Blackjack guide for newbies

 

Blackjack Playing Guide For Newbies

바카라규칙 For correct decisions is called “basic strategy”. It’s easier to learn than you might think, too.

Those aren’t the only 2 options you have, though. In some situations, you have other choices, too. These include:

• Splitting

• Doubling down

• Surrendering

Splitting

Splitting can only be done if and when you have two cards of the same rank. When you split a hand, you take each of the 2 cards from your hand and start 2 hands. You have to place an additional bet in order to get that 2nd hand. These 2 hands are played independently of each other. They also pay off independently of each other.

Example

You bet $10. You’re dealt 2 aces. You decide to split, so you place an additional $10 bet.

You now have 2 hands. The first card of each of these hands is an ace. The dealer gives you an additional card on each of those 2 hands so that you have 2 2-card hands. You play each hand independently, win or lose. It’s possible to win both, lose both, or lose one while winning the other.

The basic strategy table we keep referring to includes a list of all the possible hands that could be split, and provides the mathematically correct decision about whether or not to split based on the dealer’s upcard.

Doubling Down

Doubling down means that you’re placing an additional bet and simultaneously agreeing to take one more (and ONLY one more) card. 카지노 검증

 

 

Example

You bet $10. You’re dealt an 8 and a 3, so you have a total of 11. You double down, putting $10 more into action. You’re dealt a card worth 10, so you have a total of 21 with $20 in action.

Surrendering

Surrendering is when you agree to give up half your bet and just drop out of the hand. It’s comparable to folding in poker. It’s the correct move in some rare situations. Some casinos have early surrender, while others have late surrender.

In a casino which offers early surrender, you have the option of dropping out BEFORE the dealer checks his hole card to see if he has a blackjack. Casinos which offer early surrender are giving up a good bit of their house edge, which is good for the player. It’s a generous rules option. It’s also rarely found.

In a casino which offers late surrender, which is far more common, you only have the option of dropping out AFTER the dealer checks for blackjack. That means if the dealer has a blackjack, you don’t have the option of surrendering at all. Everyone at the table loses when the dealer has a blackjack—unless you too have a blackjack, in which case you’ve tied.

Here’s how the game plays out:

1. The players place their bets.

2. The dealer deals everyone’s hands.

3. The dealer checks for blackjack. If he has it, he collects his bets from all the players who don’t also have blackjack.

4. If the dealer doesn’t have blackjack, then the players who were dealt a blackjack get paid off 3 to 2.

5. Then the players get to play their hands, hitting, standing, splitting, doubling down, or surrendering, as the case may be. If at any point a player’s hand totals 22 or more, she loses her bet and is out of the action.

6. Once all the players have made all their decisions, the dealer plays his hand.

7. All the bets are settled finally.

How the Dealer Plays His Hand

Players can take any allowable action with their hands 바둑이게임 If a player has a total of 20 and wants to take a hit because she feels lucky, then she’s allowed to do that.

But the dealer has to play his hand according to a prescribed strategy based on the casino’s rules.

In all blackjack games, dealers always have to hit any total of 16 or below, no matter what kinds of cards the players have.

Dealers also always stand on an 18 or higher.

The only difference is when the dealer has a soft 17. (A “soft” 17 is a total of 17 that includes an ace. Since the ace can count as 1 point or as 11 points, there are more possibilities with that total than with some other totals.)

In some casinos, a dealer is required to hit a soft 17. In others, the dealer is required to stand on a soft 17.

You’ll notice a couple of interesting things about these rules for how the dealer has to play his hand.

The first is that the dealer always acts last, which is a factor in the casino’s favor. Since a player loses her bet immediately when she busts, she doesn’t have the chance to see how the dealer’s hand plays out. You can bust out and lose even if the dealer eventually busts out and loses. That’s because you act first.

The next is that the dealer doesn’t get to make decisions.

Here’s an example of why that might matter:

You bet $10. You’re dealt a total of 15. The dealer has a 6 as his upcard.

You stand.

The dealer has you beat, but he can’t decide to stand. He MUST take a hit because of the rules of the game.

