Beginners’ Guide to Blackjack Strategy

Learn about some of the most important blackjack strategies with our informative beginner’s guide. It’s the best way to help improve your in-game decisions, helping you to boost your blackjack odds when you sit down to play.

A player with a confident grasp of basic blackjack strategies can cut the house advantage to just 0.5%, down from the 5% that the house generally enjoys. Learning about the basic strategies in blackjack is probably the most rewarding thing to do for players who want to understand how to play blackjack. 

The Most Common Blackjack Strategy

Strategies in blackjack often come down to the underlying logic of the game. There are mathematically correct ways in which to play every hand, providing you with a dependable set of rules that you can apply to your game.

Let’s explore a couple of rules that can help you improve your blackjack odds over the course of the game. To start, how should you play a hard hand (a hand without an ace)?

Now, what’s the best way to play a soft hand (a hand with an ace)?

Ultimately, an understanding of basic mathematical blackjack strategies is absolutely vital for beginners and pros who want to understand how to play blackjack.

Doubling Down

Doubling down is a great way to make a quick profit in blackjack, but it’s a risky move. First off, what is doubling down? After a player has received his first two cards, they can choose to receive one more card while doubling their initial bet.

So, when is the best time in which to double down? A basic tenet of this blackjack strategy is that you should double down if you have an ace and a low-value card, while the dealer shows a ‘bust hand,’ a five or six. Not only do you have more cards in the deck that can help you, but the dealer already has a ‘bust hand’ – in this instance, doubling down is a great option!

Strategically, you should double down if your hand value is 10 or 11. Doing so will provide you with a strong chance of hitting a high-value card, and making a high hand in the process. On the other hand, it’s probably best not to double down if your hand value is over 11 since the odds of you busting are massively increased!

Pair Splitting

Winning at blackjack often comes down to the player’s mastery of pair splitting. At best, splitting a pair can turn a losing hand into a winning hand, providing blackjack players with a dependable way in which to minimize their losses over the course of the game.

For starters, let’s review what pair splitting actually involves. Essentially, if your initial two cards are a pair, you can choose to split them, creating two new hands with a separate wager for each hand. It’s an extremely important blackjack strategy to understand, so here’s a quick run-through of the main points: