Forming a General Approach for Blackjack for Recreational Players

Added: December 26, 2014

Blackjack is one of those games that all kinds of people love, but there's no denying that the better you are, the better your payout will be and the better your chances of winning will be. Unfortunately, it can take a good bit of work and study to do that in blackjack, and not everyone has that kind of time on their hands. To help recreational players play good blackjack without having to spend hours and hours studying, we have some advice on forming a general approach to the game as a whole.

The first thing you need to realize is that your goal in the game will change depending on which type of dealer card you're facing. If you're up against a two through six, that's a weak dealer card, and it's called that because the chances of the dealer going bust is high. This means your goal will be primarily to hit hard hands until you're in danger of busting (ie: standing on 12 or higher) and hitting or doubling soft hands depending on your edge. This is a really critical part of the game that a lot of recreational players make a mistake on.

When you're up against a dealer card that's seven or higher, those are the strong dealer cards. They will make totals of 17-21 fairly often, so your goal is to hit and be aggressive when you're facing these hands instead of holding back and hoping the dealer busts. Generally speaking, you'll want to hit until you get 17 or higher yourself, though you'll sometimes want to double when you're holding a 10 or 11 as long as the dealer's up card is lower than your total. This last point is critical because it determines the nature of your advantage.

This covers the general strategy for a lot of situations except for deciding if you should split pairs. You should never split fives or tens, and you should always split aces and eights. Aside from that, you'll typically split against weak dealer cards because you have the advantage, and you'll play your hand as a normal hard hand if you decide not to split. This is the basic advice that will get you the most mileage in blackjack, and it will give you a good starting point for studying the game in more depth if you decide to in the future.