Surrendering your bet

Most Card rooms offer the late surrender option to their guests

When playing blackjack the must render option offers you as a player the choice to fold your hand, at the cost of half of the original bet. 

You must make that decision prior to taking any other action on the hand. For example, once you draw a third card, or split, or double down, surrender is no longer an option. (Except on Spanish 21)

 Not every game offers the surrender option, and those that do fall into two categories: Early vs Late.

The two varieties of surrender, early and late, different only in when the player may actually surrender thier hand. 

In an early surrender game, a player may surrender before the dealer checks his cards for a blackjack, offering a cheap way out even if the dealer turns out to have a blackjack. Because this offers a healthy advantage to the player, this version (early surrender) is rarely offered.  I have never seen the early surrender offered.  L

The much more common variation is the late surrender option.  The late surrender is where the dealer checks for blackjack first, and then only if the dealer does not have blackjack the player will be allowed to surrender their hands.

Surrender is an excellent option for players who use it wisely. 

Unfortunately, many players surrender far too many hands or far too few. 

If you play in a game that offers surrender, use basic strategy to determine when surrender is the appropriate play. To understand how bad a hand must be to properly be surrendered, consider the following: 

To lose less with surrender, you must be only 25% likely to win the hand (ignoring pushes). That is, if you lose 75% of the time, and win only 25% of the time, your net loss is about 50% of your bets, equal to the amount you'll lose guaranteed by surrendering. 

So, learn to use the surrender option, but make sure you know when it is appropriate.