Blackjack Basics: Rules, Basic Strategy and House Edge

1. Place your bet within the table’s minimum and maximum.
2. The deal. You receive two cards face up. The dealer takes one card face up (the upcard) and, in the standard game, one face down (the hole card).
3. Dealer peek. If the upcard is an ace or a ten-value card, the dealer checks for blackjack. If the dealer has one, the hand ends at once and you lose unless you also have blackjack.
4. Your decisions. You hit, stand, double, split or surrender, as allowed by the table rules, until you stand or bust.
5. The dealer plays by fixed rules: draw to 16 or below, stand on 17 or above, with the soft-17 rule printed on the table.
6. Settlement. A higher total than the dealer wins even money, a tie (push) returns your stake, and a two-card 21 pays 3 to 2 at a good table.

A soft hand contains an ace counted as 11, such as ace-5 (soft 16). It cannot bust on the next card, because the ace drops to 1 if needed. A hard hand has no ace or has one that must count as 1, such as 10-6 or 10-5-ace (hard 16). The same total plays very differently depending on which it is, which is why strategy charts split them.

Our 2014 page described a split as winning “double the prize” if both hands win. That is slightly misleading. Each split hand is a separate bet of the original size, settled on its own, so you can win both, lose both or split the result.

The charts below assume the most common good rules: the dealer stands on soft 17, you may double after splitting, and late surrender is offered. “Dealer” means the dealer’s upcard. Where doubling is not allowed, hit instead; where surrender is not offered, hit.

Hard totals

Soft totals

Pairs

Two shortcuts carry most of the value. First, assume the hole card is worth 10: a dealer showing 4, 5 or 6 is likely to bust, so stand on stiff hands and double aggressively. Second, against 7 or higher the dealer will usually finish on 17 or more, so a 15 or 16 needs improving even though it often busts.

The strategy chart makes more sense once you see how the dealer’s upcard shapes the hand. These are the dealer’s bust chances in a six-deck game where the dealer stands on soft 17, after the dealer has checked for blackjack and does not have it:

A dealer 5 or 6 busts more than four times in ten, so you let the dealer take the risk. Against a 10 or an ace, the dealer busts less than a quarter of the time, so a total below 17 usually loses unless you improve it.

Hand one: hard 12 against a dealer 4

You bet £5 and receive a 10 and a 2. The dealer shows a 4. Hitting busts on any ten-value card, which is nearly a third of the shoe, while the dealer showing 4 busts close to 40% of the time. Basic strategy says stand. Many players hit here because 12 “feels too low”, and that costs them over many hands.

Hand two: eight-eight against a dealer 10

Now you hold two 8s for 16, against a dealer 10. Sixteen is the worst total in the game. Splitting gives two hands that each start from 8, which is a much better place to be, even against a 10. You add a second £5 bet and play each hand separately. If late surrender is offered, the chart still prefers splitting a pair of 8s to surrendering in this game.

Hand three: 11 against a dealer 6

You have 6 and 5 for 11, and the dealer shows a 6. This is one of the best spots in blackjack: any ten-value card gives you 21, and the dealer is at its most likely to bust. You double to £10 and take one card. Even if you draw a small card and end on, say, 14, you still win whenever the dealer busts.

Most of the chart follows four ideas. Learn them in this order and the exceptions become easy to remember:

1. Stiff hands: stand on hard 13 to 16 against 2 to 6, hit against 7 to ace. Hard 12 stands only against 4 to 6.
2. Doubles: double 11 against everything but an ace, 10 against 2 to 9, and 9 against 3 to 6.
3. Pairs: always split aces and 8s, never 10s or 5s.
4. Soft hands: never stand on soft 17 or less, and double soft hands mainly against 4, 5 and 6.

After that, practise with a free trainer or a deck of cards at home, saying the correct move aloud before you check it. A few hundred hands are usually enough to make the common decisions automatic.

At a land-based table, dealers rely on hand signals rather than words so the cameras can record your decision. Tap the felt to hit and wave a flat hand over your cards to stand. To double or split, place the extra chips beside your original bet, never on top of it. Online and live-dealer games replace all of this with buttons, but read the rules screen before your first hand, because the soft-17 rule, the blackjack payout and surrender are listed there.

Following the strategy above at a six-deck table with those rules, Wizard of Odds calculates the result of a hand as:

You lose more hands than you win, yet the edge is only 0.28%. The gap closes because blackjacks pay 3 to 2, doubles and splits put more money on the table in good spots, and surrender trims losses on the worst hands. The standard deviation is about 1.14 units per hand, so short sessions swing widely around that small average.

Rules matter more than most players realise. Starting from an eight-deck game where the dealer stands on soft 17, each change below shifts the house edge by about this many percentage points:

Worked example: the 6 to 5 trap

Imagine you bet £10 a hand for 300 hands. A blackjack arrives in roughly 4.75% of hands, so around 14 times in that session. At 3 to 2 each pays £15; at 6 to 5 each pays £12. That is about £42 less across the session from one line on the table felt, on top of everything else the house already expects to win. Single-deck games that pay 6 to 5 are a common example: the deck advantage is more than wiped out by the payout cut.

When the dealer shows an ace, you are offered insurance: a side bet of up to half your stake that pays 2 to 1 if the hole card is a ten-value card. In a six-deck shoe, ignoring the cards on the table, 96 of the remaining 311 cards are ten-values, about 30.9%. A 2 to 1 payout needs just over 33.3% to break even, so the bet carries a house edge of about 7.4%. “Even money”, offered when you hold blackjack against an ace, is the same insurance bet in disguise. Decline both.

• “Never bust, so stand on 12 or more.” Standing on 12 to 16 against a 7 or higher gives away more than hitting does.
• “The dealer is due a bust.” Each hand is dealt from the shoe as it is. Past results do not make a bust more likely.
• “Other players’ bad moves cost me.” Over time they help you as often as they hurt you. Your edge depends only on your decisions.
• “Card counting works online.” Most digital blackjack shuffles before every hand, so there is nothing to count. Live-dealer shoes are usually cut deep enough to make counting impractical.
• “Provably fair means I can’t lose.” It only confirms that a hand was not altered after you bet. The house edge applies in full.

Because blackjack swings so much more than its edge suggests, budget for the swings rather than the average. Take 200 hands at £2. The expected loss is tiny, about £1.12, but with a standard deviation near 1.14 units per hand the spread of results is about £32 either way, and doubles and splits mean individual hands can cost £4, £6 or more. A budget of £60 to £80 gives that session room to breathe; £20 will often run out early even when you play perfectly.

Flat betting, the same stake every hand, keeps the maths simple. Raising your bet after wins or losses changes nothing about the edge and only makes the swings larger. If you notice yourself chasing a loss with bigger bets, that is the moment to stop for the day.

The safest way to learn basic strategy is with free-play versions or a paper chart at home before any money is involved. Set a budget in pounds before you start, work out what it buys at your stake, and stop when it is gone. Licensed sites in Great Britain must offer deposit limits and time reminders, and GAMSTOP blocks all of them at once if you need a break. Our safer gambling page has the details, and the casino games guide compares blackjack’s edge with roulette, baccarat and craps. For the legal side of crypto gambling in the UK, see UK law and tax.