winnings, which is a great saving considering that it costs almost twice as much to win at blackjack than it does to play on an online casino.