The proper use of early or late surrender in blackjack can drastically reduce the house edge over skilled players.
And while it’s not as popular as it once was, surrender can be found in some land-based casinos, as well as in many online casinos and electronic table games.
What is surrender in blackjack?
A surrender is simply an optional rule in blackjack that allows you to give up half of your bet after you have seen your first two cards and the dealer’s card.
If your hand has less than a 50 percent chance of winning against the dealer, it’s time to consider surrendering.
There are two types of surrender rules, referred to as early or late surrender.
We will discuss both, although the early surrender is increasingly difficult to find in its original form, where it has not been diluted by other less favorable rule changes.
Early Surrender
Early surrender allows you the option to surrender half of your bet before the dealer checks your hole card for blackjack. This has a huge impact on house advantage, as players can surrender half of their bet in the event of bad hands vs. an ace on the dealer’s card.
Early surrender was a byproduct of some questionable decisions by the Casino Control Commission and early operators in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in the late 1970s, when casinos first became legal there.
Hoping that liberal rules would attract players and not wanting dealers to peep at their hole cards because of possible collusion, they came up with a new version of surrender.
With a 0.6 percent loss to the casino, even players with basic strategy had a slight advantage.
In fact, this rule change was so disastrous that in 1981, then New Jersey Governor Byrne had to step in and uphold a decision by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission to bypass the regular public hearing process because it was believed that continuing the early surrender rule for the 60 days normally required for the public was an “imminent danger” to casino operators.
Such a powerful rule change is rare in land-based casinos.
If you find it online, it’s best to check all the rules of the game carefully, as they have probably been changed to compensate for the loss of player advantage.
If the rules seem reasonable, you’ll want to surrender 14, 15 or 16 when the dealer has a 10 up.
If the dealer has an ace, you’ll want to surrender hard 5, 6, 7 and 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17.
If the dealer hits a soft 17, you’ll also want to surrender a hard 4.
Late surrender
Late surrender differs from early surrender in that you can only surrender your hand and lose half of your bet AFTER the dealer checks your hand as a blackjack.
This drastically reduces the effectiveness of the surrender option to something like .05 to .1 percent.
That doesn’t sound like much, but consider that on a 6 deck shoe with loose house rules, the edge drops from .42% to .35% or almost 20% overall when late surrender is used optimally.
So late surrender can be another tool to help us reduce house edge when it is available.
While this should be easy to spot in online casinos or at electronic tables, in land-based casinos it is rarely shown on table signs or elsewhere.
It’s best to ask the dealer if the surrender option is available and whether it’s a late or early surrender.
If that wasn’t confusing enough, not all casinos use the same hand signals for surrender in blackjack.
In general, you should draw a horizontal line behind your bet with your index finger while verbally announcing your surrender.
This applies to blackjack games dealt from the shoe.
Hand surrender procedures may vary at casinos with hand games, so when in doubt, it’s best to ask the dealer for proper hand surrender etiquette. He or she will be happy to walk you through the process.
You’ll want to surrender all hands in which you don’t have at least a 50% chance of winning with the card the dealer has revealed.
However, this will be affected by house rules such as hit or stand on soft 17 and the number of decks in play.
Here’s a quick summary of the late surrender rules:
- If the dealer has 9 up, you should only surrender if you have 16. And only if the game has four or more decks.
- If the dealer has a 10, you should always surrender if you have 16, and also surrender all 15, unless it’s a game with one deck.
- If the dealer has an ace, things get complicated depending on whether the dealer has a soft 17 or stands.
- If they stand all 17, always surrender 16, no matter how many decks are in play. If they hit a soft 17, you should surrender 15, 16 and 17 regardless of the number of decks.
Total Dependent vs Composition Dependent
The rules of the game outlined above are for what is called “total dependent,” meaning that you are only interested in the totals of your first two cards to decide whether to surrender.
There are rules for “composition dependent,” which means, for example, that if you get a 9, 6 vs. an 8, 7. Although both have a total of 15, they consist of different groups of cards.
If you analyze this using composition dependent rules for a game with one deck, you should surrender 9, 6, but play 8, 7.
There are more than a dozen such exceptions, and it can be quite confusing for those who are starting out with surrender options in blackjack.
The small advantage gained is probably not worth the extra difficulty and is best left to more experienced players.
So that’s the basic summary of early and late surrender and the basic rules for gaining the biggest advantage in blackjack. When applied correctly, they will help you keep more of your money and stay in the game longer.