An Introduction to Diamond Blackjack Online

Diamond Blackjack is a game that you’ll find at some online casinos, and it’s important to learn how to play this game correctly because there are some major rule changes. If you don’t adjust to these changes, then your payout rate is going to suffer tremendously. The main issue is that it uses the European hole card rule combined with a late surrender rule, and this creates a game where you’ll be doing a lot more surrendering than any other form of blackjack out there. What we’re going to do is look at when to surrender in this game and some general principles for playing atypical situations that are different than normal strategy.

The key thing to know in this game is that you’re going to surrender against an ace an exceptionally large percentage of the time. That’s going to stand out as being really weird, but the reason is that it’s such an overwhelming favorite against almost all player hands. For example, you’ll surrender a hard 12 through 20 against a dealer who is showing an ace. You’ll also surrender paired sixes through paired tens. This is really difficult for new players to understand, but that’s how the math works out.

Doubling with soft hands is a little different than a lot of games. You’ll double against a six with a soft 14 through 18. Against a five, you’ll double 15-18, and against a four, you’ll double 16-18. You’ll only double with a 17 or 18 against a dealer who is showing a three, and you’ll never double a soft hand against a two. Keep in mind that these actions are all about soft hands, so you won’t be doing something ridiculous like doubling a hard 18 or something like that at any point in this game.

You’ll surrender a hard 16 against a nine or up, and you’ll surrender a hard 15 against a ten and up. You can also surrender after doubling in this game, and you’ll surrender 16 against an eight or higher in that case while only surrendering a 17 against an ace. It’s interesting how the math works out in these situations, but the end result is that you can make a lot of mistakes playing a normal blackjack strategy, and in that sense, this game is largely seen as a sort of trap to get confident blackjack players to give up a larger house advantage.