Basic Blackjack covers what the title says, the basics of blackjack. It covers the basic strategy variations in blackjack found whenever blackjack can be found. He goes over common rule variations like whether the dealer hits soft seventeen or the number of decks.
That sounds basic, but a key to blackjack for beginners is understanding the odds and basic strategy of when to draw another card (hit) and when to stop (stay). In this casino guide, blackjack for.
Blackjack, also commonly known as 21, is one of the most popular casino games in the world. Not only is it a hit on the casino floors, but it’s also big online. Aside from being so much fun to play, it’s also pretty simple to learn and master some basic strategies.Since it’s not too difficult of a game to pick up, it is also recommended for beginners.
Mastering the game of blackjack does not stop at just basic strategy. That only helps you choose when to hit or stand. Highly skilled 21 players know that splitting cards is a great way to maximize your profit potential. That’s especially true when the dealer’s up card suggests they have a relatively weak blackjack hand. Blackjack Split.

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Michael Shackleford: Hi, this is Mike with the Wizard of Odds. The purpose of this video is to create the blackjack basic strategy from scratch in Excel starting with just a blank spreadsheet.

The basic rules for blackjack are the same in every game, but the secondary rules vary from game to game. Some of the rules are good for the casino and some help you. When you look for a blackjack game you should find games that have more rules that are favorable to you than the casino. This lowers the house edge.

Why am I doing this? Because I'm getting a little tired of hearing dealers say that the basic strategy is a myth, that it was created by Ed Thorp, Beat the Dealer fame back in 1962 on an old UNIVAC computer or whatever and he must've made a mistake somewhere and this mistake has been repeated for decades by other gambling writers who never once thought to confirm his work and we've all just been repeating his work like parrots.

Number one I'd like to correct something is actually, Ed Thorp was not the first person to publish the basic strategy. There were four guys in the army in the 50s who did it before him and published it in the American Statistical Journal. However, Ed Thorp was the first one to write a book about it including addressing card counting and broke all kinds of new ground in the game.

I might also add that blackjack analysis has been repeated over and over by lots of gambling writers, including myself, and we all-- all the legitimate writers basically agree with each other.

Nevertheless, dealers will continue to say, 'Well, I've seen players play by the book and lose lots of times.' Well, of course, it's a game of luck and bad players who don't follow the basic strategy lose, too. But, as I always say, the more ridiculous a belief is, the more tenaciously it tends to be held, but let's quit talking and actually show you the basic strategy starting from nothing.

I'm going to use an assumption of an infinite number of decks of cards for the sake of simplicity. The mathematics of the game are not tremendously different between eight decks and an infinite number of decks. The basic strategy will be different in a couple borderline plays as we'll see later. But let's jump in, shall we?

Let's call the first sheet in the spreadsheet, 'the dealer sheet.' This is going to show the probability of every possible outcome for the dealer according to all possible 10 up cards.

So, one of these things are going to happen to the dealer; he could bust, he could end up with 17, 18, 19, 20, or 21, and we're going to do this by American rules where the dealer peeks for blackjack and he exposes it, if he doesn't-- if he has it otherwise, the player is not drawing dead to a handy can't be. We will factor in the blackjacks later on in another video where I show you how to calculate the house advantage.

There's 10 possible up cards the dealer can have, which we'll put across the first row. This table up here will represent the possible probabilities under the American rules. Again, it's a little tricky because in the-- again, because of this peeking rule. So, let's do it underneath here according to the European rule where the dealer doesn't peek for a blackjack and let's consider all the possible totals all the way up to 31 which will make-- doing the spreadsheet a little bit easier and we also will look at the soft totals and we'll start there from a 12, also up to a 31. What's a soft 31, you might ask? That's the same thing as a hard 21. For a soft 22 or more, just subtract 10 and it's the same thing as a hard total.

All right, if the dealer has a-- that's the 17. There's a 100% chance he will end up with a 17 because he's going to stop and same thing with an 18 through a 21. The dealer ends up with a 22 or more. There's a 100% chance he's going to bust.

With the soft hands, let's assume the rule that the dealer stands on a soft 17. We can do the same thing there. With a soft 22, that's going to be the same thing as a hard 12.

Okay, let's start with looking at what is the probability of the dealer getting a 17 if he starts with a two? Well, the next card could bring him up to a four all the way up to an 11, each with equal chance. There's 4 chances he could end up with a 12 because there's four ranks in the deck that are 10 points, and one chance he could get to a soft 13. We divide by 13 because there's 13 ranks. This same formula is going to work all the way up to 16 for all the other possible totals.

Now, let's work on the soft hands. The dealer starts with-- hit's a soft 12. He could end up with a 13 up to a 21 each with equal chance, and four chances at a 22, copying paste that down.

Let's take the total to make sure it adds up to one. Good, it does. Let's make sure it does for all the other outcomes. Looks good so far.

All right, now, let's think about the American rules. Blackjack is the same, all other things being equal in the US and Europe if the dealer's showing a two through nine because there's no chance a dealer can have a blackjack, so we can just refer to the European numbers for two through nine.

Let me add another row here for the total. For the 10 and the ace, there's no chance the dealer has a blackjack because he already peeked for it and again, we'll adjust for that later on when we figure out the house edge. But if the dealer has a 10 showing and when he hits that, that could leave him with a 12 up through a 19, each with one chance and four chances of the 20, and we divide it by 12 because there's 12 ranks, not counting the ace. Similar kind of logic with the ace, but there you can end up with a soft 12 up to a soft 20 and divide by 9, because there's only nine ranks that won't give them a blackjack.

There are all your dealer probabilities. Let's save this before I forget. We'll just call this 'basic strategy.' Now, we're ready to start talking about the player. Let's make our next sheet called 'stand.' This is going to show the players expected value of standing for any possible scenario.

Let's do everything by the 10-possible dealer up cards. Let's do all the player sheets according to having anywhere from a hard four all the way to 31 and a soft 12 all the way to 31.

Let me make the screen a little bigger for you. I hope that helps so you can see what I'm doing. All right. What if the dealer stands on a four against a two? The only way he's going to win is if the dealer busts. His expected value is the probability of the dealer busting minus the probability of anything else happening.

So, he can expect to lose by standing on a four against a two of about 29.3% of his bet. That's the same number for standing on everything all the way through a 16 because a 16 is no better than a four or a zero.

Things start to get better with a 17 because now, a 17 is going to turn from a loss to a push, so the expected value there is the probability of the dealer busting minus the probability of an 18 through a 21. We can ignore the dealer getting a 17 because that's going to result in a push with a player. Eighteen, expected value is the probability of the bust or 17 minus the probability of a 19 to21.

With a 19, expected value is the probability of a dealer having a bust 17 or 18 minus a 20 or 21. With a 20, it's a bust through a 19 minus a 21 and with a 21, it's anything except another 21 which would be a push.

So, the expected value of a 17 against a two is a ex

Basic Things To Know About Blackjack