Blackjack Basic Strategy

Find your hand on the left, the upcard along the top, and read the play where they cross. Look them up in a fixed order: a pair on the first two cards goes to the pairs chart, which also gives the play for pairs it does not split; a soft hand goes to the soft chart; everything else is read from the hard chart.

• H hit, S stand, P split.
• D double if allowed, otherwise hit. Ds double if allowed, otherwise stand.
• Rh, Rs and Rp surrender if allowed, otherwise hit, stand or split.

The fallback after each D or R applies once a hand has three cards, since doubling and surrender are only offered on the first two. The six-deck charts also serve four-deck and eight-deck tables, where not one cell differs; only two decks and one deck play differently.

Totals of 8 or less are always hit and 17 or more always stood on, so each range takes one row. Four-deck and eight-deck games use the same chart.

A,7 is soft 18 and A,9 is soft 20. A soft hand that has drawn more cards is read by its total, so A,2,4 is played like A,6.

Where a pair is not split, the letter is the play for its total: 5,5 is treated as a hard 10 and doubled. The splits of small pairs assume the table lets you double after a split.

Every cell not listed plays as in the charts above. Hitting soft 17 moves 3 cells, late surrender adds 4 surrenders, and the no-hole-card rule undoes 4 plays. Where a table combines H17 with surrender, use both sets of rows and also surrender hard 15, hard 17 and 8,8 against an ace.

Every column here assumes S17 with doubling allowed after a split. Two decks alter 4 cells of the six-deck charts and one deck 14; a cell not shown is identical at every deck count.

A rule moves a cell only where two plays were already close. Hitting soft 17 gives the dealer more ways to bust from a weak start, tipping 11 against an ace, soft 18 against a 2 and soft 19 against a 6 toward the double; the soft 17 rule page prices each of those cells. Surrender adds cells rather than moving them, all among the hands that lose the most, and the blackjack surrender page gives the value of every one.

Without a hole card, money added by a double or a split is exposed to a dealer blackjack nobody sees coming, so those plays against a 10 or an ace revert to a hit, as the European blackjack page explains. Fewer decks make your cards and the upcard a bigger share of what remains, tilting close calls toward doubling and splitting; the single-deck page covers that game.

The rule: Match the chart to the rule card before the first hand. A chart built for other rules misplays only a handful of cells, but each of those is a small loss repeated every time the hand comes up.

One more rule reaches the pairs chart. Where doubling after a split is not allowed, 7 small-pair splits against low cards become hits: 2,2 and 3,3 against a 2 or 3, 4,4 against a 5 or 6, and 6,6 against a 2. The pair splitting guide sets every pair against every upcard, with the rule and without it.

Each value below is the expected result per 100 units staked after the dealer's blackjack check, on the six-deck game of the charts. Many correct plays still lose money; they are correct because every alternative loses more, not because they avoid a bust.

Hard 16 against a 10 is the closest call in the chart: standing returns −54.0 and hitting −53.5, so the hit wins by a fraction of a unit. With late surrender, giving up half the stake returns −50.0, ahead of both.

Hard 12 changes play across the low upcards. Against a 2 a hit returns −25.3 and a stand −29.3; against a 3 the hit still leads, −23.2 to −25.2; against a 4 the order flips, standing at −20.9 and hitting at −21.2. Only ten-value cards bust a 12, and a dealer 2 or 3 busts too seldom to make standing pay.

Hard 11 against a 10 is doubled: +17.7 against +11.8 for a plain hit, since the extra stake lands on a hand already ahead. Against an ace the order reverses, with the double at +12.6 and the hit at +14.7; an H17 table puts the double back in front. Every hard and soft double, upcard by upcard, is priced in the doubling guide.

Figures are per 100 units of the original stake on the six-deck S17 game of the charts. A double or a split puts more money out, so its result can run past 100 either way.

The charts play by total, so a three-card 16 is played like a two-card one. Exact-card play gains almost nothing: the six-deck house edge is 0.41% with the charts and 0.40% with perfect play. Far more is lost to the handful of plays that are easy to get wrong, and the blackjack tips page lists the costliest of them with what each one takes.

Insurance has no place in basic strategy; it is a separate wager on the hole card, priced on the blackjack insurance page. Following which cards have left a live shoe can adjust a few plays and the bet size, and the card counting guide explains how.

Games that rewrite the rules need charts of their own, which Spanish 21, Free Bet blackjack and Blackjack Switch each cover. For everything else, our blackjack demos let you drill the plays free, with no account.