Insurance

Insurance is a side bet offered in blackjack only when the dealer's face-up card is an ace. You may stake up to half your original wager that the dealer holds a ten-value card in the hole, completing a blackjack. If the dealer does have it, insurance pays 2-to-1, which exactly offsets the loss of your main bet, leaving you even on the round. If the dealer does not, the insurance stake is lost and play continues normally. Worked example: you bet 10 and the dealer shows an ace. You take 5 of insurance. With an ace up, the dealer completes blackjack roughly 30.7% of the time in a standard shoe (sixteen ten-value cards remain among the unseen). Over many rounds, for every 13 unseen cards only about 4 are tens, so insurance loses far more often than the 2-to-1 payout compensates for. The bet carries a house edge of around 7.4%, far worse than the sub-1% edge of the main game. Why it matters: insurance is marketed as protection, but it is simply a separate, poor-value bet on the dealer's hole card, unrelated to the strength of your own hand. The basic-strategy ruling is unambiguous — decline it. The one exception is the card counter who knows the remaining shoe is unusually rich in tens (a true count of roughly +3 or higher), at which point the bet can turn positive. So-called even money, offered when you hold a natural against an ace, is mathematically the same wager. See also even money, basic strategy and card counting.