Blackjack Basic Strategy Charts

Why it's worth two weeks of your time

A typical player deciding by feel gives the casino a 1.5–2% edge. At $15 a hand and 60 hands an hour, that's roughly$18 an hour in expected losses. Perfect basic strategy cuts the edge to about 0.5% — around $4.50 an hour on the same stakes. Same table, same cards, a quarter of the cost. Specifically, playing the chart means:

• The house edge drops to its floor — around 0.5% under common rules, and lower in good games. Every departure from the chart hands edge back to the casino.
• Your expected return is maximized for the rules you're playing, before any card counting enters the picture.
• You have the foundation for advantage play. Card counting only works layered on top of perfect basic strategy — a counter who misplays hands is just a gambler with homework.

Basic strategy in 60 seconds

The full chart has a few hundred cells, but a handful of rules carry most of the weight. Learn these six and you're already playing better than most of the table:

1. Always split aces and 8s. Never split 10s or 5s.Two 8s make a hopeless 16; two hands starting from 8 are worth the extra bet. Two 10s are already a winning 20 — leave it alone.
2. Double hard 10 and 11 when the dealer's upcard is lower than your total.You're favored to make the best hand at the table — get more money out while you are.
3. Stand on hard 12–16 when the dealer shows 2–6. Hit them against 7 or higher.Against a weak upcard the dealer busts often enough that risking your own bust is the losing side of the bet. (One refinement: hit 12 against a 2 or 3.)
4. Always stand on hard 17 or more.The chance of improving is never worth the chance of busting.
5. Always hit soft 17 (A-6) or less.A soft hand can't bust with one card — 17 isn't strong enough to defend, so take the free shot at improving it.
6. Never take insurance.It's a side bet at a ~7.7% house edge, whatever the dealer ends up having. (Card counters get to break this rule — more on that below.)

That's the skeleton. The chart below fills in what these rules leave out — the soft doubles, the borderline splits, the surrenders — and settles every hand the shorthand gets wrong.

The charts

The correct plays change with the number of decks and whether the dealer hits or stands on soft 17, so there's one chart per game. Free to use, free to print. Pick the one that matches your table:

• 6-Deck · H17
• 6-Deck · S17
• Double-Deck · H17
• Double-Deck · S17
• Single-Deck · H17
• Single-Deck · S17

The chart for the most common game: 6-Deck (4–8 Decks), Dealer Hits Soft 17

Most shoe games in US casinos deal from 6 decks with the dealer hitting soft 17, and the same chart is correct from 4 to 8 decks. If you only memorize one chart, make it this one. Playing a different game? S17 shoe games, double-deck, and single-deck each get their own chart.

Charts assume double after split is allowed and doubling on any two cards. Where a play depends on a rule your table doesn't offer, the code tells you the fallback — e.g. Rh means surrender if you can, otherwise hit.

Where the chart comes from

Nothing in these tables is opinion. Basic strategy was derived by exhaustive analysis — originally by hand in the 1950s, later confirmed and refined by computer simulation of billions of hands:

• Every situation is enumerated. Every player total, hard and soft, every pair, against every dealer upcard, under each set of table rules.
• Every action is tested. For each situation, hitting, standing, doubling, splitting, and surrendering are each played out across every possible way the cards can fall.
• The highest expected value wins. Whichever action returns the most (or loses the least) on average becomes the basic strategy play for that cell.

That's why the chart changes with the rules: remove a deck or make the dealer stand on soft 17, and the probabilities shift enough to flip the correct play in a handful of cells. It's also why "hunches" lose money — the math has already been settled for every single hand.

Why it works

The dealer plays by fixed rules: they must hit until reaching 17 and can never double, split, or surrender. You can do all of those things. Basic strategy is simply the systematic exploitation of that asymmetry:

• You stand on stiff hands when the dealer is weak.Against a 4, 5, or 6, the dealer busts often enough that risking your own bust is the losing side of the bet.
• You double when the odds tilt your way — getting more money on the table precisely when your hand is favored, like 11 against a dealer 6.
• You split to turn bad hands into good ones. A pair of 8s is a miserable 16; two hands starting from 8 are worth the extra bet.

Basic strategy and card counting

Basic strategy assumes a freshly shuffled shoe — a "neutral" deck. But as cards come out, the composition of what remains changes, and with it the odds. That's the opening card counters exploit, and it's why counting doesn't replace basic strategy; it fine-tunes it in two ways:

• Bet sizing. When the remaining shoe is rich in tens and aces, blackjacks and dealer busts both become more likely and the edge swings to the player — so you bet more. When it's poor, you bet the minimum or walk.
• Play deviations. A few dozen decisions sit on a knife's edge, and a shifted count flips them. 16 against a 10 becomes a stand at a positive count; insurance becomes a money-maker at the right count instead of a sucker bet.

The combination is what turns a −0.5% game into a +0.5% to +1.5% game. But the order matters: deviations are worthless — actively harmful — until neutral-count basic strategy is automatic. Master the chart first. When you're ready for the next layer, start with how card counting works and the Illustrious 18 deviation charts.

Key takeaways

• Basic strategy is a solved problem — one correct play per hand, derived from the math, not from feel.
• Match the chart to the table: deck count and the dealer's soft-17 rule both change the correct plays.
• Perfect execution cuts the house edge to roughly half a percent; it does not, by itself, beat the game.
• Counting layered on top of perfect basic strategy is the only proven way to play blackjack with a genuine long-run edge.

Frequently asked questions