In this Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast episode, host Justin Vacula demonstrates how to play multi-hand blackjack on FanDuel Pennsylvania using purchased Fanduel gift cards.
He provides a detailed walkthrough of optimal blackjack strategies, highlighting the use of strategy cards and the benefits of good game rules.
Vacula explains how leveraging credit card rewards and promotional bonuses can provide an edge in online blackjack.
The video includes practical examples of hands played, discussing decisions based on strategy charts and game rules.
Additionally, he emphasizes the long-term benefits of stacking credit card rewards, such as points, miles, and cashback, making the overall experience profitable and enjoyable.
Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction to FanDuel Pennsylvania
00:11 Maximizing Rewards with Gift Cards
00:37 Blackjack Strategy and Rules
01:21 Exploring Multi-Hand Blackjack Surrender
01:45 Utilizing Promotions and Bonuses
02:55 Gameplay Walkthrough
16:20 Final Thoughts and Conclusion
Show notes:
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Rough Transcript:
[00:00:00] Justin Vacula here with the hurdy gurdy travel podcast today on FanDuel Pennsylvania. FanDuel available in many sites. Pennsylvania is one of them where we can play online blackjack. The idea here is we’re going to be loading FanDuel gift cards that we purchased with credit. I can purchase FanDuel gift cards at many grocery stores, Lowe’s, other locations that accept credit cards, sometimes getting discounts on these cards or rebates in the form of fuel points for gas or grocery rewards.
So we’re going to upload gift cards on FanDuel, play through the funds one time in Blackjack and withdraw money. See here on the right hand side of the screen, Blackjack Apprenticeship is giving us a strategy card here for how to play optimal Blackjack. And with good rules, when we have the good rules in Pennsylvania, the house has about a half percent advantage.
So even though we’re giving up a half percent on the face of it, I can use many cards at grocery stores, like the Amex gold card, getting four X. Membership [00:01:00] rewards points. I’m getting 4x on the acquisition. I’m giving up a half percent. I’m still doing really well here and many other cards to like the altitude reserve card that’s giving 4.
5 percent back. So many credit cards stacking with promotions will give us an edge in blackjack. As long as we’re playing well, we’re sticking to the strategy and we’re playing through funds once. Here we have the multi hand blackjack surrender game. I’ll move this off the screen a little bit. You could see that there are various games on here, various live dealer.
Blackjack, other forms of blackjack throughout the website, but we’re going to look at just this multi hand blackjack surrender as this has the best rules and it’s fast. The live dealer games can tend to be slow. And if you look here on the promotions tab, if we can move over and find that we have various bonuses, sometimes on deposit and play that will give us a further edge.
You could see here as it loads, I [00:02:00] 10 bonus today. Okay. Yes, today get a 10 casino bonus when you bet 200 or more on casino games. I loaded a 250 gift card. We have 250 in the account. And once we get over that 200 mark, it’s going to give us bonus money of 10. You can see the playable balance here. It says deposits 250, bonuses.
Um, FanDuel, we have to play through the bonus once before withdrawing. It’s nice. It breaks it up. It shows us that. FanDuel’s really nice. It’s transparent. It’s very easy to use the software. It’s one of my favorite sites to use, especially when we’re getting bonuses. And every day we have this thing called the reward machine.
At least, um, as recording 11, 22, 24, we get three free spins a day. Sometimes it gives us bonus cash or free spins on slot machines. I haven’t gotten too much off of this, maybe 2 or 3 on a spin or two spins on slot games. So let’s get back to it. Pull the game in. This is multi hand blackjack surrender.
These are the rules that we [00:03:00] want. This is the game that we want. You want to look for this game on all the other sites as well. And in Pennsylvania, most of the sites have this except for maybe poker stars. We can go to the options in the bottom, right? We have speed on sound off safety net on safety net.
As if we’re going to misclick, like if we had something like a 20 versus a dealer, six, And we accidentally hit, it’s going to say, are you sure you want to do that? And insurance off insurance is a sucker side bet. In most cases, we’re just going to turn that off. You can customize the felt color here as well, but these options aren’t default.
So you need to do that. As I mentioned, we deposited 250. I’m going to play 5 hands for the purpose of this video. It’s going to take a little bit to get through the hands, but I want to show you examples of hands and how this game works, the click counter over here. I have it at 50. So we could do 250 divided by five, four 50.
So we’re going to keep track of our play as FanDuel, unfortunately, for the most part, doesn’t occasionally sites will pop up every 15 minutes. You’ve wagered X in the last 15 minutes. Um, but FanDuel, I [00:04:00] don’t believe does that, or it doesn’t do it very often. We have blackjack paying three to two dealer must stand on 17 and must draw on 16.
So these are good rules for us. And we have the surrender option as you see the game is multi hand blackjack surrender. So let’s get into it, get some examples. Of hands, we’re going to get two cards. The dealer gets one card and we’re making decisions based on these charts. So we have a 16, the dealer has a 10.
