Basic Strategy

The exciting thing about card games in general is that the results are somewhat more predictable than games involving dice and wheels.

Sixteen cards, a whopping 30 percent of the deck, are valued at ten when playing blackjack. That climbs to 38 percent when you include nines and 46 percent when you include eights. Consider the dealer's hole card.

There's a really good chance it's an eight, nine, or ten. Does that change your impression of a six up card? There is a nearly one in two chance the hand is a fourteen, fifteen, or sixteen. And consider what will come out of the shoe when the dealer hits.

Meanwhile you have a hard thirteen. What's coming out of the shoe for you? Hitting a hard thirteen against a dealer six doesn't seem so appealing anymore. With a six up card the dealer will bust about 42 percent of the time. Why screw that up?

Mathematicians have worked out the various probabilities. The result is a basic strategy for playing blackjack that in most cases reduces the overall house edge to less than one percent. Favorable rules push the edge past zero and into positive territory.

Allowed after splits. Variations of the strategy for hitting soft seventeen and doubling after splits are minor and we'll cover them in a later section.

Variations of the strategy

less common and the strategy