How to Play Blackjack

Cards are worth their face value. Picture cards are ten. An ace is eleven, or one if eleven would bust you — which is why a hand with an ace is called "soft" while it still has that flexibility.

1. You place a bet and receive two cards face up.
2. The dealer takes two, one of them visible.
3. You act on your hand — hit, stand, double or split — until you stand or go over 21.
4. The dealer then plays their hand to a fixed rule, usually drawing until they reach 17.
5. Closest to 21 without busting wins. Equal totals push, and your stake comes back.

Two cards totalling 21 — an ace with a ten or picture card — is blackjack, and normally pays more than an ordinary win.

• Hit — take another card. Right when your total is low enough that busting is unlikely, or when standing leaves you losing to the dealer's likely total anyway.
• Stand — take nothing further. Right when another card is more likely to bust you than to help.
• Double — double your stake and take exactly one more card. Right when you are strongly favoured on that single card, classically on a total of eleven.
• Split — with a pair, separate them into two hands with a second matching stake. Splitting aces and eights is standard; splitting tens breaks up a hand that is already winning.

Every combination of your hand and the dealer's visible card has one mathematically best action, worked out long ago by simulating the game exhaustively. That table is basic strategy. It is not a system for beating the casino — it is the set of decisions that loses the least.

Played well, blackjack has one of the lowest house edges available. Played on instinct, it does not — the most common and most expensive habits are standing on weak hands out of nerves, and taking insurance, which is a side bet that loses money over time whatever your hand looks like.

Basic strategy varies slightly with the house rules — the number of decks, whether the dealer draws on soft 17, whether you may double after splitting. Check the rules panel of the specific table before assuming a chart applies.

Software blackjack deals from a shuffled virtual shoe and reshuffles every hand, so nothing carries over between rounds. Card counting does not apply and cannot apply. It plays at your pace, which makes it the better place to practise the strategy table without holding anyone up.

Live blackjack is a real dealer at a real table, streamed to you. It plays at the table's pace with other players at it, and it feels much closer to a casino floor. Explore the live dealer tables, or take the software tables at your own speed.