I have outline the basic rules to get you started, for a complete set of rules please refer to the online Casino you intend to play on as rules can vary between casinos.

The basic rules of blackjack are outlined here with the intention of introducing a novice player.

Each blackjack player at the table competes only against the dealer (i.e. the bank/casino), not against other players. The often stated goal of blackjack is to draw cards until your hand adds up to 21, or comes as close as possible without exceeding 21. More realistically the true goal is simply to beat the dealer. It just so happens that usually, your best hope of beating the dealer so is to get as close to 21 as you can without going over.

If your first two cards total 21, you have been dealt a blackjack. If the dealer gets closer to 21 than you without going over themselves, the dealer wins your bet. The dealer does not have freedom to choose how to play their hand, and always follow a set of blackjack rules which apply only to the dealer. Understanding these is just as important as knowing what you can do as a player.

Before you are dealt a hand, you must place wager. The dealer then deals two cards to each of the players at the table, and two to themselves. The first of the dealer’s cards is dealt face up and the second is dealt face down. Face cards (kings, queens and jacks) count as 10, an ace counts as one or 11 (whichever is more advantageous to the current hand) and all other cards are counted at their face value.

If the dealer’s hand totals 16 or less, they must take a card. If the dealer’s hand is 17 or more, they must stand. Sometimes a casino lets the dealer hit on a soft seventeen, adding to the casino edge. Should a player get a Blackjack (first 2 cards are an Ace and a ten) standard blackjack rules pay back at 3 to 2, or 1.5 to 1.

You also have the option during mid play to ‘double down’ after you are dealt your first two cards. To double down is to double your bet on your current hand, part way through. When you choose to double down it means you will be dealt one more card on your hand, and this will produce your final hand, with no more opportunities to hit. Some casinos only allow doubling on a total of 9, 10, or 11 (this is sometimes referred to as European Rules Blackjack) although some allow doubling down on any 2-card hand.

If you are dealt a pair, you have the option of ‘splitting’ them. The original bet will go with one card and an equal amount of chips go against the 2nd card. You are now playing two hands, each as though they were independent, normal blackjack hands following standard rules. If you were splitting aces however, you only get one more card on each hand after the split. If you manage to split aces and draw a ten, it is not considered a natural Blackjack, so you don’t get paid 3 to 2, but you still win (this is valid for most casinos but please check the Casino rules regarding this).

The first accounts of gambling were in 2300 B.C. or so, and yes, the Chinese again get the credit. Gambling was very popular in Ancient Greece even though it was illegal and has been a part of the human experience ever since.

The history of the BlackJack card game itself is still disputed but was probably spawned from other French games such as “chemin de fer” and “French Ferme”. BlackJack originated in French casinos around 1700 where it was called “vingt-et-un” (“twenty-and-one”) and has been played in the U.S. since the 1800′s. BlackJack is named as such because if a player got a Jack of Spades and an Ace of Spades as the first two cards (Spade being the color black of course), the player was additionally remunerated.

Gambling was legal out West from the 1850′s to 1910, at which time Nevada made it a felony to operate a gambling game. In 1931, Nevada re-legalized casino gambling where BlackJack became one of the primary games of chance offered to gamblers. As some of you may recall, 1978 was the year casino gambling was legalized in Atlantic City, New Jersey. As of 1989, only two states had legalized casino gambling. Since then, about 20 states have had a number of small time casinos sprout up in places such as Black Hawk and Cripple Creek, Colorado and in river boats on the Mississippi. Roughly 70 Native American Indian reservations operate or are building casinos as well.

In addition to the United States, countries operating casinos include France, England, Monaco (Monte Carlo of course) and quite a few in the Caribbean islands.

The first recognized effort to apply mathematics to BlackJack began in 1953 and culminated in 1956 with a published paper. Roger Baldwin wrote a paper in the Journal of the American Statistical Association titled “The Optimum Strategy in BlackJack”. These pioneers used calculators and probability and statistics theory to substantially reduce the house advantage. Although the title of their paper was ‘optimum strategy’, it wasn’t really the best strategy because they really needed a computer to refine their system. I dug up a copy of their paper from the library, it is ten pages long and fairly mathematical.

Professor Edward O. Thorp picked up where Baldwin and company left off. In 1962, Thorp refined their basic strategy and developed the first card counting techniques. He published his results in “Beat the Dealer”, a book that became so popular that for a week in 1963 it was on the New York Times best seller list. The book also scared the hell out of the casinos.