He has a total of 16 as it turns out, but he deals himself a 10, so he busts.

You win $10.

If he were allowed to make decisions, he could decide to stand on the total of 16. But he doesn’t have that option. This gives a player what we like to call “a fighting chance”.

Blackjack Strategy for Beginners

The first thing to understand when thinking about blackjack strategy is the difference between a hard hand and a soft hand.

Hard Hands

A hard hand is a hand with no aces in it. It’s also a hand with an ace in it where the ace has to count as 1, not 11, in order to avoid going bust.

Think of a hard hand in blackjack as a hand with no wiggle room.

You’ll play hard hands differently from soft hands, for reasons which will soon become obvious.

Soft Hands

A soft hand, on the other hand (ahem), is a hand with an ace in it which can count as either a 1 or as an 11. The total used is the higher of the 2 options, but you have some wiggle room in case you’re dealt a high value card.

Here are 2 examples of hard hands:

You have a jack and a 5. That’s a hard total of 15.

You have an 8, a 3, and an ace. That’s a hard total of 12. (If you count the ace as 11, you have a total of 22, which would make you bust.)

Here are 2 examples of soft hands:

You have a 9 and an ace. You have a “soft total” of 20. You COULD take a hit here without going bust. The highest value card you could receive would be worth 10, which would still leave you with a total of 20.

You have a 5 and an ace. You have a “soft total” of 16. You could take a hit here, too, and it would be impossible for you to bust. Even if you were dealt a 10, which is the highest value card in the game, you could just count the ace as 1 and avoid going bust.

When deciding how to play each hand, you’ll take into account whether it’s hard or soft.

The second thing you need to understand about blackjack strategy is the importance of the dealer’s up card. You’ll look at the dealer’s up card to see how likely you think it is that the dealer will go bust.

The “breaking point” for the dealer’s up card is between the 6 and 7. When the dealer has a 6 or lower showing, you will generally play your hand more conservatively, because the dealer is more likely to go bust. When the dealer has a 7 or higher showing, you will generally play your hand more aggressively, because the dealer is more likely to wind up with a high total that you’ll have to beat.

When reading pages about “common blackjack myths”, you’ll occasionally see people complain about the idea of assuming that the dealer has a 10 in the hole. And it’s true that your strategy won’t always be correct if you assume that.

But the reality is that there are more cards in the deck worth 10 than any other value. You have 16 cards out of 52 which are worth 10 points, so the chance that the dealer has a 10 in the hole is usually 30.7%. That’s almost 1/3 of the time.

But you should also consider that cards of 7, 8, and 9 are often in the hole, too. So if the dealer has a 6 or lower showing, he has a good chance of having a total of 16, 15, 14, or 13. All of those hands are apt to go bust when the dealer takes a hit.

Do you see why?

Because there’s always an excellent chance of the dealer getting dealt a 10 on the next. Heck, with any of those totals, even an 8 or a 9 is going to bust the dealer.

That’s why the correct strategy, when you have a hard total of between 12 and 16 versus a dealer’s 6 or lower, is almost always to stand. You want to stay in the game to maximize your chances of still being in the game when the dealer busts.

There are exceptions to this. A lot of times, if you have total of 12 or 13, you’ll take a hit against the dealer—not always, but some of the time.

At the same time, if the dealer has a 7 or higher showing, he’s likely to have a 10 in the hole, which means he’s going to stand on a pretty good hand.

That’s why, if you have a hard total of 16, if the dealer is showing a 7, you should take a hit. Even though you’re likely to go bust, it’s more likely that the dealer has a hand total of 17 or better, and he’ll beat you if you stand on that 16.

There are exceptions to all these rules, but these are the considerations and thought processes that go into creating a correct basic strategy for the game.

The dealer’s up card will also inform your decisions about splitting and doubling down. These will also often assume that the cards you don’t see have a value of 10.

Here’s an example:

You ALWAYS split aces and 8s.

Here’s why:

If you have a pair of aces, you basically have a total of soft 12. If you take a card, and you get a 10, you now have a hard total of 12, which is not a great hand.

