Blackjack basic strategy chart

A blackjack strategy chart is just a big lookup table, and once you see how it is built it reads in seconds. Down the left side you find your own hand, grouped into three blocks: hard hands (any total with no ace, or where the ace can only count as one), soft hands (a hand with an ace counted as eleven, like Ace-Seven for a soft 18), and pairs (two matching cards, like a pair of eights). Across the top is the dealer upcard, the one card the dealer is showing, running from 2 up through Ace. Your row and the dealer's column meet in one cell, and that cell is your move.

Each cell tells you to do one of four things: hit (take another card), stand (keep what you have), double down (double your bet and take exactly one more card), or split (separate a pair into two hands). That single cell is the whole answer for that situation, so you never have to guess.

One note on doubling. When a chart says Double, it means double if the rules allow it, which is always true on a fresh two-card hand. If you have already taken a card and can no longer double, fall back to hitting instead, with one exception: on a soft 18 you would stand rather than hit when doubling is off the table. Splitting works the same way, only on a true pair.

To use the chart, find your hand on the left, slide straight across to the dealer's upcard column, and read the cell where they cross. If you would rather not eyeball it, use the lookup tool on this page to type in your two cards and the dealer's card and get the same answer. Playing every hand this way is what basic strategy is, and it trims the house edge to roughly half a percent without any card counting at all.

The hit-or-stand decision comes down to one question: how likely are you to bust if you take a card, versus how likely the dealer is to beat you if you don't. The easy ends of that range are simple. If your hard hand is 8 or less, you can never bust by taking one card, so you always hit. If you have a hard 17 or more, the risk of busting is too high and your total is already respectable, so you always stand. No dealer upcard changes those two rules.

The interesting part is the middle, the stiff hands of 12 through 16. These are too high to hit comfortably and too low to feel safe, so what you do depends entirely on the dealer upcard. The whole idea is to let the dealer take the risk when the dealer is in trouble. When the dealer shows a 2 through 6, those are bust cards, meaning the dealer is most likely to draw into a busted hand. Against those cards you stand on your stiff hand and let the dealer bust for you, with one exception: you hit 12 against a 2 or a 3, because a 12 busts only when you draw a ten and standing there gives up too much. So you stand on 13 through 16 against a 2 through 6, and you stand on 12 only against 4, 5, or 6.

When the dealer shows a 7 through Ace, the situation flips. Those upcards usually build into a strong total, so standing on a weak stiff hand just hands the dealer the win. Here you hit and try to improve, even though it feels risky. Two concrete cases make this stick. With 16 against a dealer 10, you hit, because a standing 16 almost always loses to the strong hand a 10 is building. With 13 against a dealer 6, you stand, because the 6 is a classic bust card and your job is simply to stay alive and let the dealer break.

This is the heart of basic strategy, and it works whether you are playing a hard hand or a soft hand. Once you internalize the 2-through-6 versus 7-through-Ace split, the hit and stand choices stop feeling like guesses. Layered together with the right times to double down and split, this discipline is what trims the house edge to roughly half a percent, no card counting required.

Splitting is the move where a pair becomes two separate hands, each getting its own new card and its own bet. The fastest way to remember the rule is the part that never changes: always split aces and eights, and never split tens or fives. You split aces because a single ace is a strong start, and breaking the pair gives you two fresh shots at a 21 or a 20 instead of one clumsy soft hand. You split eights because a pair of them is a hard 16, the worst total in the game, so turning one bad hand into two hands that each start with 8 is a clear upgrade. You never split tens because you already hold 20, an almost-certain winner, and there is no reason to risk that by breaking it apart. You never split fives either; instead you treat the pair as a hard 10 and double down against a dealer 2 through 9, otherwise hit.

For the rest of the pairs, the dealer upcard decides everything, and most of them follow a friendly low-card pattern. Split 2s, 3s, and 7s against a dealer showing 2 through 7, and just hit against anything higher. Split 6s against a dealer 2 through 6, those weak bust cards, and hit otherwise. Split 4s only in the narrowest spot, against a dealer 5 or 6, and hit against everything else, because a pair of fours plays fine as a hard 8 the rest of the time.

Nines are the one pair with a split-and-stop pattern worth memorizing. Split 9s against a dealer 2 through 6 and again against an 8 or 9, but stand against a 7, a 10, or an Ace. The reason is simple: your pair of nines is already a hard 18, and an 18 is good enough to beat a dealer who is likely sitting on 17 when they show a 7, so you keep the strong hand together rather than gambling on two new ones.

These splitting calls are part of basic strategy, the same chart that tells you when to hit, when to stand, and when to double down, and following it is what trims the house edge to roughly half a percent. Splitting decisions sit alongside your reads on a soft hand and a hard hand, all driven by that one dealer upcard. None of this is card counting; it is just the mathematically best play for the two cards in front of you, every single time.

Doubling down is the move you make when you are strong and the dealer looks weak. You put out a second bet equal to your first, take exactly one more card, and that is it. Because you are doubling your money for a single card, you only want to do it when the odds are clearly tilted your way, so basic strategy is picky about when it tells you to do it. The rest of the time you just hit or stand as usual.

