Blackjack Strategy

There is a lot of great blackjack strategy which you will end up learning as you start gaining more experience playing the game, but before you sit down and play you should learn some basic strategy. Basic blackjack strategy is really simple and you basically only need to be able to remember when to hit, stand, double down and split pairs. We’re going to go through a quick little chart which you should learn and try to remember as best you can because it will help you lower the house edge against you.

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• When your hand value is less then 8 in blackjack the only thing you should do is hit until you have a good enough hand at which point you should stand.

• When you have a hand value of 9 you should typically hit, although if the dealer is showing a 3-6 as their exposed card you could double down.

• When you have a 10-11 valued hand you should always double down unless the dealer’s exposed card is a 10 or ace and then you should just hit.

• When your hand is a value of 12-16 you should stand in about half the situations you’ll find yourself in, but when the dealer has an exposed card of 7 or higher you need to hit.

• When you have 17 or higher then you should always stand as the odds just aren’t good enough to take another card no matter what the dealer has.

• You should typically only split pairs when the dealer’s exposed card is fewer than 6 because you have a good chance of winning both hands then. You should also never split 10’s no matter what the dealer is showing and you should also not split nines when the dealer’s exposed card is a value of 10 or an ace.

• If the blackjack game you’re playing allows you to buy insurance make sure that you never get sucked into buying it because it increases the house advantage over you by quite a bit.

• If you’re playing on a table where you can surrender to the dealer it’s recommended that you should surrender whenever you have a 15 or 16 because your chances of winning are very slim. Some would also surrender on marginal hands like 12-14 when the dealer’s exposed card is a 7 or higher.

Once you learn and remember the basic blackjack strategy above you’ll be prepared to hit the tables and start gaining some valuable playing experience. I would suggest playing a bunch of hands whether for real money or play money so you can execute the strategies above to see how they work out for you. Once you have become more familiar with the game and you have the basic strategy under your belt you should come back here to learn more advanced blackjack strategies such as card counting techniques. The more advanced strategy is also very easy to learn, but it can be difficult if you don’t understand the basics beforehand.