Finally, let the reader be apprised of the possibility of an "unfinished" blackjack hand. Many casinos permit the splitting of any ten-valued cards, and of these, some allow unlimited splitting (this assumption isn't vital in what follows if there are four players at the table). Imagine a player who splits sixteen tens and achieves a total of twenty-one on each hand by drawing precisely two more cards. The dealer necessarily has an ace up, ace underneath, but cannot complete the hand. By house rules she is condemned throughout eternity to a Dante's Inferno task of shuffling the last two aces, offering them to the player
for cut, attempting to hit her own hand, and rediscovering that they are the burn and bottom cards, unavailable for play