Blackjack basic strategy chart

The mathematically correct play for every hand you can be dealt, against every card the dealer can show. Six decks, dealer stands on all 17s, doubling allowed after a split.

Basic strategy doesn't beat the house. Nothing does. What it does is shrink the edge from somewhere around two percent, which is what casual play costs you, to roughly half of one percent — and that difference is the whole gap between a game you can play all evening and one that empties your pocket.

The chart

Find your hand down the left, the dealer's upcard across the top.

Why the chart looks like this

Memorising a grid is tedious. Understanding the four shapes inside it is not, and the shapes are what you'll actually recall at the table.

The dealer's bust card is 2 through 6

Look at the block of "stand" running across hard 12 to 16 against upcards 2 to 6. Those are the hands where you hold a total that can't win on its own but the dealer is likely to bust. Roughly four times in ten, a dealer showing 5 or 6 goes over. You don't need a good hand; you need them to fail, and drawing risks handing them the win for free.

Against 7 and up, you have to build a hand

The same 12 to 16 totals become "hit" against 7 through ace. Assume the hole card is a ten and a dealer showing 9 has 19. Standing on 15 there loses almost every time. Hitting loses often too — but less often, and less often is the entire game.

Double when you're a favourite, not when you feel lucky

Doubling clusters on 9, 10 and 11, and on soft hands against weak upcards. The logic is simple: you get exactly one card, so you want a total where one card very likely lands you in the high teens or twenties, against a dealer likely to be in trouble. Eleven against anything qualifies. Nine against a 2 doesn't quite.

Aces and eights always split

Two aces played together make a soft 12, one of the most useless totals available. Split them and each becomes a hand starting with the best card in the deck. Two eights make 16, the worst total in the game — the hand that loses most often no matter what you do. Breaking it into two hands starting from 8 is simply less bad, which is why you split eights even against a ten.

The pairs worth arguing about

• Never split tens. Twenty wins about eight times in ten. Two hands starting from ten win considerably less between them.
• Never split fives. Two fives are a ten — the best doubling hand you can hold. Splitting turns one strong hand into two weak ones.
• Split nines against everything except 7, 10 and ace. The exception for 7 catches people out: eighteen already beats the 17 a dealer showing 7 most likely holds, so there's nothing to gain.
• Split sevens through 7, twos and threes through 7, sixes through 6. These all follow the same idea — split into the dealer's weakness, play one hand against their strength.
• Split fours only against 5 and 6, and only because doubling after splitting is allowed here. Under rules that forbid it, you'd just hit.

Rules this chart assumes

• Six decks, reshuffled before the shoe runs low.
• Dealer stands on all 17s, including soft 17.
• Blackjack pays 3 to 2.
• Double allowed on any two cards, including after a split.
• Split up to four hands. Split aces receive one card each.
• No surrender.

Change any of those and a handful of cells shift. The one to watch for elsewhere is a table paying 6 to 5 on blackjack instead of 3 to 2 — that single change costs about 1.4 percent, which is more than perfect basic strategy can ever win back. Walk past those tables.

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New to the game? The complete guide to how to play blackjack covers the rules, the terminology and what the dealer is obliged to do.