On hard hands (a hand with no ace, or an ace forced to count as 1) the big one is hard 11: double against everything the dealer shows except an Ace, and simply hit against that Ace. Double a hard 10 when the dealer's upcard is 2 through 9, and double a hard 9 when the dealer shows 3 through 6. Those dealer cards are the weak ones, the cards a dealer is most likely to bust with, which is exactly when pressing your bet pays off.

Soft hands (a hand with an ace counted as 11, like ace plus four) also offer doubles, and they show up against that same weak dealer range. Double A2 and A3 against a dealer 5 or 6, double A4 and A5 against 4 through 6, double A6 against 3 through 6, and double A7 against 3 through 6. The idea is the same as the hard doubles: you have a flexible hand and the dealer is sitting on a card that often busts, so you lean in.

Two practical notes. You can only double on your first two cards, so the chance is gone the moment you take a hit. And when a strategy chart tells you to double but the rules or your bankroll won't allow it, read that as "double if allowed, otherwise hit." None of this is about splitting pairs or counting cards; played straight, knowing exactly when to double is one of the cleanest ways to shave the house edge.

A soft hand is any hand where you are counting an ace as 11. The magic of a soft hand is that it cannot bust on your very next card, because if a big card would put you over 21, the ace simply drops down to count as 1 instead. Hold an A,6 (a soft 17) and take a 10, and you do not bust, you just have a hard 17. That built-in safety net is why basic strategy lets you play soft hands more aggressively than a hard hand, which can absolutely bust the moment you draw a high card.

Walking through the key ones, soft 13 through soft 17 (that is A,2 up to A,6) mostly call for a hit, and you upgrade to a double down when the dealer is showing one of their weakest cards. The exact spots are easy to feel out once you watch the dealer upcard: A,2 and A,3 double against 5 and 6, A,4 and A,5 double against 4 through 6, and A,6 doubles against 3 through 6. The rest of the time you simply hit and try to improve, since a low soft total is never a hand you want to stand on.

Soft 18 (A,7) is the tricky one that trips people up, so it is worth memorizing on its own. You double down against a dealer 3 through 6, you stand against a 2, 7, or 8, and you HIT against a 9, 10, or ace. That last part surprises beginners, but 18 is simply not a safe number against those strong dealer upcards, and drawing to it wins more often than standing pat. Soft 19 and soft 20 (A,8 and A,9) are the easy ones, you always stand and let them ride.

Keep the contrast clear in your head. A soft hand gives you a free swing because the ace can rescue you, while a hard hand has no ace cushion and busts if you draw too big. Playing your soft hands correctly is one of the cleaner ways basic strategy chips away at the house edge, and it has nothing to do with split decisions or card counting, just knowing when the ace is protecting you and when an 18 needs one more card.

This chart is built for the most common game you will find on a casino floor: a shoe dealt from 4 to 8 decks, where the dealer stands on soft 17 (often printed on the felt as S17), double after split is allowed (DAS), and there is no surrender. Those four rules are the standard setup, and the basic strategy laid out here matches them exactly. Every time you hit, stand, double down, or split according to this chart against a given dealer upcard, you are making the mathematically best play for that game.

The one variation you will run into most often is the dealer hitting soft 17 instead of standing on it (H17). A soft hand is one with an ace counted as 11, so when the dealer shows a card that could become a soft 17, hitting it gives the house a little more room to improve. This nudges the house edge up slightly and shifts a few of your plays, mostly in spots where you would already be doubling against a strong dealer card. The changes are small, and following the S17 chart against an H17 game still plays very close to perfect.

Where surrender is offered, you get the option to give up half your bet and fold a hopeless hand rather than play it out. With that rule you would surrender a couple of the very worst spots, the clearest being a hard 16 against a dealer 10. A hard hand has no ace, or an ace forced to count as 1, so a stiff 16 is a genuine loser against a 10 and bailing for half saves money over the long run. Without surrender on the table, you simply play those hands as the chart shows.

The takeaway is to glance at the table rules before you sit down, but not to worry if conditions are not perfect. This chart is correct for the standard shoe game and captures nearly all of the available edge, trimming the house edge to roughly half a percent. That is the floor you can reach with strategy alone, before anything like card counting ever enters the picture.

Basic strategy is the mathematically proven best play for every hand you can be dealt. For any combination of your cards and the dealer upcard, it tells you the single decision that loses the least or wins the most over the long run, whether that is to hit, stand, double down, or split. These are not opinions or hunches; they come from running the math on every possible outcome. When you follow the chart exactly, you shrink the house edge to roughly half a percent, which is about as low as the game goes without counting cards.

It helps to be clear about what that half a percent means. Basic strategy does not turn blackjack into a winning game on its own; the house still keeps a small mathematical edge no matter how perfectly you play. What it does is make blackjack one of the cheapest games on the floor to play, and it removes the costly mistakes that quietly hand the casino far more than half a percent. Every other skill you might pick up, whether you are working with a hard hand, a soft hand with an ace counted as eleven, or a pair, builds on this foundation, so it is the first thing worth learning well.

The next step beyond basic strategy is card counting, which tracks the mix of high and low cards still to come and can actually tilt the edge toward the player in the right conditions. That is a bigger commitment and a separate topic, but it is the only widely known way to push past the half a percent floor. You can also estimate any game's house edge before you sit down, because the edge follows directly from the rules, things like the number of decks, whether the dealer stands on soft seventeen, and whether you are allowed to double after a split. Better rules mean a lower edge, and basic strategy is what lets you capture it.