Premium Blackjack

Quick verdict: two games sharing one table

Premium Blackjack is Playtech's multi-hand RNG blackjack table, first released on 15 January 2016. The main game is standard, well-regarded blackjack: six decks, the dealer stands on all 17s, blackjack pays 3:2 and the theoretical RTP is 99.58% with correct decisions. You can play up to five hands against the dealer in one round.

The part that deserves more attention is the side bets. Perfect Pairs and 21+3 sit next to each main hand, and they are separate wagers with their own paytables and much lower returns. The main hand and the side bets might look like one game on screen, but in maths terms they are two very different products. This review focuses on that gap, because it is what most summaries of the game skip.

Premium Blackjack spec sheet

The rules of the main hand

Premium Blackjack follows the familiar structure. Each hand you open receives two cards, and the dealer receives one face-up card. Card values are the standard ones: number cards count at face value, picture cards count 10, and an Ace counts 1 or 11, whichever suits the hand better.

A round works like this:

1. Choose your hands. Place a main bet on as many of the five hand positions as you want. Each hand is independent and has its own bet.
2. Add side bets if you want them. Perfect Pairs and 21+3 can be placed on any hand you are playing. They are optional.
3. Deal. Each hand gets two cards; the dealer shows one.
4. Insurance, if the dealer shows an Ace. You may take insurance, which pays 2:1 if the dealer has blackjack.
5. Play each hand in turn. You can hit, stand, double down or split, where the hand qualifies.
6. Dealer plays. The dealer draws to 16 and stands on all 17s, including soft 17.
7. Settle. A hand closer to 21 than the dealer's without going over wins even money. A two-card 21 (blackjack) pays 3:2. Equal totals push.

Doubling and splitting

Doubling lets you double the stake on a hand in exchange for exactly one more card. Splitting turns a pair into two separate hands, each carrying a bet equal to the original.

Both actions are available, but Premium Blackjack's specific limits are not published outside the game itself: for example which totals you can double on, how many times you can resplit, or whether doubling after a split is allowed. For reference only, Playtech's Classic Blackjack lists doubling on any first two cards, splitting up to four hands, doubling after splits and one card only on split Aces. Those are rules for a different Playtech table, and the in-game help file for the version you are playing is the authoritative source for this one.

Some versions are also reported to include a ten-card Charlie rule, where a hand of ten cards without busting counts as a win. Treat that as version-dependent and check the help file before relying on it.

What 99.58% means, and what it doesn't cover

An RTP of 99.58% means that over a very large number of main hands played with correct decisions, the game is designed to return 99.58% of the total amount wagered on those hands. The long-run house margin on the main bet is therefore 0.42%.

Two conditions sit inside that number:

• It assumes correct decisions on every hand. The figure is calculated with mathematically correct play for each total against each dealer card, usually called basic strategy. Standing on hands where hitting is correct, or skipping good doubles, lowers the return you actually experience. Basic strategy doesn't overturn the house margin; it only avoids adding to it.
• It applies only to the main bet. Side bets are paid from separate paytables and have their own, much lower, returns.

The six-deck, stand-on-soft-17, 3:2 structure is consistent with Playtech's other RNG tables. For comparison, Playtech lists 99.57% for Classic Blackjack, 99.6% for Perfect Pair Blackjack and 99.65% for Blackjack Surrender, which allows surrender after the dealer checks for blackjack.

Perfect Pairs, step by step

Perfect Pairs is a bet on your first two cards alone. The dealer's cards and the outcome of your main hand have no effect on it.

The settlement is immediate: the bet is resolved as soon as your first two cards are dealt.

A Perfect Pair can only happen because the shoe holds more than one deck. With six decks there are six copies of every card, so two identical cards are possible, but rare.

21+3, step by step

21+3 combines your first two cards with the dealer's face-up card into a three-card poker hand.

Like Perfect Pairs, 21+3 settles right after the deal and has nothing to do with whether your blackjack hand later wins. Only the highest qualifying result pays, so a Suited Trips pays 100:1 rather than also paying for the flush.

Why side bet RTP is lower, with the numbers worked out

The side bet RTPs usually quoted for this game are 96.29% for 21+3 and 95.91% for Perfect Pairs. Those exact figures are the ones given for Premium Blackjack Pro, a separate operator-exclusive Playtech variant that uses eight decks and has a 99.49% main game RTP. Playtech has not published a separate side bet figure for Premium Blackjack itself, so it is worth checking what the paytables actually produce.

