Card Counting the King’s Bounty Blackjack Side Bet: 2 Decks

King’s Bounty (KB) is Shufflemaster’s (now Scientific Games) answer to the very popular Lucky Ladies side bet offered by Galaxy Gaming. I previously wrote about card counting the six-deck version, that article can be found at my blog on 888Casino and in my book, Advanced Advantage Play.  Over the years I have been asked many times to consider the two-deck version of KB.  I finally broke down and did the analysis.

First, the pay table for the two-deck version of KB is considerably more generous than the six-deck version. To make it easier to understand the differences in pay, I’ve colored the changes in red with a strikethrough.

The payouts for winning KB bets are as follows, only the highest payout is paid:

• Pair of King of Spades with dealer blackjack pays 1000-to-1.
• Pair of King of Spades without dealer blackjack pays 100-to-1 200-to-1.
• Two suited Kings pays 30-to-1 50-to-1.
• Two suited Queens, Jacks or Tens pays 20-to-1 25-to-1.
• A suited total of 20 pays 9-to-1.
• Two unsuited Kings pays 6-to-1.
• An unsuited total of 20 pays 4-to-1.
• Otherwise, the player loses the KB bet.

The house edge for the two-deck version with this pay table is 24.733489%. That’s a huge house edge by any standard, with huge variance as well. But this wager is so critically dependent on ten-valued cards that the edge is easy to overcome.

I first analyzed KB using the Ten-Count.  Here are the results of a simulation of two hundred million (200,000,000) two-deck shoes, with the cut card at 76 cards (sorry, it’s not 75 cards, I just forgot me previous standard):

• Trigger true count = +9
• Frequency of edge = 7.36%
• Average edge = 17.82%
• Win (in units) per 100 hands = 1.311

This is a substantial win-rate and one that would clearly get some action if the game is deeply dealt and the table maximum is more than $25.  Also, using a specialized count that takes into consideration the King-of-Spades (like I did for Lucky Ladies and the Queen of Hearts) would make the side bet even more vulnerable.

Naturally, every card counter and his sister who is using hi-lo wants to know what the trigger count is for two-deck KB when they are an ordinary blackjack card counter. Here are the results of a simulation of one hundred million (100,000,000) two-deck shoes, with the cut card at 76 cards, using the hi-lo system:

• Trigger true count = +7
• Frequency of edge = 5.12%
• Average edge = 15.35%
• Win (in units) per 100 hands = 0.785

Protections should be in place for KB that are similar to those for LL or any moderately vulnerable blackjack side bet.