Play blackjack the wise way

Blackjack in essence is not a guessing game and not rocket science too. Converse to what people think, blackjack is a combination of math skills, speed and accuracy. An optimal strategy in blackjack can tilt the game to your favor. For successfully understanding the strategy, one needs to be familiar with the concept of “blackjack odds”. For the sake of simplicity, the blackjack odds can be compared to the probability of drawing a white colored marble from a bag containing 20 black and 80 white marbles. Hence, the odds of drawing a white marble are 4 is to 1 than drawing a black marble.

Similarly, betting in blackjack keeping the same concept in mind improves the odds to your favor.

Blackjack strategy

The strategy of gaining the upperhand in blackjack was developed way before the invention of computers but was never published. In the 1950s, a nearly faultless theory was figured out and published by 4 clerks who had plenty of free time to manually form all the possible combinations of hands that could be dealt in the game of blackjack.

The optimal strategy consists of charts most commonly for a single deck and double deck of cards. This chart, known as strategy card, redefined the way of play and it is still used. An example of blackjack strategy card can be seen here: blackjack strategy card

The left side vertical column represents the hand being dealt to the player and the top horizontal column represents the hand of the dealer. The card numbers form a matrix and to know the correct play, you need to traverse to left from row indicating your card to the column indicating the dealer’s card. The contents of this column and row combination decide the correct play.

Each card has 4 standard options that a player can follow, “Hit”, “Stand”, “Double Down” and “Split a Pair”. There is also a fifth option “surrender” available at some casino tables.

Following the strategy card reduces the house advantage to as low as 0.5%. To simplify things further, let us take an example. If my hand totals up to 14 and the dealer has a 10 up card, the strategy card asks us to “hit”. In that case, an 8, 9, 10 or higher will bust you. Nevertheless, the probability of dealer getting bust is more if he hits a lower card and then again has to hit. Therefore, both the cases are possible where the player gets bust or the dealer exceeds 21 but the odds are in your favor if you decide according to the blackjack strategy.

The blackjack strategy is not a foolproof method to win each and every game, still it helps reduce the house edge and you stand to win more frequently following the blackjack strategy. On the contrary, many still believe that blackjack is game of guessing and card counting.