Thorp wrote “Beat the Market” in 1967, in which he used mathematics and computer algorithms to find pricing inefficiencies between stocks and related securities. Currently he is using an arbitrage formula to exploit undervalued warrants in the Japanese stock market.

The casinos were so affected by “Beat the Dealer” that they began to change the rules of the game to make if more difficult for the players to win. This didn’t last long as people protested by not playing the new pseudo-BlackJack. The unfavorable rules resulted in a loss of income for the casinos. Of course, not making money is a sin for a casino, so they quickly reverted back to the original rules. As Thorp’s “Ten-Count” method wasn’t easy to master and many people didn’t really understand it anyway, the casinos made a bundle from the game‘s newly gained popularity thanks to Thorp’s book and all the media attention it generated. Beat the Dealer is rather difficult to find these days, although I managed to pick up a copy at the library recently.

Another major contributor in the history of winning BlackJack play is Julian Braun, who worked at IBM. His thousands of lines of computer code and hours of BlackJack simulation on IBM mainframes resulted in The Basic Strategy, and a number of card counting techniques. His conclusions were used in a 2nd edition of Beat the Dealer, and later in Lawrence Revere’s 1977 book “playing BlackJack as a Business”.

I have outline the basic rules to get you started, for a complete set of rules please refer to the online Casino you intend to play on as rules can vary between casinos.

Basic Rules

The most important thing to know about blackjack is the basic strategy. This strategy is simply the best way to play every possible situation, without any knowledge of the distribution of the rest of the cards in the deck. Below is the basic strategy for four of more decks when the dealer hits on soft 17, which is the most common game.

If you only memorize one table I would suggest this one. It can be played effectively under any rules.

To use the basic strategy look up your hand along the left vertical edge and the dealer’s up card along the top. In both cases an A stands for ace. From top to bottom are the hard totals, soft totals, and splittable hands. Rule variations can have an effect on some borderline situations. The most flexible rules are the number of decks, whether the dealer hits or stands on a soft 17, and whether doubling is allowed after splitting. These additional variations only account for 0.03% of house edge.

Red= Hit
Yellow= Stay
Blue= Double if allowed, if not Hit (except stay on soft 18 vs 3,4,5,6)
Orange= Surrender if allowed, if not Hit
Green=  Split
Pink=  Split if allowed to double after split, if not hit

Universal Blackjack Strategy

This Matrix was put together with help from Stanford Wongs site http://www.bj21.com

Insurance

Do not take insurance, even if you have a blackjack. Card counters can get away with making smart insurance bets when the deck is rich in tens but the non-counting player should always decline it. The following table shows the house edge on the insurance bet depending on the number of decks used.

Surrender

Sometimes in a 6 or 8 deck game the player has the option to surrender. To be specific the player may forfeit half their bet to be excused from playing out their hand. Obviously this option should only be taken in the worst hands when the net return is less than 50%. In late surrender (the only kind I have ever seen) the player may only opt to surrender after the dealer checks for a blackjack. The following table is a basic guide for when to surrender (Y=yes, N=no).

Bad Strategies

Three popular bad strategies encountered at the blackjack table are never bust, mimic the dealer, and always assume the dealer has a ten in the hole. All three of these are very bad strategies. Following are my specific comments on each of them, including the house edge under Atlantic City rules (dealer stands on soft 17, split up to 4 hands, double after split, double any two cards) of 0.43%.

Never bust: For my analysis of this strategy I assumed the player would never hit a hard 12 or more and based all other decisions on maximizing expected value under this assumption. This results in a house edge of 3.91%.

Mimic the dealer: For my analysis of this strategy I assumed the player would always hit 16 or less and stand on 17 or more. The player as well as dealer stood on soft 17. The player never doubled or split, since the dealer is not allowed to do so. This results in a house edge of 5.48%.

Assume ten in the hole: For this strategy I first figured out the optimal basic strategy under this assumption. If the dealer had an ace up I reverted to the proper basic strategy assumption of assuming the dealer did not have a ten. Then I went back and used this strategy under regular playing conditions. This results in a house edge of 10.03%.

If you want to learn how to card count you must learn the basic straegy by heart first, then take your skill into ther real world. If a Casino suspects that you are card counting then they may ask you to leave or you might end up being eaten by vultures in the middle of nowhere.