But if you split the aces, you have a chance of getting a 10 as the 2nd card of each of your 2 new hands. That gives you the opportunity to get 2 blackjacks, in fact. That’s an obvious good decision.

If you have a pair of 8s, you have a hard total of 16, which is likely to go bust if you hit it. It’s also likely to lose if the dealer doesn’t bust. It’s just a lousy hand.

On the other hand, if you split those 8s, you have a chance of getting 2 hands totaling 18. That’s a respectable total that has a good chance of beating the dealer even if he doesn’t go bust.

Here’s another example:

You never split 4s, 5s, or 10s.

Let’s just look at one of those examples.

You’re dealt a pair of 5s, so you have a hard total of 10.

If you split that hand, you have 2 new hands, each of which starts with 5. If you’re dealt a 10, you’ve got 2 hands of 15, which are lousy hands. They’ll get beat most of the time if you stand on them, and they’ll bust most of the time if you hit them.

On the other hand, if hit a hard total of 10, a good percentage of the time you’ll get dealt a 10 or an ace, in which case you have a total of 20 or 21. Either of those hands is a likely winner against most dealer hands.

Doubling down is also fun, but it’s a move you’ll probably only get to make rarely. If you have a total of 10 or 11, you’ll almost always double down. In fact, the only time you WON’T double down is if and when the dealer has an ace showing. In that case, the dealer has such a high chance of winning that it isn’t worth getting the money into action.

Doubling down on other totals makes sense sometimes, although many casinos restrict the totals that you’re allowed to double down on to 9, 10, or 11. But if you can double down on a hard total of 8 against a dealer 5, you should do so.

Most people learn a complete basic strategy using a chart or a table. In fact, you can buy such a chart or table in the casino gift shop and use it while you play. As long as you’re not slowing down the game, the casino doesn’t mind. After all, using the correct basic strategy doesn’t eliminate the casino’s edge or even give you an edge. It just reduces the house edge to a more reasonable level.

We’re fans of learning basic strategy a little more holistically. You can visit our basic strategy page for a text version of basic strategy which explains some of the reasoning behind some of the decisions.

Either way, keep in mind that game conditions do affect the correct strategy in certain situations. You can find customizable basic strategy generators that take into account the rules in place where you’re playing. If you don’t bother with these customizations, you’re not giving up much to the house.

In fact, the most dedicated basic strategy players don’t stop with basic strategy. They start getting interested in advantage play techniques. We offer an introduction to advantage player for beginners in the next section.

Advantage Play for Beginners

“Advantage play” is a phrase used in the gambling niche to describe a method of gambling that puts the edge on the side of the player. These techniques are distinct from cheating, as they don’t go outside the prescribed rules or game conditions. The most commonly known advantage play technique in gambling is counting cards in blackjack.

This entire page is aimed at beginners, so learning how to count cards might seem like an advanced topic. But we’re only providing an introduction to the subject here. We have extensive sections on how to count cards and get an edge in blackjack elsewhere on the site. You can review those pages when you’re ready.

not just a “1”, in other words—it’s an ace!

The jack, queen, and king are all called face cards.

Scoring in BlackjackIf the dealer doesn’t have a total of 21, you lose the $10 

Doubling down means that you’re placing an additional bet and simultaneously agreeing to take one more (and ONLY one more) card.

Example

You bet $10. You’re dealt an 8 and a 3, so you have a total of 11. You double down, putting $10 more into action. You’re dealt a card worth 10, so you have a total of 21 with $20 in action.

Surrendering

Surrendering is when you agree to give up half your bet and just drop out of the hand. It’s comparable to folding in poker. It’s the correct move in some rare situations. Some casinos have early surrender, while others have late surrender.

In a casino which offers early surrender, you have the option of dropping out BEFORE the dealer checks his hole card to see if he has a blackjack. Casinos which offer early surrender are giving up a good bit of their house edge, which is good for the player. It’s a generous rules option. It’s also rarely found.

In a casino which offers late surrender, which is far more common, you only have the option of dropping out AFTER the dealer checks for blackjack. That means if the dealer has a blackjack, you don’t have the option of surrendering at all. Everyone at the table loses when the dealer has a blackjack—unless you too have a blackjack, in which case you’ve tied.

