Blackjack Dealer Tells

The concept of a “tell” is used in poker to judge what kind of hand your opponent has. For instance, if another player nervously rubs their eyebrow when they’re bluffing, you can use this tell to either call or raise them. Interestingly enough, there are also blackjack dealer tells that can be used to read a dealer’s hand. 

Seeing as how casinos pay dealers the same whether they win a hand or not, dealers usually have little attachment to the cards they hold. Therefore, you’re not going to get a lot of emotional blackjack dealer tells. Instead, most of the dealer tells will come from the way that they peak at their hole card.

If a blackjack dealer doesn’t look at their card very long, it’s likely that they have a face card because face cards (jack, queen and king) are the easiest to see; aces are fairly easy to spot quickly too, so you can also throw this in with the face cards.

Perhaps the biggest blackjack dealer tell of all happens when they look at the smaller cards (2-6). Smaller cards are a little harder to glance at, so some dealers will lift them up higher and look at the card value longer. Assuming they have a medium card (7-10), dealers will peak at their card for an average amount of time.

In any case, spotting blackjack dealer tells can help you immensely when you’re stuck in a tough position. If you can correctly guess a dealer’s card range from the way that they look at their hand, you have a good chance to win some big profits.

Of course, everything begins with finding a dealer that’s prone to giving away tells. Some dealer are far better than others at hiding blackjack tells, while you’ll also find dealers that are more obvious than a player on tilt. In any case, you might have to watch several different games to find a dealer that’s likely to show lots of tells. Once you find one of these tables, you’d better sit down and start playing!