Since I covered Vegas Strip Basic Strategy a few days ago I felt it was time for another Basic Strategy Lesson. This time I’ll be talking about Basic Strategy for European Rules Blackjack at Goldencasino.com. You might remember that European Rules Blackjack is one of the variants of Blackjack that is offered by GoldenCasino.com.

The Rules for European Rules Blackjack offered by GoldenCasino are:

• Dealer Stands on all 17s.
• Pairs can be Split.
• Doubling is allowed on hand values of 9, 10 and 11.
• Doubling after a split is allowed on hand values of 9, 10, and 11.
• Aces can only be split once.
• Insurance is available when the dealer shows an Ace.
• Dealer does not check for Blackjack.
• Surrender is not available.

Blackjack Basic Strategy Chart

Your Hand	Dealer’s Upcard
	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	A
7	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H
8	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H
9	H	D	D	D	D	H	H	H	H	H
10	D	D	D	D	D	D	D	D	H	H
11	D	D	D	D	D	D	D	D	H	H
12	H	H	S	S	S	H	H	H	H	H
13	S	S	S	S	S	H	H	H	H	H
14	S	S	S	S	S	H	H	H	H	H
15	S	S	S	S	S	H	H	H	H	H
16	S	S	S	S	S	H	H	H	H	H
17	S	S	S	S	S	S	S	S	S	S
A,2	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H
A,3	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H
A,4	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H
A,5	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H
A,6	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H
A,7	S	S	S	S	S	S	S	H	H	H
A,8	S	S	S	S	S	S	S	S	S	S
A,9	S	S	S	S	S	S	S	S	S	S
2,2	P	P	P	P	P	P	H	H	H	H
3,3	P	P	P	P	P	P	H	H	H	H
4,4	H	H	H	P	P	H	H	H	H	H
5,5	D	D	D	D	D	D	D	D	H	H
6,6	P	P	P	P	P	H	H	H	H	H
7,7	P	P	P	P	P	P	H	H	H	H
8,8	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	H	H
9,9	P	P	P	P	P	S	P	P	S	S
T,T	S	S	S	S	S	S	S	S	S	S
A,A	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	H
Dealer	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	A
Key:
	H	= Hit		S	= Stand		P	= Split
	D	= Double (hit if not allowed)

Alright I thought I would start my Basic Strategy lessons with the basic strategy that I am using when I play online. I currently play at GoldenCasino.com and I am playing the Vegas Strip Blackjack Game. GoldenCasino.com has a few variants of Blackjack available including Perfect Pairs, European Rules, and a Progressive Blackjack game. I decided to play the Vegas Strip Blackjack as it has similar rules to what I might find in Las Vegas.

Vegas Strip Blackjack has the dealer standing on all 17’s, doubling is allowed on all values and after splits, there is no surrender option and the dealer does peak to check for Blackjack. Now that we know the rules for the game we can select the right Blackjack Basic Strategy and being play.

Basic Strategy for Vegas Strip Blackjack.

It seems that card counting online doesn’t work as the deck is essentially shuffled after each deal. This means that all the cards are in play for every hand making card counting useless. In land based casino’s this would be equivalent to playing at a table that uses a constant shuffle machine. I think I’ll do a post on these neat little machines in the near future.

Unfortunately this also means that you cannot use an online casino as a training ground to practice your counting skills. There are however computer programs that people have written specifically for people to use to practice their counting skills with.

Did you know that card counting has nothing to do with counting the number of cards played and memorizing those cards? I didn’t!

I honestly thought that a card counter tracked the number and types of cards played by memorizing the number of each card played. In my world a card counter literally new that 3 tens, 1 queen, 3 5s etc had already been played, but in reality card counting has nothing to do with memorizing which cards have been played.

I’m sorry to tell any card counters out there that I am just a little less impressed with your skills than I was only yesterday. Yesterday you were Blackjack Idols with the memories that were closer to computers than anything else. Today you are just Blackjack Idols with impressive skills… sorry

In case there is anyone like me that has no idea what card counting is I’ll explain it like I did with Basic Strategy.

There are a number of different card counting strategies available but I’ve only looked at two of them, the Hi-Low system and the Wizard Ace/Five system.

The Hi-Low system is the most basic of the card counting systems. Each card is assigned either a +1, -1 or 0 value to it. As each card is dealt you will either add (+1), subtract (-1), or do nothing to a running count in your head and adjust your wagers based on this count.

The cards valued 2 through 6 as assigned a value of +1.
Ten valued cards (including Faces and Aces) are assigned a value of -1.
The cards 7, 8, and 9 are assigned a value of 0.

Using this distribution when a full deck has been dealt your running count should be zero as there are an equal number of +1 valued cards and -1 valued cards.

