Perfect Pairs is a side bet on a standard blackjack game, made in addition to the usual blackjack bet.
It is paid or taken by the dealer before the blackjack hand is played out according to the casino’s normal rules of blackjack.
The Perfect Pairs blackjack bet is a bet that your first two cards will be a pair.
If you get dealt a pair, you win, otherwise you lose your ‘Perfect Pairs’ bet.
It’s a fun and exciting way to add more adrenalin to blackjack.
A pair is two cards of the same number or face card value, such as the 9 of Hearts and the 9 of Diamonds, or the Jack of Spades and the Jack of Hearts.
There are three different kinds of pairs.
A Perfect Pair is two cards of the same suit and either the same number or face card value such as two Kings of Spades, or two 9s of Diamonds.
The Perfect Pair payout is 30 to 1.
A Colored Pair is two cards with the same number or face card value and having the same color, such as the 10 of Hearts and the 10 of Diamonds, or the King of Spades and the King of Clubs.
The Colored Pair payout is 10 to 1.
A Mixed Pair is two cards with the same number or face card value, but of different colors and different suits, such as the 8 of Hearts and the 8 of Clubs, or the Queen of Diamonds and the Queen of Clubs.
The Mixed Pair payout is 5 to 1.
A common pay table for the Perfect Pairs bet in a land-based casino is:
I’ve seen the pay table changed to allow for larger payouts for the lower paying winning bets and reducing the top award payout as shown in the House Advantage table below.
This means the House Advantage is increased for the casino from 3.38% to 4.09%. That doesn’t seem like much, but it represents an increase of 21% - so it’s quite significant.
As you can see in the table below, the HA is quite low compared to some side bets in Blackjack, and changes depending on the payouts offered.
This table shows the HA for an 8-deck shoe with three very common pay tables.
Pair | Payouts | Payouts | Payouts |
Perfect Pair | 30 to 1 | 25 to 1 | 25 to 1 |
Colored Pair | 10 to 1 | 12 to 1 | 15 to 1 |
Mixed Pair | 5 to 1 | 6 to 1 | 5 to 1 |
House Advantage | 3.38% | 4.09% | 2.17% |
Pro Tip
For a detailed description of the rules of blackjack, and several articles on how to be a better player from ‘Blackjack – Guide for Beginners’ to ‘Blackjack Strategy’, to ‘Card Counting’ go here.
It’s very simple.
You must have a regular blackjack bet to place the Perfect Pairs bet.
Let’s take a look at the real odds of getting a Perfect Pair.
In an 8-deck shoe, there are a total of 8 x 52 cards = 416
There are 8 of every card.
Let’s say our first card is the King of Diamonds.
There are 7 remaining Kings of Diamonds, and 415 total remaining cards.
So the odds of getting one of the Kings of Diamonds for the Perfect Pair is 7/415.
Which is 0.01686 – and rounding up for easy math, it’s 1.7%
Expressed another way, it means that you have 17 ways to win, and 983 ways to lose out of the total hands available. This is based on 1,000 hands.
Which is approximately 58 to 1
The casino pays you 30 to 1 if you win this bet, which is way below the true odds of getting the Perfect Pair.
Not good for the player at all!
As with most side bets, there really isn’t a ‘strategy’ to playing Perfect Pairs. Short of counting down the decks and keeping track of how many of each card has been dealt, it’s really not possible to formulate a strategy.
Perfect Pairs is a side bet and isn’t considered a blackjack variant like European Blackjack and Blackjack Switch and so on. It has no effect on the regular blackjack game where it is offered.
The Perfect Pairs side bet is a fun way to get a little more money in action.
Check the pay table to make sure you’re getting a reasonable payout for your bet.
And good luck!
Check out the Academy for more informative articles on playing blackjack, baccarat, craps, including handy roulette guides.
Is there live blackjack at Brango Casino that you guys recommend?
A while back there was a Blackjack option that could be played with your Chipy Coins. It was by Mascot Gaming. Any Blackjack option would be better than nothing, although I do see that the focus is more on Slots in the Play for Coins section.
I played and witnessed Blackjack teams , I know they exist to help each other eliminate other players like me. For Example , I had an opportunity in semi- finals to make final table, but I new I had to hit on hard 15 to make final table to give me a chance. The player to my right did not have enough chips to make final table no matter what she did, she was looking at my chips and decided to hit on 19, the card came out was a 5 , would have given me a 20 and a chance to move on, I got a king instead , busted out, I got little emotional and yelled at her for helping her team members on the end make it to final table. She just stood there quietly like nothing happened, so obvious .Maybe it's just me,I have great instincts on other players teaming up sometimes, I was right that time.
Richard C