Insurance

What Is an Insurance Bet?

The Dealer will give you two face-up cards and themselves two cards, one face-up and one facedown. If the Dealer’s face-up card, also known as the hole card, is an Ace, you have the option to make an Insurance bet. What happens here is the player places a bet that’s equal to half their original wager on whether or not the Dealer has a hand valued at 21, which is also known a Blackjack. If they do, you are paid out on the insurance payout, which is normally 2 to 1, and lose your original wager, but recoup the losses because of the payout.

If the Dealer does not have a Blackjack, then you lose the Insurance bet, but the game continues forward as if the Insurance bet never happened. You can then hit, double down, stay, split, the whole nine yards, all without a worry in the world except for that inkling of regret you may have for placing the Insurance bet in the first place.

Should I Place It?

If the Dealer is showing an Ace, they have a one in three chance of having a Blackjack, which means you have a one in three chance of your insurance bet paying out. This should probably automatically make you realize the Insurance bet is a bad idea. However, as stated in the beginning, sometimes you’re just feeling it. You don’t go up to a Roulette table and put $100 on a random number because you have a good chance of winning, you do it because it feels right in that moment. It’s an innate feeling all gamblers know, so if you feel like the Dealer is just waiting to flip that facedown card over to reveal a ten, we say go for it. Also, if the Blackjack strategy chart tells you to surrender if you have the cards you have and the Dealer is showing an Ace, it might be worth it to just say whatever and do the insurance bet. Worst case scenario, you lose 50% more than you would have lost. Best case scenario, the Dealer has a Blackjack, and you win instead of lose. These are just things to think about.

In reality, you should not place an Insurance bet, but putting restrictions on strategy kind of takes the fun out of it in our opinion.

What’s the Difference Between Insurance and Surrender?

The nuts and bolts are: you have the opportunity to win with Insurance, whereas with a Surrender, you would be simply attempting to save yourself from losing your full wager. If you decide to Surrender, you get to keep half your wager and forfeit the rest of it instead of betting half of your wager in addition to your original bet. Not all Blackjack variations offer the opportunity to surrender (or take Insurance for that matter), and with Surrender, assuming that it is offered, you normally can only take that option when you have your first two cards, and if you continue to play from there, you wouldn’t have that option. Follow the Blackjack strategy chart to see exactly when a Surrender option is the best decision, because mathematically and unlike insurance, it often is.