Learn Blackjack Basic Strategy in Minutes

[00:01] you can play nearly even with the casinos. And I can teach you blackjack basic strategy in just a few minutes. Trust me, if you watch this video just a couple of times, you'll have blackjack basic strategy nearly wired. So, let me

[00:13] teach you basic strategy in just a few minutes. Today on Jacks, jacks.com and today I'm going to teach you how to play blackjack with nearly

[00:28] zero house advantage. Most people know that blackjack offers one of the best games in the casino. If you know how to play, you can enjoy one of the lowest house advantages offered across all casino table games. That means you'll

[00:40] than you would with every other casino game. If you can master blackjack basic strategy, you can lower the casino's house edge to less than 0.5%. That's less than half of the house edge in Bakarat and that's less than onetenth

[00:54] roulette. But learning all of blackjack basic strategy can take dozens of hours if you want to master the set of almost 300 situations. But today I'm going to help you learn it hopefully in a matter of minutes. So let's get started.

[01:09] I'm going to assume that you are already familiar with blackjack. You know the standing, splitting, and doubling down all are. And hopefully you've seen one of these blackjack basic strategy cards before. But before we start memorizing

[01:22] through what all the symbols and colors strategy color scheme first used in the This was one of the first books to publish blackjack basic strategy using

[01:35] full color charts. So that means we use red for hit, yellow for stand, blue with some red for double down and hit when you can't double, blue with yellow for double down and stand when you can't double, and green for splitting pairs.

[01:48] And the chart is organized with your player hand along the left side and the we're just going to sprint through these 28 different player hands one at a time. player hands, there are two major rules you need to follow. The first rule is

[02:04] never play six to five blackjack. If you see the phrase blackjack pays six to five, you should steer clear of that table. Avoid it like the plague. If you try to play blackjack on a six to five table, it becomes three times harder to

[02:17] blackjacks pay 3 to2 is hard enough without getting your blackjack bonus without getting your blackjack bonus nerfed by 60%. So never play 6 to5 blackjack. The second rule is never take insurance. Never take even money. Some

[02:30] when you're dealt a blackjack and the dealer has an ace showing. And some 20 when the dealer has an ace showing, but don't listen to them. It doesn't matter what your total is when the dealer has an ace showing. It only

[02:44] If they have a 10 in the hole, you win the insurance bet. If they have any other card, you lose the insurance bet. And I have a few videos that discuss why it's bad to take insurance or to take even money. But the short answer is

[02:57] because the math tells you not to do it. So, now we're going to go through the we're going to start with the hard hands. And within the hard hands, let's start out with the low hard totals. These are the hard player hands 4

[03:11] through 11. So, in case you don't already know, hard totals are the player hands that don't contain an ace and don't contain a pair that you can split. So, for hard totals of 4 through 8, it's easy. You always hit. That's it. You

[03:25] dealer is showing. Just hit it. You can't bust, so you wouldn't consider standing. And you can't even make a 20 with the next card, so you wouldn't consider doubling. Now, for a hard nine, it's a little more tricky. With a hard

[03:38] dealers 3 through six up card, and you hit everything else. So, you're going to hit against the dealer's two, 7, 8, 9, 10, and ace. With a hard 10 and hard 11, you should always double except when the

[03:51] dealer's up card is the same as your total or higher. So with a hard 10, you double against two through nine and just hit against 10 and ace. With a hard 11, double against two through 10 and just hit against an ace. And that's it for

[04:05] the low soft totals. And now we're going to cover the stiff hard hands. Stiff hands are hard hands that are in danger of breaking, also known as busting. And in case you didn't notice, there are a lot of metaphors

[04:17] about being hard, being soft, and being stiff in BJ. These stiff hands are hard hands where your total is 12 through 16. For this set of hands, you just need to learn three things. When do you hit by default? When do you stand by default

[04:32] default, you should hit against all high up cards. The high dealer up cards are the cards seven through ace. And when you have a stiff hand, you will always hit. Now, here we are ignoring

[04:44] small up card, you should stand by default. The small up cards are the cards two through six. Now, the only exceptions to this are when you have a hard 12 and the dealer has a two or three showing. And that's all you really

[04:57] need to know about the stiff hands. There are some exceptions to this if you to explore that in this video. In this introductory lesson, we're only going to stiff hands. And to close out the hard

[05:10] hands, let's talk about pat hands. Pat hard hands are hard totals of 17 and up. With pat hands, it's easy. You always stand with a pat hand against a dealer. Low or high card. It doesn't matter. And that's it for all of the hard hands. And

[05:24] hands. That is the vast majority of hands you're going to play in blackjack. So next up are soft hands. Soft hands are hands containing an ace where the ace might act as either a one or an 11.

