The purpose of this “blackjack for beginners” page is to
provide a detailed buy also easily understood introduction to
the game. Too many guides to the game get really complicated
really quickly. We’re going to avoid that here.

Playing Blackjack For Beginners
Blackjack For Beginners In Vegas
Blackjack Books For Beginners

The first section covers the card game and how it works in
actual play. We follow that with an explanation of the
appropriate strategies for getting the best odds. Finally, we
conclude the page with some comments on advantage play and how
to get an edge over the casino.

Introduction to Blackjack

Blackjack is a card game played in casinos. You play against
the dealer, not the other players. Since this page is for
beginners, we’re going to go into a little bit of detail about
card games in general and how they work to star this off.

Blackjack for Beginners: Game Flow Betting. At the start of the round, you place your bet. You can bet as much, or as little, as you want, but only within. After the betting phase is complete, each blackjack player receives two cards. The dealer places these. Blackjack is a contest between the dealer and player where the player's objective is to achieve a better hand than the dealer without exceeding a total of 21 points. This post consists of my seven best blackjack tips for beginners. To become a better blackjack player, keep reading below and start applying the following strategies and tips. Master Basic Strategy. Honestly, if you ignored all the other tips on this list and just mastered basic strategy, you’d be way ahead of most other blackjack players.

How a Traditional Deck of Cards Works

Blackjack uses a traditional deck of cards. (Actually it
often uses multiple decks, but we’ll go more into that later in
the page.) