Suit 'Em Up Blackjack at Springbok: the suited side bet

Underneath the side bet sits unchanged blackjack. Springbok's table-games article gives one set of blackjack rules and lists no different ones for Suit 'Em Up, so expect the main hand to follow the same rules as the standard Springbok blackjack table:

• A natural blackjack pays 3:2, and insurance pays 2:1.
• The dealer hits soft 17 rather than standing on it.
• Doubling is allowed on any two cards.
• Split Aces: Springbok deals one card to split Aces.

The article quotes R1–R500 a round and chips from R2–R200 for its blackjack tables without naming a separate limit for Suit 'Em Up. That is why the rule card at the top reads "not listed separately". The table sign in the game is the final word.

You place the side bet before the deal, next to the main bet. It pays when your opening two cards share a suit and settles on those two cards. The dealer's cards play no part in it.

Every winning hand is two cards of one suit. What lifts the pay is which two cards they are.

Suited Aces and a suited pair both need two identical cards, which only a shoe of more than one deck can produce. Springbok doesn't say how many decks it uses.

Whatever your first card is, a quarter of the shoe shares its suit. Once that card is out, slightly fewer than a quarter of the cards left can match it, so a little under one start in four is suited. Most suited starts are the plain kind that pays 2:1.

That is the whole engine of the house edge here. A 2:1 pay on something that happens a bit less than one time in four would lose heavily on its own. The bigger pays for the rarer suited hands close most of that gap, but not all of it. What is left over is the edge, which Springbok puts at 3.41% of every rand staked on the side bet over a long run of rounds.

3.41% puts Suit 'Em Up in the middle of Springbok's house-edge table. It is lower than the 6.11% on the Perfect Pairs side bet, and several times the 0.65% Springbok quotes for the main blackjack hand played by the book.

Two caveats come with it. First, the figure is for the side bet alone; your main hand carries its own edge, and that one depends on how well you play. Second, a side bet like this becomes cheaper or dearer with the number of decks in the shoe (the Wizard of Odds page works through how), while Springbok publishes no deck count for its blackjack tables. Rely on the figure Springbok gives for its own table rather than on numbers worked out for other casinos.

Both side bets ride on the same first two cards and leave the main hand untouched. Here is how they differ on Springbok's figures.

Suit 'Em Up wins more often with smaller pays and costs less over time on Springbok's numbers; Perfect Pairs pays more per hit but hits less often. Neither touches the main hand. The full breakdown is in Perfect Pairs rules and payouts.

• Mixing up the two blackjack pays. A suited Ace and ten-value card wins the side bet at 10:1, while the main hand is a natural paid under blackjack rules. They are separate bets settled separately.
• Playing the hand differently because it is suited. Suits mean nothing to the main game. Hit, stand, double and split by the basic strategy chart, not by colour.
• Expecting suits to come in runs. A few suited starts in a row say nothing about the next one.
• Letting the side bet outgrow the main bet. At 3.41% it is the dearer of your two bets, so keep it the smaller one.
• Forgetting an active bonus. See below: this is the slip that can cost more than any hand.

No blackjack table appears on the list of games that count toward Springbok's bonus wagering. While a bonus is still being wagered, a round here does nothing to clear it and can put the bonus and its winnings at risk, and the R100 bet cap applies until wagering is done. Play Suit 'Em Up from a deposit made without a coupon. Play Suit 'Em Up Blackjack at Springbok.

If you do hold a bonus, finish or forfeit it before you sit down. For the wider picture, read how Springbok's wagering requirements work.