Double Exposure is a blackjack variant offered at Microgaming online casinos. The essence of this game is that both the pocket cards of the dealer are dealt face up and hence the name Double Exposure. This obviously gives the player a fantastic advantage and therefore the rules are tweaked so as to level the playing field. Blackjack pays even money only. The dealer wins all ties except for a tied blackjack. The player wins tied blackjacks, which is another advantage to the player. Another significant rule is that the dealer must hit on a soft 17. The other rules can be seen by moving the cursor over the Rules icon in the top left hand corner of the screen.
The cards are dealt as follows. First one card is dealt to the player, then one to the dealer, then the second card to the player and finally the second card to the dealer. All cards are dealt face up. The player then makes his moves. He can obviously hit or stand and can also split or double if the rules permit. The player cannot take insurance, but that should not matter because this bet is a loser bet under all circumstances.
The optimum strategy for Double Exposure blackjack has been generated through computer simulation as is the case for all blackjack games. However this strategy is much more complicated and almost impossible to learn. Therefore it is essential that players use the strategy card provided by Microgaming. It would be stupidity not to do so. The strategy card can be accessed only in the Expert Mode and therefore players must play in this mode only. This mode can be activated by clicking the Expert button in the bottom tool bar. Every time the player has to make a move he should take note of his and the dealer’s hand totals and then click on the Strategy button. When the strategy card is displayed the regular game table gets covered by it.
The strategy card is a big one and is displayed over two pages. The columns reflect the dealer’s hand totals. The first columns display the dealer’s hard totals from 4 to 20. The later columns display the dealer’s soft totals from 12 to 17. The rows reflect the player’s hand totals. The first rows display the player’s hard totals from 5 to 20. The middle rows display the player’s soft totals from 13 to 20. And the last rows display the pairs dealt to the player. Based on the cards dealt the player has to choose the appropriate row and column and read the instruction from the cell at the intersection. The instructions are color coded and given in text. The yellow cell says STAND, the red cell says HIT, the green cell says SPLIT and the blue cell says DOUBLE.
This is a cumbersome process and Microgaming has given a way out to those players who want to avoid it. The strategy card can be automatically used with the Auto Play feature. The Auto Play feature is available only in the Expert Mode. It can be activated by clicking the Auto Play button. The Auto Play set up box appears. The number of deals required can be entered and the conditions required to stop the auto play can be checked. Then the player can sit back and watch the software wager for him using optimum strategy. If the player has difficulty in figuring out what is happening at the table he can set the time between cards to 2 seconds and this will help.
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