Blackjack — rules card

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Blackjack 1 against the dealer players · a shoe of several 52-card packs THE IDEA • Get closer to 21 than the dealer, without going over. Going over is BUST and you lose at once, whatever the dealer then does. • Cards are worth their number. A king, queen or jack is 10. An ace is 11, or 1 if 11 would bust you. YOUR TURN • HIT to take another card. STAND to stop. • DOUBLE doubles your bet and gives you exactly one more card, then stops you. • SPLIT turns a pair into two hands, each with its own bet. You play them one after the other. WHAT THE DEALER MUST DO • The dealer has no choices at all. They draw to 16 and stand on 17. • That is the whole reason the game can be played well: the other side of the table is a rule, not an opponent. GETTING PAID • Win and you get your bet back and the same again. • A BLACKJACK — an ace and a ten-card in the first two — pays three to two. It is the only bet on the table that pays more than even money. • Same total as the dealer is a PUSH: nobody wins and you get your bet back. THE COACH • The suggested move is BASIC STRATEGY — the play with the best long-run outcome for the exact hand you are holding against the exact card the dealer is showing. • It is a suggestion and it is often wrong about one hand. It is right about ten thousand of them, which is what "best" means here. WORDS THIS GAME USES Bust — Going over 21. You lose immediately, before the dealer plays at all — which is why hitting a hard 16 is frightening. Hard and soft — A SOFT hand holds an ace still counting as 11, so it cannot bust on one card. A HARD hand cannot fall back. Blackjack — An ace with a ten, king, queen or jack in your first two cards. Pays three to two. Push — A tie. Your bet comes back and nothing happens. The shoe — Several packs shuffled together, dealt from one box. Casinos use it to make counting cards hard. The upcard — The dealer's one face-up card. Every decision you make is about that card as much as about your own hand. Basic strategy — The published best play for every possible hand. Not a system for winning — a system for losing least. WHERE THESE CAME FROM Wizard of Odds — Blackjack rules and basic strategy. Blackjack is the one game here with something close to an authority: the maths is settled and published, even though every casino writes its own house rules on top of it. w.richardpringle.com/games/blackjack/ ▲ FOLD ▼ ▲ FOLD ▼ ▲ FOLD ▼ FOLD & TEAR