Where a table offers surrender, you may give up a hand after seeing the dealer's up card and take back half your bet instead of playing it out. Late surrender, the common form, is offered after the dealer has checked for blackjack. Early surrender, offered before that check, is far more valuable to the player and has all but disappeared.
Late surrender is worth 0.08 percentage points to the player, against an otherwise identical table without it.
That is the only entry in our rule table with a sign in the player's favour. Everything else a casino can change to the felt costs you something: 6:5 blackjack costs 1.39 points, hitting soft 17 costs 0.22, removing double-after-split costs 0.14, and restricting doubling to 9 through 11 costs 0.11.
The catch is that surrender only pays if you use it, and it applies to very few hands: hard 16 against a dealer 9, 10 or ace, and hard 15 against a 10, with the exact list depending on the deck count and whether the dealer hits soft 17. Surrendering more widely than that gives back more than the rule is worth, which is how a rule that helps the player turns into one that does not.
The practical reading is simple. Take a surrender table over a non-surrender table when both pay 3:2, and never take a surrender table over a 3:2 table that lacks it, because 0.08 points does not begin to pay for the 1.39 that 6:5 takes.
Where the numbers come from
Related terms in casino floor
- House edge, The average share of each bet the casino expects to keep over the long run.
- Soft 17, A hand of 17 counting an ace as eleven. Whether the dealer stands or hits on it is printed on the table, and it is worth 0.22 percentage points.
- Insurance, The side bet offered when the dealer shows an ace. Every source calls it a bad bet; this one gives the figure, and it changes with the number of decks.
- Expected value, The average result of a bet if it could be repeated indefinitely.
Where an entry quotes a number, that figure comes from the computed sections of this site rather than from another glossary, so the definition and the derivation cannot drift apart. Each entry links to the page where the number is worked out.