Basic blackjack strategy and rules
Everything About Blackjack Strategy and Rules
When it comes to a game with cards played in casinos around the globe, blackjack is by far the most popular in the daily large group. Blackjack owns a lot of its popularity to the fact it is one of the rare games where players can learn and improve to their skills and also significantly lower the casino edge.
On the other hand, blackjack is a fairly easy game to learn and play, as far as the rules are concerned, it interests lots of casual players with no experience as well. The game owes a lot of its claim to fame, many books and movies about famous card counters and counting teams who took casinos to the cleaners back in the day.
Blackjack rules
The online casino that caters to New Zealand players gives many different variations of blackjack, each of them with their special changes to the rules. However, all blackjack variants follow the same fundamental rules and if you know these rules, then you’re ready to play pretty much any blackjack game online.
The objective of blackjack is fairly straightforward. The player must make a hand totaling 21 or less and beat the dealer’s total. Picture cards are counted as 10, Aces are counted as 11 or 1, and every other card has their face values.
There are usually between six and eight players at a live blackjack table, while electronic online tables have no limit because players play on their own. Furthermore, at the start of the hand, the dealer deals each player one card face up and takes one card for themselves, but facing down. Then, each player is dealt with another card and therefore the dealer also takes another card, but this time face up, for everybody to see.
Once the first cards are dealt, the dealer gives every player a choice to either hit, i.e. take another card, or stand, keep their total, and not taking any further cards. The exception is when the player is dealt an Ace and any card valued at 10 because then they’re dealt the blackjack and are immediately paid at 3 to 2. Players can take new cards for as long as their total is under 21, but once they are over 21, their hand is bust and their bets are immediately forfeited.
Also, once all the cards are dealt with to the players, the dealer turns over their face-down card and proceeds to draw if their total is below 17. Once they reach 17, they couldn’t draw any more cards. If the dealer busts within the process of drawing cards (goes over 21), all players with an active hand automatically win. Otherwise, the totals are compared and those with a higher total than the dealer win at 1 to 1 compared to their bets
In the event when a player and the dealer have the same total, the hand is declared a push and the player gets their bet back.
Special Blackjack rules
Apart from these fundamentals, there are a couple of special rules that the players need to be aware of. The first such rule has got to do with splitting cards. Once the player receives a pair as their first two cards, they’re allowed to split the pair and effectively play two blackjack hands by putting down a further bet.
Players also are allowed to double down on certain totals, counting on the actual variation. This means that, in most instances, players can double their bet if their total is 8,9,10, or 11, and requests for another card. However, they can only get one card after doubling and can’t draw anymore.
Basic Blackjack Strategy
We’ve already mentioned earlier that blackjack is one of the rare games where players’ decisions truly matter. Knowing how to play the game properly can seriously diminish the house edge and the set of rules on how to play correctly is known as the basic blackjack strategy.
The entire strategy can be quite extensive (although not that difficult to master), so we’ll only cover some of the main principles in this article. According to basic strategy, you should:
- Always split the Aces
- Never split the 10s (or face cards)
- Always split the 8s
- Never split 5s
- Always double on the 11 total
- Always double on the ten total unless the dealer is showing an Ace or a Ten
- Always stand on 17 or better
- Always stand on 13 to 16 if the dealer is showing a 2 – 6; otherwise hit
- Always hit on 8
- If the dealer is showing a 3 – 6, double on a 9; otherwise hit
There is more to understand about basic blackjack strategy, but these things represent a nice summary of the entire thing and even if you just learn these by memory, you’ll be making very few mistakes on the tables.
Card counting does it work for online blackjack?
Card counting is the only surefire way to turn the tables on the house and make the game of blackjack profitable for the player. Moreover, there are several card counting techniques, but all of them rely on the same basic principle of keeping track of big, middling, and small cards. As there are more big cards left within the blackjack shoe, the game becomes more favorable for the player.
Can you count cards in online Blackjack?
Unfortunately, card counting doesn’t work for online blackjack. At electronic tables, the virtual shoe is shuffled at the beginning of each hand, which suggests there’s no point keeping track of what cards were dealt with. With live blackjack games on the online casinos, a player could count cards but shoes are usually cut very often, which means that they never get deep enough for card counting to become effective. However, that shouldn’t stop you from checking out online casino Malaysia such as Mega888 or 918kiss and have fun with variants blackjack games they offer.
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