Because both paytables above are published, the return can be calculated exactly by counting every possible combination of cards. We ran that calculation for both deck counts:

Two conclusions follow.

First, the reported 96.29% and 95.91% line up with the eight-deck calculation almost exactly. That supports the idea that the figures were carried over from the eight-deck Pro variant.

Second, deck count matters a lot for these bets. Fewer decks mean fewer duplicate cards, and both Perfect Pairs and the Suited Trips result depend on duplicates. Moving from eight decks to six takes about two percentage points off Perfect Pairs and nearly one point off 21+3 at the same paytable. The pattern holds in the other direction too: at a fixed paytable, every deck removed from the shoe makes these duplicate-dependent results rarer, and the return drops further.

Put next to the main game, the difference is large. The main bet's long-run margin is 0.42%. Perfect Pairs on six decks carries roughly 6.1%, and 21+3 roughly 4.6%. Per unit wagered, the side bets are designed to keep between about eleven and fifteen times as much as the main bet does over the long run.

How five hands change the picture

Playing five hands does not change the RTP of any individual hand. Each is dealt from the same shoe and settled against the same dealer total. What changes is how much is being wagered per round, and how much of that sits on side bets.

Consider a round with five hands, each carrying a main bet plus both side bets of the same size. Main bets make up only one third of the total stake. The other two thirds sit on the lower-return side bets. The blended long-run return of that round is well below the 99.58% headline, simply because of where the stake is placed.

The hands are also connected. Because all five, plus the dealer, draw from one shoe, they share the same dealer outcome. When the dealer finishes on a strong total, several hands can lose together, and when the dealer busts, several can win together. That shared dealer result makes five-hand play swingier round to round, even though the long-run return per hand stays the same.

The largest multiple on one hand

Blackjack doesn't have a published max win in the way a slot does. The largest multiples come from specific results:

• A blackjack on the main hand pays 3:2, or 1.5x the main bet.
• A doubled winning hand pays even money on twice the stake.
• Insurance pays 2:1 on the insurance stake.
• Perfect Pairs pays up to 25:1.
• 21+3 pays up to 100:1 for Suited Trips, the single highest multiple on the table.

With six copies of each card in the shoe, Suited Trips needs three identical cards across your two cards and the dealer's up card, which is why it sits at the top of the paytable. There is no feature buy or bonus round.

Premium Blackjack next to Playtech's other tables

Playtech runs several RNG blackjack tables, and their published figures help place Premium Blackjack:

• Classic Blackjack: 99.57%, six decks, dealer stands on all 17s. Very close to Premium Blackjack's main game.
• Perfect Pair Blackjack: 99.6%, six decks, up to five hands, with the same 25:1, 12:1 and 6:1 pair paytable. The nearest relative in structure, focused on pairs only.
• Blackjack Surrender: 99.65%, six decks, with surrender allowed after the dealer checks for blackjack.
• Blackjack Switch: 99.86%, six decks, where you can swap second cards between two hands but the dealer hits soft 17 and a dealer 22 pushes most hands.
• Premium Blackjack Pro: 99.49%, eight decks, with the 96.29% and 95.91% side bet figures discussed above.

Premium Blackjack's edge over most of these is that it combines both side bet types with five hands in one table. Its drawback is that the extra options are exactly where the lower returns sit.

Who Premium Blackjack suits

It suits players who want classic six-deck blackjack with good main game rules, and who like the pace of managing several hands at once. The main bet on its own is one of the higher-returning options on the table game menu.

It also suits players who enjoy side bets for the occasional large multiple and understand they are paying for that possibility with a noticeably lower long-run return. It is a weaker fit for anyone expecting the 99.58% figure to describe the whole table. Once side bets are in play, it doesn't.

What we like about Premium Blackjack, and what we don't

Pros

• 99.58% main game RTP with dealer standing on all 17s and 3:2 blackjack.
• Up to five hands in one round, each with independent bets.
• Two different side bet styles, pairs and three-card poker, with a top multiple of 100:1.
• Clear, published paytables that let the side bet maths be checked.

Cons

• Side bets return far less than the main game, and the 96.29% and 95.91% figures appear to come from the eight-deck Pro variant.
• Specific doubling and splitting limits aren't published outside the in-game help.
• Five hands sharing one dealer result make round-to-round swings larger.

Premium Blackjack FAQ