We can look over to what’s called the hard totals. So this is if we don’t have an ace in our hand, we just have two other cards. 16 versus 10. It says to hit here, but we also have the option for surrender. We’re going to be surrendering in cases 16 versus dealer nine, 10 and ace 15 versus dealer 10. So the surrender chart supersedes the.
Hard totals charts, 16 versus 10. We pick the surrender option. It just gives us half our bet back and we just forfeit the hand. That’s fine. They figured out the math on this and what are the optimal decisions. [00:05:00] So it’s better to surrender than it is to hit or stand on 16 when the dealer has the nine, 10 or ACE.
So, um, I missed a click counter there, but maybe not really. I try to do the click counter right when it deals. I usually use my phone to keep track. Cause I don’t have to click the screen. I can just tap while I’m clicking the screen. But for purposes of this video, we’ll use the click counter on screen.
This is our first hand, go to the next hand. We’ll move the click counter down one. And it’s the same thing, 16 versus 10. So again, that’s a surrender, not off to a great start here, 18 versus four. So we go to the hard totals. We see that if we have a 17 or higher on the hard totals, no matter what the dealer has, we’re going to stand.
So an 18 versus four is a stand. And we’ll see the dealer here is a 23. So the dealer busts and we win this hand. I’m not so much concerned about what happens up here. Of course, I like winning. That’s a good thing. We want the dealer to bust, but in the long run, again, we’re going to have that half percent.
So in the short term, it is gambling. [00:06:00] We might be up, we might be down, whatever the case might be. But again, we’re playing this money through one time and we’re expected to have this house edge of half percent. In the long run. And then we’re getting the bonuses from FanDuel. We’re getting the credit card rewards and much more.
So we have five versus 10. That’s going to be a hit. And we see these low hands where we’re never going to stand on a five. We can’t bust if we hit on a five. So now we have 10 versus 10. That’s another hit. We can look at the hard totals. 10 versus dealer 10 is a hit 16 versus 10. So normally we would surrender here, but it’s grayed out.
We can only surrender on the first two cards. So if we can’t surrender 16 versus dealer 10 is a hit and we bust. We’re onto the next hand. Another click counter 17 again, hard 17 stands. Okay. Next hand, right? Some of the buttons are a little bit [00:07:00] grayed out here. I’ll try to move this up for you so you can see the bottom of the screen.
It’s a little bit covered by the descript is sharing your screen. That’s the, site that I’m using here to record. Um, all right, so the dealer got a 21, so we lose that hand. Click counter one 15 versus two. So we could look at the hard totals. 15 versus two is a stand. You’ll see there are some patterns to this.
And as you practice basic strategy off table, not wagering money, you could use various training apps. You’ll learn these patterns. 12 versus 10 look at the hard totals. 12 versus 10 is a hit 21. So once we have 21, the hand just ends. Another click counter, another hand. So we have 11 versus nine, 11 always doubles.
So no matter what the dealer has, we’re doubling. So doubling means we put up an additional unit. So we move the click counter and we just get one card and only one card, right? Ace [00:08:00] seven versus eight. So finally we have a soft total. So when we have an ace and another card in our hand on the first two, we look at the soft totals.
So we have ace seven versus the dealer eight. And we see that this is a stand. Ace seven, probably the trickiest hand to play. We might get some other hands where we have an ace in lower cards. So if we have something like ace four, and then we hit on ace four and have a three, that would be counted as a seven.
And you see the chart will say here, double if allowed, otherwise stand. So if we have a three card or more hand, then we have to follow that guidance. But to get back to the original hand, a seven versus eight is a stand. Next hand, another counter. 20. So it’s hard 17 and above just stand next hand ace four versus six.
Look at the chart. Ace four versus six is a double. And again, we can only double on the first two cards. So it’s an additional wager. We [00:09:00] move the click counter one. We just get one card and one card only. Next hand we have 12 versus eight. Look at the hard totals. 12 versus eight is a hit. You can have the strategy card right on your screen on a different monitor, wherever you’d like to have it.
13 versus eight. So now we have an ace, the ace can count as one or 11. So we have 10, 12, 13, and this little thing here will show us we have 13. So we don’t need to always do the math. We have 13 versus eight. So we just go back to the hard totals in this case, 13 versus eight is a hit 15 versus eight. Also a hit.
And we bust next hand, next click counter, 16 versus Ace. Normally that would be a surrender, but the dealer has blackjack, so we just loose onto the next hand, 14 versus three. Go back to the hard totals. 14 versus three is a stand [00:10:00] next hand. Okay, so we have blackjack, so we just win this hand and we’re onto the next 10 versus two, or deuce.
