Have you tried blackjack and you really liked the thrill the game brings, but the winnings were not as often as you expected? If you are looking for ways to perfect your game perhaps it is time to come up with a strategy. In fact, there might not be any need to create a playing tactic yourself since the experts already did it for you.
Aside from the excitement and the quick pace it offers, blackjack is also popular because it is a game of chances and odds may play a significant role in the outcome of each round. There are two different strategies for black jack that are considered to be the most popular – basic strategy and card counting, which is considered an advanced approach to playing the game.
In this article, we will focus more on the basic blackjack strategy and try to explain you how you can increase your winning chances by playing the odds to your favor.
Blackjack Strategy Chart
Single-Deck, Dealer Hits on Soft 17
Dealrs card showing
Your hard hand
Soft
Splits
Explanation of options
- Hit
- Stand
- Double if allowed, othrwise hit
- Double if allowed, othrwise stand
- Split
- Split if double after split is allowed, otherwise hit
- Split if double after split is allowed, otherwise double
- Split if double after split is allowed, otherwise stand
- Surrender if allowed, otherwise hit
- Surrender if allowed, otherwise stand
Single-Deck, Dealer Stands on Soft 17
Dealrs card showing
Your hard hand
Soft
Splits
Strategy for Winning
If you thought that blackjack is solely a game of luck, you are deeply wrong as the decisions the player makes during the game can considerably affect whether they will win or not. In fact, this is what makes blackjack unique as your choice can affect what will happen next and whether you will go home with our pockets filled with money.
Those who are passionate about blackjack, but also expert in mathematics carefully examined the odds and calculated your chances of winning depending on the move you make. That is how they came up with a blackjack chart that enables you to optimize your play and boost the chances of crushing the dealer.
In its essence, the chart provides you with an exact move that you should make depending on what you and the dealer’s cards are. If you want to follow this strategy, there is no room for improvisation or following the intuition. In fact, it is the latter the often ends in costing newbies and impatient players a lot of cash. Blackjack is a game of numbers and statistics and it is all about using them to your advantage.
However, there are a couple of things to keep in mind. First, you should apply different charts depending on the number of decks the game is played with. The same odds to not apply when you are playing at a single deck or multideck table. There are three different charts that you can find for playing blackjack – one was designed for a single deck, the other one is a double-deck chart, while the third is the multideck option and can be used on tables that are played with four to eight decks of cards.
Why Is This the Perfect Strategy?
Some call it basic, but you will also find people that call charts the blackjack perfect strategy. The reason for that is that, in the long run, you cannot lose. The charts are designed in a way to play the odds to your favor, but the crucial term to consider here is “the long run.” It Implies that you still need to be ready for a string of unfavorable outcomes. And although, in theory, everything should fall into place when you observe what happens at the table long-term, no strategy is a guarantee that you will win each hand.
Regardless of the game you pick to play in a casino, the house will have an edge over the players. The purpose of these strategy charts is to improve your chances and reduce casino’s advantage. It is vital to understand that this is not a bulletproof strategy and you might still need a bit of luck. However, utilizing these charts might boost your chances to win.
When it comes to downsides of this strategy, the most obvious one is that it doesn’t consider what happened in previous hands. The charts are designed on a premise of what will most likely happen based on the current in-game situation and they offer guidance to how you should act accordingly. In theory, it is the smartest move you can make, but we know that the probability and statistics are only applicable in the long run.
There are other advanced blackjack strategies that you may want to consider, too. The most popular one is card counting. However, that strategy is only applicable to offline casinos and most of them ban the players from using it. On top of that, it is exceptionally hard for newbies to implement card counting strategy as it requires a bit of experience.
That is why you may want to stick to the basic winning strategy. After all, you do get return-to-player odds of 99.63%, which is admirably high. However, to keep the odds at such a high level, you need to understand that it is vital to stick to the strategy even when you are in a string of bad luck.
