Blackjack Online
Apart from the standard land casino variants, there are a number of innovative blackjack variants available at online casinos. In these variants some of the rules are changed in ways that create more interest and greater challenge for the player. The player has to make changes to the standard optimum blackjack strategy so as to accommodate the effects of the different rules.
One such rule is the Charlie Rule, which is present in blackjack online casino variants like Triple Attack Blackjack. Actually the Charlie Rule is a generic rule. It says that if the player is dealt a specified number of cards without busting then the player's hand is an automatic winner, irrespective of the value ultimately obtained by the dealer. Sometimes the Charlie Rule is tempered by making it lose against a dealer blackjack.
Getting four cards without busting is fairly common and therefore the Charlie Rule never applies to four cards. It begins with a Five Card Charlie. A Five Card Charlie hand is a hand of five cards whose hand value is not over 21 calculated according to the normal blackjack rules. This decreases the house edge by 1.46%. Blackjack variants usually have a house edge of 0.5%. Hence the Five Card Charlie Rule will increase the return to the player at over 100%, which is not feasible for the online casino. Hence the Five Card Charlie Rule is rarely offered and when it is offered then some other advantage is taken away from the player in order to level the field.