[05:38] And a soft total is the value of the hand when you assume the ace is an 11. So, a hand with an ace and a five would be considered a soft 16. And one characteristic of a soft hand is that you can't break them. That's why they're

[05:52] soft. If you hit a soft hand and get a 10, now you just have a hard to. So, soft hands are rare. They're a lot more rare than the hard hands. And since an ace 10 isn't really considered a soft 21, there are really only eight soft

[06:05] start off with the low soft totals, which is ace 2 through ace 6. That's a soft 13 through soft 17. With the low soft hands, your only options are to hit or double down. With these hands, you're always going to take another card. You

[06:20] going to double down or not. When you double down with a low soft total, it's not really about trying to make a great hand. It's often about hoping that the dealer busts, but if the dealer actually makes a hand, you're hoping that you can

[06:33] back door into a higher total. So, with that in mind, let's look at the double can look at the dealer's up card first. We're going to kind of go through this chart vertically for this section. Versus a dealer five and six, you're

[06:46] going to double all low soft hands if you can. So double your ace deuce, ace you can. So double your ace deuce, ace three, ace 4, ace 5, and ace six versus five and six. Versus a dealer four up card, you double with ace4, ace five,

[07:01] and ace 6. And with a dealer three up card, you double against ace 6. and you you can't double because you have three or more cards. Now, let's look at the high soft totals. That's ace seven and up. That's a soft 18 and higher. And

[07:16] specifically, we're going to look at soft 18 first or a7. We really have to difficult hand to learn because it's the only one where you have three main options. With Ace7, you sometimes hit, you sometimes double, and you sometimes

[07:30] stand. So with A7, you double against three, four, five, and six, and you stand against two, seven, and eight. And one thing that surprises a lot of people is that you hit against a 9, 10, and ace. So you hit when the dealer's up

[07:45] card plus 10 is higher than your own hand. And for the ultra high soft totals, that's ace 8, ace 9, and of course, ace 10. When you have one of these ultra high soft totals, you always stand. You're not going to double, and

[07:57] really want to double, you can double the ace8 versus a dealer six, but only when the dealer hits a soft 17. But if it's easier to just stand as opposed to stand. It's not going to cost you much in expected value. And obviously, if you

[08:12] natural, that's a blackjack. Just get be playing at a 3 to2 table. You're not playing at a 6 to5 table, right? And that's it for all the soft hands. Pretty

[08:24] And finally, we're going to look at pairs in blackjack. And let me just start out by saying that you should not be splitting tens. Even though you can split a hand with two non-matching tens, you should never split them. And a pair

[08:37] of fives should never be split either. A pair of fives should always be treated like a hard 10. And if you ignore pairs of tens and pairs of fives, then pairs become the least common type of hand, so it makes sense to learn them last. And

[08:49] complicated with pairs because sometimes your decision to split the pair is going double after splitting. Obviously, if splitting, the option to split will become more attractive. You're going to

[09:03] this come into play when you have a pair of twos, threes, sixes, and even fours. So, in learning pairs, you first want to learn about aces and eights. The easiest hand to learn are the pairs of aces and eights. With aces, you're always going

[09:18] dealer is showing. It doesn't matter that you only get one card on split aces. You always split aces. Splitting aces is great because it turns a soft 12 into two great hands. Starting out with an 11 is great because you have about a

[09:33] 38% chance of making a 20 or higher. You're splitting here to try to make more money. This is an offensive split. And with a pair of eights, you always split these two. The only difference between aces and eights is that

[09:47] When you split eights against the dealers nines, tens, and aces, you're mostly trying to avoid starting the hand with a 16. A lot of people are afraid to split eights against a dealer high card, but I can assure you that it's the right

[10:01] play. You do not want to start with a 16. A 16 is the absolute worst hand you can start out with. So, for a pair of nines, that's pretty easy, too. Just split against a dealer's two through nine, except against sevens. Against

[10:14] sevens, tens, and aces, you just stand. And with a pair of fours, you are not going to split by default. There are only two exceptions. You will split fours against the dealer's five or six, but only if you're allowed to double

[10:27] it like a hard eight, and you just hit. Now, a pair of twos and a pair of threes play out exactly the same. You always split these against a four, five, six, and seven. Yes, seven. And against a dealer two or dealer three, you split if

[10:42] when you don't split, treat it like a hard hand and you're just going to hit. Pair of sevens is pretty easy, too. Pair of sevens, you just split when the Otherwise, you hit. With a pair of sixes, you split against threes, fours,

[10:56] fives, and sixes. Against twos, you only split if you can double after splits. split if you can double after splits. Against all other up cards, hit. So, we went over hard hands, soft hands, and pairs. If you're learning blackjack

[11:09] highly encourage you to watch this video a couple of times. Just keep watching it more of a visual learner, you can buy one of my blackjack basic strategy cards available at shop.jack.com. Or you can print out one of my blackjack

[11:23] basic strategy charts for free at jackas.com. If you enjoy this content, remember to like and subscribe. Always gamble responsibly. Never play six to five blackjack. And peace out, donkeys. [Music]