So we look at the 10, 10 versus the dealer. Low card two through nine is doubling 10 versus two double one card, one card only. And another wager on the click counter. Okay. Nine versus 10. Look at the hard totals. Nine versus 10 is going to be a hit. 19 will stand. Ace eight versus dealer 10. So you can see the ace eight is just going to be standing here.
The ace eight only doubles against the dealer six. So we’ll keep our 19. Okay. Next hand 19 versus seven again, hard 17 or above is a stand next hand 17, hard 17. [00:11:00] Again, it’s a stand next hand. So this can go pretty fast. 11 versus nine double 11, always doubles. Next hand, eight versus 10 up dealer is blackjack.
So we lose 12 versus four. Go back to the hard totals. That’s going to be a stand 12 versus four is a stand. Okay. Next hand five versus six. So it’s a low hand versus a low hand. We’re going to hit here. 14 versus six back to the hard totals. That’s going to be a stand. We like it when the dealer has a six, the dealer is going to bust a lot.
Hopefully it’s the case this time. It is not. Next hand click counter ACE ACE. So we’re finally on the pair splitting chart. So if we have a pair of ACEs, it’s a split ACEs always split. And when we split with ACEs, we get one card and one card only. But if we had something like three, three and [00:12:00] split, we can hit, we can double.
We have options. Next hand, Ace 7 vs. 10. Look at the hard totals. Ace 7 vs. 10 is a hit. 18 vs. 10. So now the Ace would count as 1 because we have this 10 here. 18 vs. 10 is a stand. Hard 17 and above stand. Next hand. 14 vs. 7. Back to the hard totals. It’s going to be a hit. We bust. Blackjack, we win. Next hand. 11 versus 10, 11 always doubles.
Next hand. 7, 7 versus 5. Alright, so we get a split example here. 7, 7 versus 5 is a split. So we move the click counter down one because we put up an additional wager. So now here we can see the highlight or the spotlight is on this hand. 17 versus 5, that’s a stand. Next hand. And [00:13:00] we have 16 versus five is also a stand.
If we were to have gotten a four here for 11, we’re able to double after splitting, which is really nice when that happens. And we lose that one blackjack again, next hand, another click counter blackjack again, next hand, another click counter for four versus four. So we can look up here for four does not split against the four.
So we have eight versus four in the hard totals, which we know is a hit. Eight is always hitting 13 versus four. Look at the chart. It’s going to be a stand. Okay, almost finished. Six versus two is going to be a hit. 16 versus two. Look at the chart. It’s a stand. Next hand, 19. Hard 19 stands. Next hand, 11 versus 10, 11 always [00:14:00] doubles.
Okay. Next hand 14 versus two. Look at the chart. It’s a stand next hand 14 versus 10. Look at the chart. 14 versus 10 is a hit. We bust next hand 14 versus a Steelers blackjack hand is over. 16 versus seven, 16 versus seven’s a hit. We bust next hand final hand 18 versus four hard 17 and above stand. All right.
And the dealer bus. So on our two 50 initial deposit, we’re now at two 65. And as I mentioned before, we have a bonus. So I’m going to go try and find that screen here.
It’s showing two 55 shared winnings. So that shows that we’ve played through. This was the get a 10 bonus betting 200 or more Xenon games, which we did and [00:15:00] showing that we have 10 in deposits here. So it converted from bonuses to deposits. So we still have to play through this 10 before we withdraw. So let’s go back here to Blackjack.
Go to the multi hand Blackjack surrender. Put this up here. Start to resize for you. We could put the counter at two. We have 10. We’re going to do 5 a hand. One, two. Hopefully it loads. Maybe it’s a little bit slow with the screen recording software. I’m not really sure. So we’ll go back to the chip selector.
Play a 5 hand. Deal. We have 12 versus 10. That’s going to be a hit. 17 stands. And, oh, we missed the counter. We just did two, uh, 10 versus two. So even though we’ve played through the 10 funds, it’s still in our advantage to double. So we’re going to go ahead and do [00:16:00] that. We’re wagering a little bit extra, but we want to take advantage of the opportunity to double because it’s a better play than just hitting here, even though it’s bonus funds.
So this session we ran. Okay. We started with two 50. We had a 10 bonus and we ended up with two 80. Of course, this isn’t guaranteed. This is gambling. After all, there are ups and downs, but over the long run, we’re going to reach expectation and life is going to be good. After playing many of these cards, after going through a lot of play, I’m doing really well.
I’m even ahead of expectation with some bonuses putting me over and definitely on the acquisition side with the credit card rewards, the rebates, the cashback, the points, the miles, the statuses, and much more. It’s been super worth it. It’s been a fun journey. It’s been nice to liquidate gift cards from home and not have to deal with a lot of the traditional methods that have been a little bit more difficult.
So thank you for your time today. This has been the hurdy gurdy travel podcast [00:17:00] blackjack basic strategy on FanDuel Pennsylvania. There’ll be a lot more to come. So stay tuned for videos like this and other traditional podcast episodes.