# Blackjack - average value per hand

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blackjack-average-value-per-hand/492455>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [April 8, 2009, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blackjack-average-value-per-hand/492455 "2009-04-08T23:43:03Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![YamatoTwinkie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/cc9497/32.png) [@YamatoTwinkie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YamatoTwinkie)\
**Post date:** [April 10, 2009, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blackjack-average-value-per-hand/492455/41 "2009-04-10T17:27:14Z")

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> [@Sam\_Stone](#):
>
> If you sit there and cycle your money through by playing 500 hands, then you get tired of playing and leave, you’d walk away with $975.25, and the hold for the house turns out to be about 2.5%. But if you’re totally addicted and you sit there without bathing or sleeping until you’re busted, the casino’s hold is 100%.
> 
> Got it?

I get it now. What was throwing me for a loop is figuring out the difference between the hold of 1 person playing 1000 hands (house hold of 5% using your math) and 1000 people playing 1 hand (house hold of 0.5%)

…Then I realized that at $10 a bet, the buy-in for the 1000 people is $10,000, as opposed to the single guy that only bought $1000 of chips before starting :smack:

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