Blackjack Strategies

Often considered one of the few winnable casino games where players actively determine their own outcome rather just wagering on a chance event, blackjack has yielded scores of theories about methods to beat the house. Most estimates place the casinos’ winning advantage between 0.5% and 1%, making blackjack the most affordable game for the losing player. Throw in systematic bet raising, a 3:2 payout for a natural blackjack, and some complimentary cocktails, and its easy to see why savvy players feel that with guided strategy they can beat the house.

Basic strategies revolve around how to play the hand based on the total of the dealer’s visible cards in relation to the players’ card total. These are affected by varying rules from casino to casino about dealer play and betting, but they theorize that a player gains advantage with a lower card total compared to the dealer’s visible card total. Knowing the dealer must stop drawing at 17, and that a hand with player and a dealer bust is still a dealer win, a player can calculate when to draw or stand based on the dealer’s visible card total and if the dealer draws or stands. Combine this strategic drawing with a controlled betting strategy and a player’s odds get better.

More complicated blackjack strategies are based on methods of counting the visible occurrence of key cards to determine if the remaining cards in the shoe create an advantage for the player. Since keeping track of all the known played cards in a six or eight deck shoe is near impossible, some system of assigning positive or negative values to cards is used to create a running total reflecting the deck’s state of relative advantage or disadvantage to the player. These strategies usually assign a negative value to the cards 10 through Ace, because a higher concentration of these cards remaining in the deck builds an advantage for the player, thus when they are visibly played they decrease the deck’s value. The player should bet more aggressively when a deck’s running total is a higher positive number, and they should bet less when the deck’s total dips below zero. Many touted variations of this exist, each with exacting rules on valuing methods and theories about when best to bet, but studies show that careful card counting methods can swing the odds in favor of player by as much as 2%.

So why do casinos play a game so easily manipulated to a player’s advantage? Simply, the loss rate for players not enlisting a strategy is so great it compensates for the players able to discretely work the game to an advantage. This gives the educated blackjack player hope.