So to use this system you would wait until a new deck(s) is introduced at the table and add the appropriate value to your count (which starts at zero) as each card is dealt.
As an example I just started a hand and the cards dealt to me were 5 and 2 and the dealer has an Ace as their face up card. The count would look like this +1 for the five, +1 for the two and -1 for the Ace so my current running count is +1 (1+1-1=1). I take another card and I am dealt a 4 which changes the count to +2. Again I take another card which is a King, which bring my count back to +1. Since the King gives me 21 it is the deals turn and I get to see what cards the dealer has and will get. Their hole card was a 4 and they drew a 9 and 10. So with these cards there is no change in my running count because the 4 is worth +1, The 9 is worth 0 and the 10 is worth -1 (1+0-1=0). This means after the first hand my running count is at +1 which means that there are a more 10 valued cards in the deck and I should increase my wager as I am now more likely to be dealt a Blackjack than I was on the last hand.

Here is how my second hand worked out.
Player: 4, 2, Q, (+1)
Dealer: 5, 6, 3, 6 (+4)
New running count total: (+6)

Well thats all for my first post on Card Counting. In my next post I will discuss a simple card counting system called the Wizard Ace/Five.

Blackjack Basic Strategy has been tested both in the real world and in the theoretical world and it has been proven time and time again to be an effective strategy to lower the casino’s edge over the player. With this in mind I would like to present a basic primer on Blackjack Basic Strategy, how to use it and how it will affect your game.

The Goal of any strategy is to improve your odds of winning. Basic Strategy does this by providing a set of rules that you as the player will follow. These rules will dictate your play, when you should hit, stand, split, double etc. When you follow these rules exactly and play what is known as perfect strategy you can reduce the casino’s (or house) edge down to about one half of a percent, that is 0.5%!

Unfortunately there is not just one Basic Strategy that will cover all variants of Blackjack, there is one Basic Strategy that has been developed for each different variant of Blackjack. This means that you will need to play the same variant of Blackjack every time you goto the casino or you will need to learn a number of strategies that will cover the types of blackjack that you might play. Luckily casino’s don’t mind the use of Basic Strategy trainer cards at the tables as long as you do not rely solely on the card for each and every hand.

Here is an example of Basic Strategy explained in detail. Future Basic Strategy post will contain a Basic Strategy Trainer Card or Chart.

Soft Hands: Soft hands are hands that contain an Ace.

If your starting hand is:
Ace, 2 or Ace, 3 - If the dealer’s hand shows a 5 or 6 Double otherwise hit.
Ace, 4, or Ace, 5 - If the dealer’s hand shows 4 - 6 Double otherwise hit.
Ace, 6 - If the dealer’s hand shows 3 - 6 Double otherwise hit.
Ace, 7 - If the dealer’s hand shows a 2, 7, or 8 Double 3 -6 otherwise hit.
Ace, 8 or Ace, 9 - Always Stand.

Hard Hands: Hard hands are hand that do not contain an Ace.

If your starting hand is:
8 or less - Always hit.
9 - If the dealer’s hand shows a 3 - 6 Double, otherwise hit.
10 - If the dealer’s hand shows a 2 - 9 Double, otherwise hit.
11 - If the dealer’s hand shows a 2 - 10 Double, otherwise hi if the dealer shows an Ace.
13 - 16 - If the dealer’s hand shows a 2 - 6 Stand, otherwise hit.
17 - 21 - Always stand.

Pairs:

If you starting hand is:
Aces or 8s - Always Split
2 or 3s- If the dealer’s hand shows a 2 - 7 Split, otherwise hit.
4s - If the dealer’s hand shows a 5 or 6 Split, otherwise hit.
5s - If the dealer’s hand shows 2 - 9 Double, otherwise hit.
6s - If the dealer’s hand shows 2 - 6 Split, otherwise hit.
7s - If the dealer’s hand shows 2 - 7 Split, otherwise hit.
9s - If the dealer’s hand shows 2 - 6, 8 or 9 Split, if the dealer shows a 7, 10 or Ace Stand.
10s - Always Stand.

In Blackjack there are two types of hands, Soft Hands and Hard Hands. Hard hands are very straight forward the value of the hand is the value of the cards in that hand. A hand that contains a 10 and a 8 is an 18. A soft hand is a hand that contains an Ace. If you remember from earlier I mentioned that an Ace can have a value of One (1) or Eleven (11) what this means is that a hand that contains an Ace and a 8 could be valued at 19 (11+8) or 9 (1+8). Now it might seem obvious in this example that you would want to value the Ace as 11 and have a hand of 19, which would be the correct thing to do. However lets assume you had
an Ace, 7 which is pretty good hand at 18, however according to Basic Strategy if the dealers up card is a 9, 10 or Ace you will need to hit. In this case any card higher than a 3 would bust your hand if it was a hard 18, the Ace in the soft 18 however would convert to a value of one and the hand would not bust.
For an Example lets say the card the hand recieved was a 5. Our hand of 18 if the Ace was valued at 11 would bust as adding 5 to 18 = 23. Since the hand would bust with the Ace valued at 11, the ace will be valued at 1 which means out new hand total is 13 (1+7+5).

It is almost like the soft hand is giving the player a second chance if the hit delivers a less than ideal card.