Here’s how the game plays out:

1. The players place their bets.

2. The dealer deals everyone’s hands.

3. The dealer checks for blackjack. If he has it, he collects his bets from all the players who don’t also have blackjack.

4. If the dealer doesn’t have blackjack, then the players who were dealt a blackjack get paid off 3 to 2.

5. Then the players get to play their hands, hitting, standing, splitting, doubling down, or surrendering, as the case may be. If at any point a player’s hand totals 22 or more, she loses her bet and is out of the action.

6. Once all the players have made all their decisions, the dealer plays his hand.

7. All the bets are settled finally.

How the Dealer Plays His Hand

Players can take any allowable action with their hands. If a player has a total of 20 and wants to take a hit because she feels lucky, then she’s allowed to do that.

But the dealer has to play his hand according to a prescribed strategy based on the casino’s rules.

In all blackjack games, dealers always have to hit any total of 16 or below, no matter what kinds of cards the players have.

Dealers also always stand on an 18 or higher.

The only difference is when the dealer has a soft 17. (A “soft” 17 is a total of 17 that includes an ace. Since the ace can count as 1 point or as 11 points, there are more possibilities with that total than with some other totals.)

In some casinos, a dealer is required to hit a soft 17. In others, the dealer is required to stand on a soft 17.

You’ll notice a couple of interesting things about these rules for how the dealer has to play his hand.

The first is that the dealer always acts last, which is a factor in the casino’s favor. Since a player loses her bet immediately when she busts, she doesn’t have the chance to see how the dealer’s hand plays out. You can bust out and lose even if the dealer eventually busts out and loses. That’s because you act first.

The next is that the dealer doesn’t get to make decisions.

Here’s an example of why that might matter:

You bet $10. You’re dealt a total of 15. The dealer has a 6 as his upcard.

You stand.

The dealer has you beat, but he can’t decide to stand. He MUST take a hit because of the rules of the game.

He has a total of 16 as it turns out, but he deals himself a 10, so he busts.

You win $10.

If he were allowed to make decisions, he could decide to stand on the total of 16. But he doesn’t have that option. This gives a player what we like to call “a fighting chance”.

Blackjack Strategy for Beginners

The first thing to understand when thinking about blackjack strategy is the difference between a hard hand and a soft hand.

Hard Hands

A hard hand is a hand with no aces in it. It’s also a hand with an ace in it where the ace has to count as 1, not 11, in order to avoid going bust.

Think of a hard hand in blackjack as a hand with no wiggle room.

You’ll play hard hands differently from soft hands, for reasons which will soon become obvious.

Soft Hands

A soft hand, on the other hand (ahem), is a hand with an ace in it which can count as either a 1 or as an 11. The total used is the higher of the 2 options, but you have some wiggle room in case you’re dealt a high value card.

Here are 2 examples of hard hands:

You have a jack and a 5. That’s a hard total of 15.

You have an 8, a 3, and an ace. That’s a hard total of 12. (If you count the ace as 11, you have a total of 22, which would make you bust.)

Here are 2 examples of soft hands:

You have a 9 and an ace. You have a “soft total” of 20. You COULD take a hit here without going bust. The highest value card you could receive would be worth 10, which would still leave you with a total of 20.

You have a 5 and an ace. You have a “soft total” of 16. You could take a hit here, too, and it would be impossible for you to bust. Even if you were dealt a 10, which is the highest value card in the game, you could just count the ace as 1 and avoid going bust.

When deciding how to play each hand, you’ll take into account whether it’s hard or soft.

The second thing you need to understand about blackjack strategy is the importance of the dealer’s up card. You’ll look at the dealer’s up card to see how likely you think it is that the dealer will go bust.

The “breaking point” for the dealer’s up card is between the 6 and 7. When the dealer has a 6 or lower showing, you will generally play your hand more conservatively, because the dealer is more likely to go bust. When the dealer has a 7 or higher showing, you will generally play your hand more aggressively, because the dealer is more likely to wind up with a high total that you’ll have to beat.

