A SIMPLE STRATEGY

Before employing any blackjack playing strategy, it is important that you first become familiar with the proper decision-making procedure. Knowledge of a playing strategy will be of limited value if you try to apply it haphazardly. There is a certain evaluation sequence that should be followed in order to make the best playing decisions.

PLAYING DECISIONS

Many novice blackjack players get flustered when it is their turn to make a decision on how to play their hand. Should they split? Should  they double down? Should they hit? Should they stand? Suddenly there seem to be an unending number of decisions to make. Although they have carefully memorized the strategy rules, when their turn comes and the dealer is impatiently pointing at their hand, they draw a blank and end up taking the wrong action.

Experienced كازينو players, on the other hand, don’t have this problem when it comes time to make a decision, because they already use such a methodical approach on a subconscious level. It is so automatic that most of them don’t even realize they are doing it. Whether subconscious or not, if you follow the decision process outlined below while applying the basic strategy, you have the best chance of playing your hand correctly .

Decide whether or not to surrender. Apply the basicكازينو strategy rules to determine if surrendering is the best action. If surrender is not offered by the casino or you are using a simplified strategy table, skip to pair splitting.

Decide whether or not to split a pair. Apply the basic strategy rules to determine if splitting is the best action. If your initial hand is not a pair, skip to doubling.

Decide whether or not to double down. Whether or not you have split a pair, apply the basic كازينوstrategy rules to determine if doubling is the next best action.

Decide whether to hit or stand. If you did not double, apply the basic strategy rules to determine if you should hit or stand.

If you split a pair, repeat the above steps for each hand. These four fundamental playing decisions are summarized in the following simple, easy-to- remember chart:

A SIMPLE STRATEGY

When you are a beginner, learning the entire Universal Basicكازينو Strategy table in the next section seems like a daunting task—especially when you are anxious to start playing. An easier approach is to first learn the simplified strategy presented in this section. Surprisingly, using the Simple Strategy costs the player less than 1% as compared to the Universal Basic Strategy. That is, the house advantage will still be only 1% or so—which is a lot better than the 3% to 5% advantage the house has over the average player.

The main differences between this strategy and the full-blown basic strategy are the lack of a surrender option and simplified splitting and doubling rules. When you apply the simplified rules, be sure to play non-split pairs like a hard hand, as the table indicates. If the strategy tells you to split a pair, then it is correct to resplit if you catch a third card of the same value. Before you ever step up to a blackjack table, be sure you have the following rules down pat, and have familiarized yourself with the above decision-making procedure, which you can reduce to three steps, since there is no surrender rule to consider.

Pair of aces: Always split a pair of aces. The value of the initial hand is either a 2 or a soft 12, neither of which is very good. By splitting, you get two chances of catching a 21. Remember that splitting aces is a special case. The dealer will give you just one card on each ace, and you cannot take any hits. If one of those cards is another ace, you should resplit to a third hand, if the casino permits you to do so.