Always 6 Blackjack — Rules, House Edge & Strategy

What is Always 6 Blackjack?

Always 6 Blackjack is Evolution's gimmick on a 6-deck blackjack engine. Every hand begins with the dealer's up card showing 6 — the worst card for the dealer. You'd expect this to swing the game wildly in the player's favour, but Evolution offsets it by paying only 0.61 units on a 1-unit winning bet (BJ payout 3:2 is preserved). The result is a 99.34% RTP that's roughly the same as Evolution Classic 8-deck (99.29%).

The three key rule changes

• Dealer's up card is always 6 — drawn from outside the shoe (suit-less), every round. You always know the dealer's first card before deciding what to do.
• Regular wins pay 0.61:1 — bet $10 and win, you receive $6.10 plus your stake back. Blackjacks still pay 3:2 ($15 on a $10 stake).
• No insurance is ever offered — Aces never show as up cards, so the insurance prompt is structurally impossible.

Strategy: every decision is pre-decided

Because the dealer's up card is always 6, every player total has a deterministically optimal action — you can literally memorise one chart and play perfectly. Dealer 6 busts roughly 42% of the time, so:

• Stand on every hard 12 through 16 — let the dealer bust. Hitting against a 6 is almost always a mistake.
• Double every hard 9, 10, 11 — you have nearly +EV on each.
• Split every pair except 5s and 10s — even 4-4 splits become correct against a 6 (DAS not allowed, but the bust frequency is high enough).
• Surrender does not exist in Always 6, and insurance never appears — those decisions are off the menu by design.

House edge breakdown

The dealer-shows-6 rule alone would give the player approximately a +5 percentage point edge — you would crush a game where the dealer was always weak. Evolution claws it all back (and a hair more) by paying only 0.61 units instead of 1 on regular wins, leaving 0.66% house edge (99.34% published / 99.32% per EV Solver). That is roughly the same as Evolution Classic 8-deck (0.71% / 99.29%) — slightly better for the player by 0.05 pt, but the variance is very different. Wins are smaller and more frequent; the path to ruin is gentler but so is the path to a big session.