Blackjack: Rules For The Social Player

See also Blackjack Rules

This article describes a Simple Strategy that consists of only seven rules. It will help the social player lose less and is a good strategy to teach to non-blackjack-oriented friends, dates or spouses, so they can play blackjack with only a slight disadvantage to the house.

If the social player were playing $5 per hand, on average he would lose between $5 and $10 per hour playing this Simple Strategy. Many would view this as an acceptable charge for sitting at the table, enjoying the excitement of gambling and the casino environment, and receiving free alcoholic beverages or soft drinks.

The seven rules are:
1. If the dealer's upcard is a 2 or 3, the player should hit until a total of 13 is reached. So if the player had 12 and the dealer had either a 2 or 3 upcard, the player would hit. If the player had a total of 13 or greater (say 15 or 18), naturally he would stand.

2. If the dealer's upcard is a 4, 5 or 6, the player should hit until a total of 12 is reached. Thus, the player does not hit 12 versus a 4, 5 or 6. (For your information, with a 4, 5, or 6 upcard, the dealer has a 40%, 43% and 42% chance of busting by hitting his hand. In each case, always remember the real reason is that the computer experts ran thousands of hands exercising various options, compared the results and told us what the optimum play is.)

3. If the dealer's upcard is 7, 8, 9, 10 or ace, the player should hit until a total of 17 is reached. Thus, if the player had a 16 versus a dealer's 8, he must hit. Yes, his chances of busting are high, but the computer tells us that we will lose less by hitting than by standing.

These three simple rules apply to the majority of hands the player will be faced with.

This Simple Strategy has two rules for doubling-down:
4. If the player has a total of 11, he should double-down if the dealer's upcard is 2 through 10. In other words, the player automatically doubles-down on 11 in all cases except when the dealer has an ace upcard. (In certain situations the player should also double-down against the ace, but, in our Simple Strategy, we will ignore this refinement.)

5. If the player has a total of 10, he should double-down if the dealer's upcard is 2 through 9. A crutch for remembering these two rules is: you double if the dealer's upcard is less than the total of your hand—that is, double on 11 if the dealer has 2 through 10; and double on 10 if the dealer has 2 through 9.

6. One rule for splitting pairs: always split aces and 8's. Although the real reason for making these plays is because of exhaustive computer analysis, each of these plays can be better remembered if a "common sense" reason is cited:

• With two aces, the player is converting a poor hand, which totals 12 (or 2, if both aces are valued as 1) into two possibly good hands starting off with the value of 11 each.
• By splitting 8's, the player is converting a poor hand of 16 to two potentially good hands, starting with an 8 on each hand.

7. One final rule: Never Take Insurance. Insurance is a poor bet (even if you have a blackjack).