Blackjack Basic Strategy Chart

How to read the chart

Find your row on the left (your hand total or your pair). Find the dealer’s up-card on the top. The cell where they meet tells you which action you should do.

Always check pairs first. If you’ve got a pair, look at the Pairs table before the Hard or Soft tables.

Soft hands are any hand with an Ace counted as 11. A soft 18 is A,7. The moment you bust past 21, the Ace flips to 1 and the hand becomes hard.

Doubling is only allowed on your first two cards. If you can’t double (because you’ve already hit, or the rules forbid it), use the fallback action shown in the legend.

Surrender is the option to forfeit half your bet on a bad starting hand. Most online tables offer late surrender, where you can only surrender after the dealer checks for blackjack.

Why are these moves correct?

The chart isn’t based on our opinion or experience.

It’s rooted in math and comes from running millions of simulated hands and picking the action with the highest expected value (EV).

EV is what you actually win or lose on average over time.

In blackjack there are 2 main decisions you can make.

• When to take more cards (hit)
• When to commit more money (double)

Hit when the dealer is strong. Stand when the dealer is weak.

When you see the dealer’s up card is 5 or 6, you’re in luck because they’re the weakest they can get.

The dealers bust most of the time here, so you have more chances to win.

That’s the moment when you want to double on borderline hands and split aggressively against them.

Conversely, when the dealer’s up card is 7 or up, all the way through an Ace, this is considered strong.

That’s when the dealer almost never busts.

That’s when you take fewer risks and accept a worse hand.

S17 vs H17. Why does it matter?

Soft 17 is when the dealer holds an Ace plus a six. The Ace can count as 1 or 11.

On an S17 table, the dealer must stand. On an H17 table, the dealer must hit. That extra card gives the dealer a chance to improve, which adds about 0.2% to the house edge.

S17 is better for the player. Always. Toggle the rule above and you’ll see five cells change. The biggest one: surrender hard 17 against a dealer Ace on H17 (you’d never surrender 17 on S17).

Memorize the chart

Reading a blackjack chart on your phone is fine when you play online. But at a brick-and-mortar casino, you need it in your head.

Open our free blackjack simulator now and play a few hundred hands with the hint mode on.

Come back to practice every day until you don’t need the hints anymore, then you’re ready to play blackjack anywhere.