What is the risk of ruin in blackjack?
Let’s pretend that somehow the player gets a 2% edge over the house, which would be an unrealistic dream advantage, no doubt. But for the sake of argument, you just want to double your money, so that if you have $100, you leave with $200, the $100 you came with and the $100 you took from the house. Let’s further say your average wager is $10. Your risk of ruin is still 40% with a 2% advantage! If your aim is to leave with $300, your risk of ruin jumps to 53%. Go for $500 and it is 62%. If we pretend that blackjack is a fair game, with neither the house nor player having an advantage, then the above scenarios produce ror of 50%, 67%, 80%. And we come up with all of this by ‘tweaking’ the definition of risk of ruin by pretending the house has a smaller bankroll than it actually has.
