RAW IN THE MIDDLE: The Crowd Wants to Hit on 17, and the Math Is Sending the Plate Back

Plates down, hands off the cards. The crowd has tasted the blackjack 17 and picked Hit. They looked at a hand that is already plated and already decent, and they want one more ingredient. Over a hot stove that is ambition. At a felt table it is how dinner ends up in the bin. I covered the first round of this in my earlier cook-off on hitting seventeen, and I was clutching my apron then. Now the apron is in a knot.

First, the recipe book. According to Wikipedia's entry on blackjack, basic strategy is the optimal way to play any hand. Mathematicians worked it out and computers refined it, and following it keeps your long-term losses to the house as small as they can be. The standard example chart assumes four to eight decks, a dealer who hits soft 17 and doubling after a split. On that chart a hard 17 says stand against every dealer upcard from two through ten. Against a dealer ace it says surrender, and stand if the table won't let you surrender. Change the rule so the dealer stands on soft 17 and only a few cells move. One of those changes is standing on 17 against the ace.

So the textbook never says hit. Here is what the crowd says anyway. On the Morfi opinion market, Hit leads at 80% consensus and Stand trails at 20%. That comes from 18 traders who have put $241,837 behind their opinions, and the market opened less than a day ago. To be fair, these numbers measure the crowd's conviction, not a show of hands. Still, the conviction is leaning hard toward the one move the charts never serve on a hard 17.

Now my verdict, and this is opinion, seasoned to taste. I respect the urge. Hitting on 17 is the chef who adds a fifth reduction because four felt timid. But a hard 17 is a steak already at medium. Ask for another card and most of the deck pushes you past 21 into charcoal. There is one fair note in the crowd's favor. A soft 17, an ace plus a six, is a different dish, because an ace can drop to one and you can't bust in a single draw. Maybe some of these traders are thinking soft. If they mean hard, I'm sending the plate back to the kitchen. Stand. Serve it. Let the dealer burn their own toast.

What to watch next: whether the crowd keeps backing Hit once someone reads the chart aloud, and whether the gap closes now that the market has had its first day. Markets like this can turn fast. If you think the crowd has it wrong, or think I'm the one who's overcooked, go join the market on Morfi, put your opinion on the pass and let the crowd taste it. Service!