Yes	6 votes (60%)
No	3 votes (30%)
Only if it's super juicy count	3 votes (30%)

10 members have voted

BlackjackGuy123

Never split 10's. It's a sucker play. The people who you see do it almost always have a large negative total in front of them. Doesn't that alone tell you something?? I've accumulated $303,000 in the past couple of weeks playing blackjack at Yahoo!
Jul 10, 2013 Why Splitting Tens is a Bad Move Posted July 10, 2013 by Ken Smith. Among my recent emails from players, I have several on the topic of splitting tens. One player mentioned that he seems to win more often than not when splitting tens against a dealer 5 or 6.
The EV gain at super high True Counts is pretty hard to ignore. The Index is +4/+5 for vs 6 and vs 5, but if you wait until TC +7 to split vs 6 and +8 to split vs 5 you'll still gain 50% of the total expectation from splitting 10's and only make the play 25% as often.

When it comes to splitting 10s in the game of blackjack, the bottom line should be: Average players should never split and should always stand on 20. Card counters will sometimes split in ten-rich decks. Smart tournament players will sometimes split when they need to bet more chips, especially if it’s the last hand.

There are definitely situations where I will split tens. It's not really as big a heat trigger as you might think. Chances are if this play gets you backed off they were already most of the way there already. The thing is that 95% of the time nobody is really paying attention anyway. Surveillance is mostly monitoring payouts and looking for dealer errors. Card counters are so paranoid but usually they are a very small fish in a very big pond and if you don't give away any obvious tells you will slip through the cracks. The most important thing is to keep your mouth shut. Anyway, I always split tens but I do so at a higher index. I use a risk averse index. the thing is at TC +7 and higher there is simply too much gain to abstain from splitting. You are talking about EV that is 20% higher and of course like anything the higher you go in the true count the more value you gain from making the play. So what I do is split tens (and double soft twenty), vs 4, 5 and 6 at TC +7 or higher. And resplit as well of course. It also depends on how aggressively you are betting. If you were playing at a small joint with a low table max and your max bet in this location left you with a 500+ max bet bankroll then you would want to start splitting right at the EV maximizing index or before +7 anyway. But if you were betting full kelly it would be wiser to wait a few TCs before splitting tens or making a close double like 9 v 7.

fearlessdragon

What about resplitting 10s and doubling after splitting if you got an Ace for your split 10? will you do it? or it receives attention because i have seen dealers calling for pit boss when anyone splits 10s.

beachbumbabs
Administrator

I saw an extreme video on a guy doing this last year...was it linked from here? He was playing 3 hands for a good amount (black chip or higher) and the dealer had a 6 and he split. Might have been playing 20 hands by the time the dealer took a hit. I won't spoil it by saying whether he won or lost if you haven't seen it, but the count must have been huge. I'll see if I can find it.
Edit: this is it.

The felt says 'Abu Dhabi : the place to win'.

If the House lost every hand, they wouldn't deal the game.

MaxPen

He was hitting 12's and 13's against the 6......

beachbumbabs
Administrator

He was hitting 12's and 13's against the 6......

Yeah, I saw that. Lost one of those towards the beginning. The narrative on YouTube says there were 17 hands.

If the House lost every hand, they wouldn't deal the game.

Minty

That excitement with the 'OTRA VEZ PAPAAAA!' was priceless.

'Just because I'm not doing anything illegal, doesn't mean I won't have to defend myself someday.' -Chip Reese

BlackjackGuy123

The dealer isn't really calling for pit boss. When they call out a strange play it is so you can't argue that you chose that option because the dealer shouted it out for everyone to hear moments ago. Blackjack losers like to take shots. There is an index for doubling down on a soft 21 but it's pretty high.

fearlessdragon

Ok. Thanks for the reply. I am still learning a lot about card counting, reading a lot of online resources. A free online book by norman wattenberger says REKO technique works better than hi lo and its more easier. Any one tried that and had more success?

Romes

Thanks for this post from:

There are many metrics with which to calculate the performance of a card counting system... Playing Efficiency (PE), Betting Efficiency (BE), and Insurance Correlation (IC) are a few. After that you have raw EV via simulations... In the end what some people do with statistics is they use whichever one of those measuring correlations best fits their point and case. Thus, I could make a case for one system being better than another using PE, but then turn around and make the opposite statement by measuring using BE. So long as you're using a 'main stream' count and not something like A-5 or speed count, the count you make the least amount of mistakes with is the right count for you. Often times the higher level counts that are 'slightly better' in EV (or any one particular category above) comes with some complexity that causes more mistakes and actually ends up COSTING the counter money because they don't play as perfectly as their simulation does. There really is no right answer when it comes to a counting system. I have students that would tell you from experience REKO is not easier than Hi/Low. Then again I'm sure you could find others that say it is... it's all subjective to YOUR training and how YOU interact with the counting system.
However, one thing I can say at the end of the day... you'll have a lot more trouble finding good information/help with other systems than Hi/Low. Not saying it can't be done, but since that's what the massive bulk of card counters use that's what everyone is best educated on and best suited to help one another with. Try looking up a problem you're having in regards to REKO then Hi/Low. You'll find a lot more information in regards to Hi/Low that will help you understand and overcome your problem. I think there's definitely a time and knowledge factor that goes unaccounted for there as well.
*Full Disclaimer: I support counters using Hi/Low. That doesn't mean it's the best because as said above you can prove every single system is the best with some form of measurement or another. From my experience it's the best for a lot of reasons... I talk about them in the articles I wrote and linked you to in another thread =).

Playing it correctly means you've already won.

Even players with little or no knowledge of basic strategy in blackjack understand one thing:

You always split aces and 8s in blackjack.

Of course, you can always find contrarians who disagree with everything, no matter how solid the math behind it is. This post is for people who want to understand in detail why you should always split aces and 8s in blackjack.

A Pair of Aces in Blackjack Is a Soft Total of 12

I don’t know a single blackjack player who gets excited about having a hard or soft total of 12. It’s a hand that’s going to bust a lot of the time when you hit it, because there are at least 16 cards worth 10 points in the deck. (That’s almost 1/3 of the cards in the deck.)

On the other hand, if the 1^st card of a hand is worth 11 points, you stand a good chance (1/3 again) of winding up with a total of 21. Even if the game doesn’t pay off at 3 to 2 for blackjack after splitting, that’s still an excellent hand that the dealer probably won’t beat. The best the dealer can do is push.

The thing about splitting, though, is that you must put up another bet. Low rollers who are under-bankrolled sometimes don’t like this. They don’t WANT to risk additional money on

Blackjack When To Split 10s