Insurance side bet mind boggler

It's something maybe you can try once or twice in a casino that you probably won't go back to for a while or something. As for the player, try to draw his attention away from what is hand value is (since it doesn't matter), act like you're just there to have fun and you want to do something crazy. You know, "against" the BS "rules".

you're not really insuring anything. It's a side bet,pure and simple,and has nothing to do with your hand.Having said that,it can be a good bet if you are counting.

jarrett40

When he said "you can not over-insure and profit by your loss" he is talking about "normal insurance". You can insure your home for a million dollars, but if it is a mobile home, they will pay to repair or replace it if it burns down, but you will _not_ get that one million.

Insurance is a good deal for counters. TC reaches +5 and insurance is "break even" if I recall correctly. Above +5 it is actually another advantage for the "advantage player" to take advantage of (three advantages in one sentence...) (make that four). :)

8% is not the number I have heard. 2-2.5% has been mentioned several times. a TC of +5 overcomes that edge and anything over +5 makes insurance an advantage play.

Yep. My error. Ever try to tell someone where to find a letter on the keyboard, but even though you can type at 100+ wpm, you find it hard to tell 'im where that "c" is???

I'm so used to the "insurance" decision that I really don't think about it. Obviously I should think about it a bit before telling someone what to do about it. :)

So, in my humble opinion it's the logistical side. Dealers seem to have a hard enough time with insurance because they don't see it in action a lot. If you can insure for more, how do you figure the max? Every bet has a max, and with people wagering differently,  that max would likely vary. It just seems like more trouble than it's worth. They make enough money with insurance as it is.

Why do you bump up this 20 year old post?

Let me still say something about this. The Insurance side bet probably was introduced for the purpose of being used in single deck Blackjack games, in which Insurance was a good bet for skilled players occasionally. 

However, these single deck games have disappeared over these many years, so Insurance has become a sucker bet mostly. Time changes, so do blackjack games. Insurance  bet is obsolete now. The good thing is, a lot of new side bets have been introduced into Blackjack nowadays. 

Insurance is either the first or second most valuable index play for a card counter, depending on the rules and your bet spread, regardless of the number of decks with the other being 16 vs T. To say it is obsolete is ridiculous.