There is a blackjack myth that says that you can change the flow of the cards by playing two hands. You will see this happen at a blackjack table when a player suddenly switches from one hand to two, or two hands to one—they are trying to shake things up a bit for the deck.
In truth the number of hands you play in a round of blackjack does not do a thing to the order of the cards…mostly because there is no order to the cards. Card order and card flow are blackjack myths.
Playing with two hands has an upside and a downside. That is because there is an effective way to play two hands per round and an ineffective way. It is kind of like having an upside and a downside. First we will look at the downside.
The downside is that you are wagering twice as much per round. Say you are wagering $10 on a hand, and switch to wagering two hands per round. An ineffective player will wager $10 on each hand for a total of $20 per round.
The problem with this is that you are putting yourself and your bankroll at twice the risk. If the dealer has a strong hand, you stand to lose $20 rather than your original $10.
This means that you have the potential of running through your bankroll twice as fast.
Sure, you can take the positive outlook and say that you are going to win twice as much when the dealer has a poor hand. But blackjack odds are against you. You only have 48% chance of winning and a 52% chance of losing.
So if the odds are still against you to lose, why wager double what you normally would just to have two hands to shake up the card flow when there is no such thing as card flow?
That is the ineffective way of playing two hands per round—to simple double the amount you are wagering per round in total. There is an effective way to play two hands in blackjack which I will discuss this afternoon.
