Blackjack Plus

The game known as Blackjack Plus is a variation on traditional blackjack, which appears to be confined to a pair of casinos: Skycity Queenstown in Queenstown, New Zealand, and the Crown Casino in Melbourne, Australia.

Both versions operate under slightly different rules and gameplay structures. This page will describe each game separately. The Queenstown version of Blackjack Plus appears to be the first offering of the game, with the Crown version appearing some time afterward, so we’ll begin with the Queenstown game before explaining how Crown’s game differs.

Of course, these rule changes directly affect the house edge attached to any casino game. As you’ll soon learn, changing the basic form of real money blackjack usually increases the house’s edge at the expense of the player’s overall odds. We’ll begin by covering the rules that separate Blackjack Plus from the traditional version of twenty-one. From there, you’ll find a guide to finding the game, along with an introduction to the game’s proper strategy.

Rules and How to Play

Blackjack Plus is a derivative of traditional blackjack, so the rules remain the same across both games unless otherwise stated..

Thus, players begin by placing a mandatory ante bet before each hand, the objective of the game is to reach a total of 21 or closest to it without going over or “busting,” and making a “blackjack” (any 10-value card plus an ace) results in an automatic winner.

Blackjack Plus uses the standard 52-card deck of playing cards, and each card between 2 and 10 is valued according to its numerical rank. All face cards (J, Q, K) are valued at 10, and aces hold a variable value of either 1 or 11, depending on the situation. Both the Skycity Queenstown and Crown Casino venues utilize a six-deck shoe at the Blackjack Plus table.

Blackjack Plus includes a several adjustments to the rules*, so we’ll run through each one individually, explaining the rule itself before covering exactly how it affects the overall game:

*Rules below pertain to Blackjack Plus played at Skycity Queenstown. 

New Zealand Blackjack Plus Rules

Australia Blackjack Plus Rules

Now that you’ve familiarised yourself with the rules of Blackjack Plus used in New Zealand, we’ll run through the different rules attached to Blackjack Plus in Australia. Unless otherwise stated, you can assume that the rules for both games have remained the same, and BOLDED terms are meant to highlight changes from the rules described above:

Other than the rules explained above, Blackjack Plus plays identically to normal blackjack in either New Zealand or Australia. Play begins on the right-hand side of the table and moves leftward, and one player acts at a time.

Best Places to Play Blackjack Plus

As is usually the case with regionally created proprietary casino games, Blackjack Plus is only available in specific locations. So unless you happen to find yourself playing at either the Skycity Queenstown casino in New Zealand or the Crown Casino in Melbourne, Australia, your options for finding a Blackjack Plus game are few and far between.

Currently, the game has yet to be adapted for play by any major online casino. Nonetheless, as online casinos continue to flourish in the Asia-Pacific region, alternative games like Blackjack Plus may very well be added to online casino table games menus sometime soon.

The Crown Perth has a detailed page about Blackjack Plus.

Blackjack Plus Strategy

Blackjack Plus is no different than any other form of blackjack in that the game’s basic structure of two exposed cards versus the dealer’s lone-up card creates a limited number of available options.

Blackjack theorists have long since discovered that the game can be broken down on a mathematical level to determine the most profitable play given any possible scenario. Known as “basic strategy,” this ordered system of assessing the cards on the board and arriving at the best possible decision (hit, stand, split, or double down) can turn ordinary blackjack into a simple procedure of memorization and recall.

The best blackjack players can instantly scan the table and determine the best play by comparing their two cards to the dealer’s up card. Fortunately, the same concept applies to Blackjack Plus because the cards and their values remain the same despite the slew of adjustments to the rules.

By taking advantage of the work conducted by one of the world’s foremost authorities on casino game theory and statistical probability, you can gain a leg up on your next Blackjack Plus session by studying the game’s basic strategy. Check out Michael Shackleford’s Wizard of Odds page on Blackjack Plus to study his detailed basic strategy charts. Shackleford’s analysis has arrived at the “perfect” play for any possible combination of cards, and all you need to know to use the information is what you hold, and the dealer’s up card.

The most important aspect of the casino game strategy is based on the concept of the house edge. At its core, the term house edge describes the theoretical rate of return that the casino expects to gain on any available wager. Under traditional blackjack rules, a player who has never even heard the term “basic strategy” will face a house edge of approximately 1.5 percent. In other words, for every $100 they decide to wager over the infinite long run, the casino will expect to keep $1.50 of that sum.

When optimal blackjack strategy is applied, savvy players can instantly shave their house edge down to under 0.50 percent, making ordinary blackjack one of the best bets on any casino floor. When held up to other popular games like roulette (5.26 percent house edge on double-zero wheels) and most hybrid table games like Three Card Poker (between 3 and 7 percent), it’s pretty clear why blackjack remains the world’s most popular casino offering to this day.

Blackjack Plus is a different animal altogether, though, and due to the inclusion of a few choice changes to the rules, the house edge on this blackjack variant is much higher at 6.36 percent. In effect, this makes Blackjack Plus one of the worst blackjack variants ever invented, at least from the player’s perspective. If you’re a casino operator, however, you’d be happy to see every Blackjack Plus table under your roof ringed with happy players, as each one would be willingly sacrificing an enormous 5 percent in expected return.

With these numbers revealed in such stark terms, it turns out that a preferable strategy for playing Blackjack Plus is never to play the game at all. By simply strolling by the Blackjack Plus table and taking your chips to a traditional blackjack game, you can immediately shave 5 percent off of the house edge you’ll be up against – and that’s without playing according to basic strategy.

Casino operators designed games like Blackjack Plus with the express intent of increasing profits for the house. Uninformed casual gamblers who don’t know any better will always find their way to these money traps, but as unfortunate as that may be, what would be worse is reading through this entire page and still managing to spend money on a game of Blackjack Plus. You know better than that by now, so save your bankroll for a “boring” game of blackjack instead – and if you truly need the thrill of a gamble, splashing around at the roulette wheel will still offer a better bet than Blackjack Plus.