Card counting is a procedure whereby a player keeps track of what cards have been dealt out of the deck (or shoe). The counter uses this information to assist him in making playing decisions. Before the reader develops any pre-conceived notions on what Card Counting really entails, let me dispel a couple of misconceptions.

Card Counting does not give you psychic-like powers to predict the next card out of the deck. What Card counting will do is give you a good indication of whether a deck is favourable or unfavourable and the extent of this favourableness or unfavourableness.

Card Counting does not involve memorizing every card that comes out of the deck. If you are envisioning Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman in the movie Rainman sitting at the Blackjack table memorizing every card that is dealt with special autistic powers, you are thinking of Card Counting all wrong. When you count cards, you are not keeping track of individual cards. All you are doing is keeping a relative score of high value cards (10′s and Ace’s) to low cards (2, 3, 4, 5 and 6).

Card Counting: Basic Premise
The game of Blackjack is focused around 10-value cards (10′s and Face Cards) and Ace’s. Why? Because combined, they are the most plentiful card in the deck. The most basic premise of Card Counting strategy is that decks rich in 10-value cards are advantageous to the player and decks short on 10-value cards are advantageous to the Casino.

Why are decks rich in 10-value cards favourable?

There are three main reasons:

The higher the proportion of 10-value cards remaining in the deck or shoe, the greater the likelihood of drawing a Blackjack (A 10 value card and an Ace). The Dealer has the same increased chance of getting a Blackjack under such circumstances and will therefore get more Blackjacks also. While that is true, when the dealer draws a Blackjack, you will lose your entire bet (Unless you also have a Blackjack). When you draw a Blackjack, however, you will not only win your entire bet, but you will also win 50% more. Remember, Blackjack pays 3-2. You will therefore win, not 100% of your bet, but 150% of your bet. Therefore, although both the odds of you and the dealer drawing a Blackjack increase during favourable conditions, you will win 150% of your bet when you draw the Blackjack while the dealer will only take 100% of your bet when he draws a Blackjack. Therefore, you will be more than happy trading Blackjack’s with the dealer under these favourable conditions.

The dealer must draw when he has a 16 or less. He has no choice. When the deck is favourable, he runs a greater risk of busting. You, on the other hand, can alter your strategy to take advantage of favourable conditions. You don’t have to take a card when the odds of busting are great because of a favourable deck.

Doubling Down. You have the option of doubling your wager. During favourable conditions, this can be an extremely valuable.

With a beginning wager of $5.00 you would double your wager with each loss. IE: $5, $10, $20, $40 $80, etc. After a win your wager would drop back to $5.00. All wagers are recovered when you win a hand.

Casinos have table limits to eliminate the effectiveness of this system. After a long losing streak you will eventually hit the table maximum, thus defeating the purpose of this system. Plus, a considerable amount of bankroll is needed to make this system work, and the payoffs simply aren’t worth it.

If you started with a $5 dollar wager and lost your first four wagers and won your fifth, (without double downs or splitting your cards) you would be a measly 5 dollars ahead. This is simply not worth it, and if you are losing multiple hands in a row it is time to leave the table, not double your wagers. Also, losing double downs or splits can deplete your bankroll in a big hurry.

Progressive Betting System – 2 Level
This is the simplest betting system to use and still effective. To use this system simply decide on a minimum and maximum bet. Then bet the smaller amount after a loss and the larger amount after a win. For example, say you set your minimum bet at $5 and your maximum at $15.

Start with a $5 dollar bet. If you win that hand you bet $15 your next wager. You then continue to bet $15 until you lose. After any loss you return to your minimum bet of $5. This is a basic, put solid progressive betting system.

Progressive Betting System – 5 Level
This is another simple, yet effective system, based on a 1,2,3,5 back to 1 progression. Example: For a $5 player, the betting levels would be $5,10,15, and 25. With this system you start with your $5 bet and progress to the next level when you win a hand.

If you lose a hand you drop back down to your original $5 wager. If you win four hands in a row you should then drop back down to your original $5 wager, hence the 1,2,3,5 back to 1 progression.

This system is rewarding when you experience winning streaks but still doesn’t kill you with losing streaks. Lets say you lose your first three hands and then win your next three. Assuming a starting wager of $5 you would be ahead $15 at the end of six hands. If you were betting an equal amount on each had you would be even.