Lucky Ladies: the worst common bet on the blackjack table
Lucky Ladies pays when your first two cards total 20, with rising tiers: any 20, a suited 20, a matched 20 (identical cards), a pair of queens of hearts, and the jackpot — a pair of queens of hearts while the dealer draws blackjack, at 1000:1.
That 1000:1 line is doing all the marketing. It lands so rarely that its contribution to the return is a rounding error, and everything below it pays nowhere near enough: the overall edge is roughly fifty times what the main game costs a basic-strategy player.
House edge
24.71% per unit bet (6 decks, pays 1000 / 125 / 19 / 9 / 4). For contrast: the blackjack hand underneath it costs about 0.5% with perfect basic strategy — this side bet is roughly 49× more expensive per unit wagered.
At 5 units per hand and 70 hands an hour, Lucky Ladies costs about 86.48 units per hour on top of the main game.
Odds and payouts
| Outcome | Pays | Chance | Odds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Queen of hearts pair + dealer blackjack | 1000:1 | 0.0015% | 1 in 68,666 |
| Queen of hearts pair | 125:1 | 0.0295% | 1 in 3,394 |
| Matched 20 — same rank and suit | 19:1 | 0.46% | 1 in 216 |
| Suited 20 | 9:1 | 2.08% | 1 in 48 |
| Any other 20 | 4:1 | 8.01% | 1 in 12 |
| Anything else — you lose | −1 | 89.41% | — |
House edge: 24.71% — the bet wins something on 10.59% of hands.
Does the deck count change it?
| Shoe | Pays 1000 / 125 / 19 / 9 / 4 |
|---|---|
| 1 deck | 38.16% |
| 2 decks | 30.05% |
| 4 decks | 26.04% |
| 6 decks | 24.71% |
| 8 decks | 24.05% |
Frequently asked questions
What are the odds of the 1000:1 Lucky Ladies jackpot?
Two queens of hearts plus a dealer blackjack on the same round: 0.0015% — about 1 in 68,666 hands in a 6-deck game.
Why is Lucky Ladies considered a sucker bet?
The house edge is 24.71% — of every 100 units wagered on it, about 25 are lost on average. The main blackjack hand played with basic strategy loses about 0.5 of every 100 units.
Check these odds against your casino’s rules →
The free analyzer recomputes every side bet for your exact deck count and paytable,
alongside the optimal basic strategy for the main game.