Blackjack Playing Strategy

The preceding chart summarizes the typical playing rules for a number of different casino locations. The blackjack games you must avoid are games in which the dealer wins all ties. This rule will give the casino more than a 9% advantage over you — an insurmountable advantage to try to overcome, even using the Nine-Count Blackjack Strategy!

These playing rules are accurate as of the date of this publication, but you are advised that casinos can change the rules, and different rules may apply when you play.

The optimal way for a player to play each hand against every possible dealer up-card was derived by playing millions of blackjack hands on a simulated basis using computers.

Because of differences in playing rules between different locales, such as the difference in the way the game is played in northern Nevada and the Las Vegas Strip, and because the number of decks used in a game can affect playing strategy, most experts present a slightly different playing strategy for each variation in rules, with adjustments for multiple decks versus single deck play.

It is far too complicated to memorize pages of different charts, trying to learn a slightly different blackjack playing strategy for each rule variation. It is simply not necessary to take this approach to beat blackjack. Learning every possible difference in how to play your hand will, at best, improve your mathematical probability of winning by 0.03%. If you make a couple of mistakes in playing strategy, because of the complexity of the rules, these will more than negate the slight advantage of learning the many variations in playing strategy gives you.

For these reasons, the Nine-Count Blackjack Playing Strategy uses only one strategy, which can be used in single as well as multiple deck games, with nearly every rule variation.

We shall review the applications of this strategy under the different playing options available to the player.

As you go through the pages which follow, I will present the basic strategy in several different ways. I will also go through each part of the strategy showing the reasoning behind it and giving you clues that will help you remember the strategy.

Even though a different basic blackjack playing strategy have been developed for single deck, 2 deck, 4 deck, 6 and 8 deck games, as well for different rule variations, there is not that much difference in the strategy and the version which follows contains a complete basic strategy you can use for games in the United States.

The chart below contains the complete Basic blackjack playing strategy. This strategy is optimal for games with four to eight decks where the dealer stands on a soft 17. It is excellent for a game that allows doubling down on any first two cards and allows doubling after splitting. If the dealer’s up-card is a 4 and you receive a pair of 3s, you should split the 3s into two hands. If you receive an 8 on the first hand for a total of 11, you should double down on this hand where doubling after splitting is allowed.

The blackjack playing strategy presented here is also optimized for games where you can re-split pairs out to four hands except for Aces.