When reading pages about “common blackjack myths”, you’ll occasionally see people complain about the idea of assuming that the dealer has a 10 in the hole. And it’s true that your strategy won’t always be correct if you assume that.

But the reality is that there are more cards in the deck worth 10 than any other value. You have 16 cards out of 52 which are worth 10 points, so the chance that the dealer has a 10 in the hole is usually 30.7%. That’s almost 1/3 of the time.

But you should also consider that cards of 7, 8, and 9 are often in the hole, too. So if the dealer has a 6 or lower showing, he has a good chance of having a total of 16, 15, 14, or 13. All of those hands are apt to go bust when the dealer takes a hit.

Do you see why?

Because there’s always an excellent chance of the dealer getting dealt a 10 on the next. Heck, with any of those totals, even an 8 or a 9 is going to bust the dealer.

That’s why the correct strategy, when you have a hard total of between 12 and 16 versus a dealer’s 6 or lower, is almost always to stand. You want to stay in the game to maximize your chances of still being in the game when the dealer busts.

There are exceptions to this. A lot of times, if you have total of 12 or 13, you’ll take a hit against the dealer—not always, but some of the time.

At the same time, if the dealer has a 7 or higher showing, he’s likely to have a 10 in the hole, which means he’s going to stand on a pretty good hand.

That’s why, if you have a hard total of 16, if the dealer is showing a 7, you should take a hit. Even though you’re likely to go bust, it’s more likely that the dealer has a hand total of 17 or better, and he’ll beat you if you stand on that 16.

There are exceptions to all these rules, but these are the considerations and thought processes that go into creating a correct basic strategy for the game.

The dealer’s up card will also inform your decisions about splitting and doubling down. These will also often assume that the cards you don’t see have a value of 10.

Here’s an example:

You ALWAYS split aces and 8s.

Here’s why:

If you have a pair of aces, you basically have a total of soft 12. If you take a card, and you get a 10, you now have a hard total of 12, which is not a great hand.

But if you split the aces, you have a chance of getting a 10 as the 2nd card of each of your 2 new hands. That gives you the opportunity to get 2 blackjacks, in fact. That’s an obvious good decision.

If you have a pair of 8s, you have a hard total of 16, which is likely to go bust if you hit it. It’s also likely to lose if the dealer doesn’t bust. It’s just a lousy hand.

On the other hand, if you split those 8s, you have a chance of getting 2 hands totaling 18. That’s a respectable total that has a good chance of beating the dealer even if he doesn’t go bust.

Here’s another example:

You never split 4s, 5s, or 10s.

Let’s just look at one of those examples.

You’re dealt a pair of 5s, so you have a hard total of 10.

If you split that hand, you have 2 new hands, each of which starts with 5. If you’re dealt a 10, you’ve got 2 hands of 15, which are lousy hands. They’ll get beat most of the time if you stand on them, and they’ll bust most of the time if you hit them.

On the other hand, if hit a hard total of 10, a good percentage of the time you’ll get dealt a 10 or an ace, in which case you have a total of 20 or 21. Either of those hands is a likely winner against most dealer hands.

Doubling down is also fun, but it’s a move you’ll probably only get to make rarely. If you have a total of 10 or 11, you’ll almost always double down. In fact, the only time you WON’T double down is if and when the dealer has an ace showing. In that case, the dealer has such a high chance of winning that it isn’t worth getting the money into action.

Doubling down on other totals makes sense sometimes, although many casinos restrict the totals that you’re allowed to double down on to 9, 10, or 11. But if you can double down on a hard total of 8 against a dealer 5, you should do so.

Most people learn a complete basic strategy using a chart or a table. In fact, you can buy such a chart or table in the casino gift shop and use it while you play. As long as you’re not slowing down the game, the casino doesn’t mind. After all, using the correct basic strategy doesn’t eliminate the casino’s edge or even give you an edge. It just reduces the house edge to a more reasonable level.

We’re fans of learning basic strategy a little more holistically. You can visit our basic strategy page for a text version of basic strategy which explains some of the reasoning behind some of the decisions.

