The tie that eats your session
You sit down, play twenty hands, and four of them end with you and the dealer showing the same total. Nothing won, nothing lost, just a quiet return of your stake. That run feels unusual, and in a short session it is. Over tens of thousands of hands, though, the push is a predictable part of blackjack's arithmetic, and it quietly shapes how much of your bankroll is at risk on any given night.
No single percentage applies to every blackjack table. The frequency of pushes depends on the number of decks, whether the dealer stands or hits on soft 17, and the exact drawing rules. What you can know with confidence is the mechanism: a push occurs when your final hand total equals the dealer's final hand total, and when it happens, your original wager is returned rather than collected or paid.
How a push is created
A push is not a decision you make. It is an outcome that arises after both hands have been played to completion under the table's rules. If you stand on 18 and the dealer draws to 18, the hand pushes. If you both hold a natural blackjack, the hand pushes unless the table rules state otherwise. If you bust, you lose before the dealer even finishes drawing, so a busted hand can never push.
The dealer's behaviour matters enormously here. A dealer who must hit soft 17 will reach some totals more often than a dealer who stands on all 17s. More decks change the composition of remaining cards, which shifts the probability of matching totals. These are not cosmetic differences; they move the push rate by a meaningful amount across rule sets.
What changes the push rate
Rather than chase a single universal number, it is more useful to understand which rule choices push the rate up or down. The table below compares the main factors.
| Factor | Direction of push rate | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Dealer hits soft 17 | Slightly higher | Dealer draws more cards, reaching more totals that can match yours |
| Dealer stands on all 17s | Slightly lower | Dealer stops earlier, narrowing the range of final totals |
| More decks in the shoe | Small upward shift | Card composition changes alter the frequency of matching totals |
| Fewer decks | Small downward shift | Removal effects change the dealer's drawing probabilities |
| Player busts more often | Lower | A busted hand loses before a push can occur |
| Player stands on more stiff totals | Varies | Depends on which totals you stand on and what the dealer must draw to |
None of these factors changes the fundamental definition of a push. They change how often the event appears in a long sequence of hands.
Pushes and the house edge
A push does not pay the house anything directly. Your stake comes back to you, and the dealer's hand does not collect it. But the push matters to the house edge because it reduces the number of hands that resolve as wins or losses. The house edge is calculated over all wagers placed, including those returned on a push. When a push removes a wager from the win-loss pool without paying either side, it changes the effective rate at which your bankroll is exposed to the edge.
Consider the arithmetic with hypothetical inputs. Suppose a game has a house edge of 0.5% on each resolved hand, and suppose 8% of hands push. If you place 100 wagers of 10 units each, you have put 1,000 units into action. The push hands return 80 units of that action to you without a win or loss. The remaining 920 units of action carry the edge. As an example, if the edge applies to the full 1,000 units, the expected loss is 5 units. If the edge applies only to resolved hands, the expected loss on 920 units is 4.6 units. The difference is small per session but compounds over many hands.
This is why the push rate is not a trivial curiosity. It changes how much of your total wagered amount is genuinely at risk, and it does so without changing the underlying edge on any single bet.
Why short sessions look nothing like the long run
In a single evening of blackjack, you might see no pushes at all, or you might see a push every fifth hand. Neither outcome tells you much about the true rate. Blackjack outcomes are high-variance in the short term. A push is a relatively rare event compared with a win or a loss, so small samples swing wildly.
Suppose the true push rate is 8%. In 50 hands, the number of pushes you observe could easily be 2 or 10 without any statistical anomaly. In 5,000 hands, the observed rate will sit much closer to the rate shown in the game’s own documentation. The long-run average is what the house edge and RTP describe. The short-run experience is what you feel at the table, and the two diverge more than most players expect.
Decisions per hour also matter. A full table deals fewer hands per hour than a heads-up game. The more hands you play per hour, the faster you approach the long-run distribution, and the more total wagers you expose to the edge. A push rate that feels high in a slow game may simply be a small sample showing its variance.
What you can and cannot control
You cannot change the push rate by betting more or less. You cannot change it by raising your wager after a push, or by standing on a different total in the hope of forcing a tie. The push is a property of the rules and the cards, not of your bet size or your mood.
What you can control is how many hands you play, how much you wager per hand, and which table rules you choose when more than one option is available. A table where the dealer stands on all 17s will produce a slightly different distribution of outcomes than one where the dealer hits soft 17. A single-deck game will differ from an eight-deck shoe. None of these choices turns a negative-expectation game into a positive one, but they do change the rate at which your bankroll is consumed.
Progression systems do not change the push rate or the house edge. Doubling your bet after a loss, or after a push, redistributes your outcomes across a session. It creates larger wins and larger losses, but it does not alter the mathematical edge built into each hand. A push followed by a doubled bet is still just a new hand with the same edge as the one before it.
Where to find the number for your table
If you want the push rate for a specific game, the place to look is the rule set itself. The table layout or the game information panel will state the number of decks, the dealer's soft 17 rule, and the doubling and splitting options. From those rules, published reference sources and basic-strategy charts can give you a push frequency for that exact configuration. The operator's own game rules page, where one exists, is the authoritative source for the specific table you are playing.
Do not rely on a number printed in a forum or a generic article. A push rate quoted without the rule set is meaningless. The same is true of RTP and house edge figures: they apply to one game under one set of rules, not to blackjack as a whole.
FAQ
Does a push count as a loss in blackjack?
No. A push returns your original wager and ends the hand without a win or a loss. Your bankroll does not change on that hand, but the hand still counts toward the total number of hands played and the total amount wagered.
Can you bet on a push in blackjack?
Most standard blackjack tables do not offer a side bet on a push. Some variant games include tie or push side bets with their own payouts and house edges, but these are separate wagers with different mathematics from the main hand.
Does the push rate change with basic strategy?
Basic strategy changes which hands you stand, hit, double, or split, and that in turn changes how often you bust and how often your final total matches the dealer's. The push rate is therefore a function of both the table rules and the strategy you play. A player who deviates from basic strategy will see a different distribution of wins, losses, and pushes.
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This article is general information about how these mechanics work. It is not legal advice and not a recommendation to gamble or to use any particular operator. Availability and legality differ by jurisdiction — check the rules that apply where you are.