When sitting around a blackjack corner, you know that you are only playing against the dealer, no matter how many players there are. What if there was a way to get an edge on the dealer? What if you could sneak into their head and know the psychology of what is in their hand?
I am going to share with you a few tips about dealer
Do you know? Are you sure you know?
Yes, blackjack offers some good odds when compared to other casino games. But really, what are your chances of winning?
Excluding pushes (the times that you and the dealer have the same total), you have a 48% shot of winning while the dealer has a 52% shot of beating you.
Realistically those are high odds for players. And they are much better than what you odds would be of winning roulette or slots. But, yes, the house still has the edge. Even when you are using basic strategy.
Depending on what house rules are in play, the house will start out with a 2% to 5% edge over you. But playing all of your hands
Some players think that working in games that allow the dealer to hit a soft 17 is good for their blackjack strategy.
They would be mistaken.
Sure, on the surface a dealer hitting a soft 17 sounds like a good thing. Players might think that the dealer has a better shot of busting because he is so close to 21. But what these players are forgetting is that Ace. The Ace that makes that soft 17 soft can be reduced to a 1 if the dealer hits and receives a card that would cause him to bust.
Because of that Ace, dealers can actually reduce that 17 to an 8 and hit to rebuild a stronger hand. He might then wind up with a hard 17 or higher that stands a shot of beating the player. Just like how an Ace can benefit a player, so too can it benefit the dealer. A soft 17 can be rebuilt whereas a hard 17 has a better shot of being beat by the player.
With that ability to rebuild his soft 17, the house
This morning I talked about a house rule to work into your blackjack strategy in which the house rule actually favors the player. Well, there is another one. This particular house rules allows players to double down after they have they have split a pair.
The step by step breakdown of how this house rule works goes like this:
First you have to be dealt a pair. You then choose to split that pair and up your wager accordingly. Let
This is the last of the pair splitting post, I swear. But what would a mutli-part discussion on pair splitting blackjack strategy be without a post devoted to pairs of 8s? It would be incomplete, that is what. So here it is blackjack strategy meets a pair of 8s.
Unlike pairs of 5s and 10s, and like a pair of Aces, a pair of 8s should always be split.
Why do you not split a pair of 8s?
Let me ask you what is 8 + 8? The answer is 16. So a pair of 8s is the same thing as a hard 16. And we all know how much we hate that hand. Nothing worse than a stiff hand, and a hard 16 is the worst. It is not high enough to win with, and it is also too high to hit.
In my opinion a hard 16 is the worst hand to have in blackjack. The only way you can win with it is if the dealer busts because there are five totals that are higher than your 16, all of which the dealer can stand on.
If that alone is not enough to convince you not to split your pair of 8s, ask yourself which you would rather have: one 16 that does not have a decent shot at winning. Or would you rather have two hands that each start with 8?
You should have said two hands that start with 8. This is because, while the chances are not stellar, you do have a better chance of building a stronger hand by starting each hand with an 8 than you do of winning with a hard 16.
Splitting a pair of 8s is on a basic strategy chart, which is legal to use in brick and mortar casinos and in online blackjack. But you have to use it, to make it a part of your blackjack strategy, in order for it to be effective. That includes splitting a pair of 8s when it tells you to. And besides it is just good blackjack strategy to split 8s.
I was thinking some more about commonly made blackjack mistakes, and I got to thinking more about pair splitting and blackjack strategy. I know I mentioned how some pairs should be split and some should not, that is just how blackjack strategy is supposed to be.
Blackjack players just do not seem to apply any blackjack strategy to their game when it comes to pairs. They can usually be divided into two ways of dealing with pairs: they either split everything just for the sake of splitting a pair, or they play their pairs like hard hands. And both ways are wrong and not good blackjack strategy. Not to mention it hurts a player
No, I am not talking about that so-called sandwich. A friend of mine tried it once and could not eat for two days his stomach was so upset.
I am talking about the double down play that players can make in blackjack. This handy little play packs quite a punch against the house. And we all know that when the house