Either way, keep in mind that game conditions do affect the correct strategy in certain situations. You can find customizable basic strategy generators that take into account the rules in place where you’re playing. If you don’t bother with these customizations, you’re not giving up much to the house.

In fact, the most dedicated basic strategy players don’t stop with basic strategy. They start getting interested in advantage play techniques. We offer an introduction to advantage player for beginners in the next section.

Advantage Play for Beginners

“Advantage play” is a phrase used in the gambling niche to describe a method of gambling that puts the edge on the side of the player. These techniques are distinct from cheating, as they don’t go outside the prescribed rules or game conditions. The most commonly known advantage play technique in gambling is counting cards in blackjack.

This entire page is aimed at beginners, so learning how to count cards might seem like an advanced topic. But we’re only providing an introduction to the subject here. We have extensive sections on how to count cards and get an edge in blackjack elsewhere on the site. You can review those pages when you’re ready.

Some people think that counting cards is beyond what their puny brains can handle, but we can attest that even the puniest of minds (ours included) can learn how to count cards in blackjack. That’s because you don’t really have to memorize which cards have been played.

Card counting uses a heuristic system for determining the ratio of high cards to low cards in the deck. When the deck has a relatively large number of high cards in it, a card counter raises her bets. When it has a relatively low number of high cards, a card counter lowers her bets.

Do you see why this would help you get an edge over the casino?

Think about which hands offer the biggest payout—the blackjack. The ace and the 10 are required to get a blackjack, and those are the 2 highest cards in the deck. If a deck had lots of aces and 10s compared to lower cards, you’d have a better chance of getting that 3 to 2 payout, wouldn’t you?

Think about it this way. If you’re playing blackjack, and all the aces have already been dealt, your odds of getting a blackjack are 0%. That means you won’t see a 3 to 2 payout until the deck gets re-shuffled.

Card counter have simple and complicated ways of tracking this ratio. Most of them use a simple count called the “hi lo” count. It works like this:

• Every time you see an ace or a 10, you subtract 1 from the count.

• Every time you see a 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6, you add 1 to the count.

If the total count is highly positive, you bet more. If it’s negative or 0, you bet the table minimum.

This might seem like it’s hard to do, and it is, but it’s achievable with practice. We recommend practicing extensively at the kitchen table before trying to count cards at the casino. If they think you’re counting cards, they’ll start shuffling every hand, eliminating the possibility of getting an edge.

They might even ask you to stop playing blackjack there.

Some casinos even ban card counters from the premises altogether.

That’s why card counters use a technique called “camouflage”. They make sure to not look like they’re paying attention. They’ll sometimes make basic strategy mistakes. They’ll tip the dealers. They won’t stay at the same casino or at the same table for more than an hour or 2 at a time.

If you can’t play, you can’t get an edge, by definition. So get good at counting cards without looking like you’re counting them if you want to try it.

Max Rubin, the author of Comp City, suggests using just enough card counting plus basic strategy to play at even odds with the casino. You don’t even need to get an edge over the casino, because you’ll get rewards from the casino just for playing. You’ll also be less likely to risk getting banned or barred.

Other advantage gambling techniques exist for blackjack, but they’re beyond the scope of an introduction to blackjack for beginners. Go to the appropriate page on our site for details on other advantage blackjack techniques like shuffle tracking, hole carding, and dealer tells.

Conclusion

Blackjack is the best game in the casino for multiple reasons, even if you’re a total beginner. With just a little bit of practice, it’s the easiest card game to learn how to play besides War. But the house edge is so much better than War that it would be silly to ever even try War.

Also, blackjack is one of the few games in the casino which offer players “agency”. That’s a fancy word that philosophers use to describe having some control over the outcome of your activity. When you’re playing slot machines, you put your money in and passively wait to see if you’ve won. When you’re playing blackjack, you’re making decisions on every hand which increase or decrease your chances of walking away a winner.

It’s easy to learn, fun to play, and offers the best odds in the casino. You can even learn how to get an edge over the casino if you’re dedicated to studying some simple advantage gambling techniques like card counting.

We can’t recommend blackjack highly enough. If you’re going to play casino games, this is the best one on the floor.