A Fundamental Blackjack Strategy for Beginners

When players start out playing blackjack, they know that the game requires a lot of skill, but that doesn’t mean that they want to have to learn a bunch of complicated strategies. Instead, they want a chance to get into the action with some basic, easy strategies that will have them playing correctly most of the time. This is what we want to offer you here. Once you get these basic strategies down pat, you’ll be able to focus in on more detailed situations and improve your payout rate accordingly.

Let’s start with hard hands since they’re the hardest to play, no pun intended. If you have 8 or lower, then you’ll always hit, and if you have 17 or more, you’ll always stand. With a 9, you’ll double if you’re facing a six or lower and hit otherwise. With a 10 or 11, double if you have a higher total than the dealer’s up card and hit otherwise. When you have the 12 to 16 totals, these are the hardest to play in all of blackjack in most cases. Stand if you’re facing a six or lower, and hit if you’re facing a seven or higher. That’s all it takes.

With soft hands, almost all cases are pretty straight-forward, so they’re pretty easy to remember. You’re going to always stand with a soft 15 or lower while you stand with soft totals of 19 or higher. When you have a soft total of 16, 17 or 18, then double when facing a six or lower, and hit facing a seven or higher. These are the situations that will change the most when you learn to play more detailed strategies, but following these guidelines will keep you out of trouble until then.

Split hands always trip up a lot of players, even people who have been playing blackjack for a while, but there are a few rules you can follow to be right most of the time. Always split aces and eights, and never split fours, fives or tens. For everything else (twos, threes, sixes, sevens and nines), only split if you’re facing a six or lower. If you’re facing a seven or higher, then play them like you would with a regular hard total. There are some detailed strategies to learn here, but you should learn these changes last since soft hands come up much more often.