Blackjack basic strategy chart

01 Hard totals

A hard hand has no ace, or has one already counted as 1. These are the hands that can bust, and the ones you will be dealt most often.

• H — hit
• S — stand
• D — double, else hit
• P — split
• Su — surrender, else hit

The block of stands from 12 through 16 against a dealer 2 to 6 is the heart of the chart, and it is entirely defensive. You are not standing on 13 because 13 is good. You are standing because the dealer's weak up-card gives them a real chance of busting, and you refuse to bust first and hand them the pot for free.

02 Soft totals

A soft hand still counts an ace as 11, which means one more card cannot bust it. That free swing is why soft hands are played so much more aggressively than their totals suggest.

• H — hit
• S — stand
• D / Ds — double; Ds means stand if you can't double

Soft 18 — ace-7 — is the most misplayed hand in blackjack. It looks like a good hand and is a mediocre one: against a dealer 9, 10 or ace you are behind, and since you cannot bust, you hit it. Against a 3 through 6 you double, because there is no card in the shoe that can hurt you and the dealer is weak.

Note also that ace-7 against a 2 is a stand, not a double. The dealer's 2 is not weak enough to justify committing another bet.

03 Pairs

Check for a pair first, before you read the hand as a total. A pair of eights is a hard 16 if you play it as one, and two fresh hands if you don't.

• P — split
• H — hit
• S — stand
• D — double, else hit

Two rows never change and are worth learning as slogans: always split aces and eights, never split tens and fives. Aces split turn one soft 12 into two hands each starting on the best card in the deck. Eights split turn the worst hand in blackjack into two ordinary ones. Tens are a 20 already, and a pair of fives is a hard 10 — the strongest doubling hand there is, and you would be throwing it away.

Nines are the fiddly row: split them against everything except a 7, a 10 or an ace. Standing against a 7 looks arbitrary until you notice that the dealer's most likely total there is 17, and your 18 already beats it.

04 The calls that feel wrong

Hit 16 against a dealer 10

This is the hand players argue about most. Hitting 16 against a 10 loses roughly 77% of the time. Standing loses roughly 79%. Both are terrible; hitting is less terrible, and less terrible is the entire job. If your table offers surrender, take it instead — half a bet back beats a 23% hand.

Stand on 12 against a 4, hit it against a 3

A one-card difference in the dealer's up-card flips the answer, and this is where the chart earns its keep. Against a 4 the dealer busts often enough that not busting is worth more than improving. Against a 2 or a 3 they don't, so you take the card. Nobody's gut produces this distinction. The simulation does.

Split eights against a dealer 10

Splitting into a 10 feels like doubling down on a bad night. It is still right: you are turning a 16, which loses about three quarters of the time, into two hands that each start on an 8. Both new hands are underdogs, but they are less of an underdog than the 16 was, and that is what the money follows.

Never take insurance

05 What basic strategy isn't

It is not a winning system. Perfect basic strategy on this rule set leaves the house an edge of about 0.5%. Play long enough and you lose; the chart only decides how slowly. What it does buy you is the roughly 1.5% that playing on instinct costs — the difference between an evening that drifts and one that drains.

It also does not change with your bankroll, your streak, or how the last shoe went. The cards have no memory. A chart that told you to play a 16 differently because you had lost four hands would not be strategy, it would be superstition with a table around it.

And it assumes one specific set of rules. Change the shoe to a single deck, or make the dealer hit soft 17, and a handful of cells move. The version above is for the six-deck, stand-on-all-17 game — the most common one, and the one Just Blackjack deals.

06 How to actually memorise it

Three hundred cells is not three hundred facts. Learn it in this order and it collapses into about six rules.

• Split aces and eights. Never split tens or fives. Two hands' worth of decisions gone.
• Always stand on hard 17 or more. Always hit hard 8 or less. Top and bottom of the chart, no exceptions.
• Dealer 7 through ace is strong; 2 through 6 is weak. Almost every stand in the middle of the chart lives under the weak half.
• Hard 12–16 versus a weak dealer: stand. Versus a strong one: hit. The single exception is 12 against a 2 or 3, which you hit.
• Double 11 against everything but an ace; double 10 against everything but a 10 or ace.
• Soft hands: hit or double, almost never stand below 18.

Then play. Reading a chart teaches you the chart; being told "the book says hit" the instant you were about to stand teaches you the game. That is what the coach inside Just Blackjack does on every hand, and it is why the version in the app is easier to learn from than this page.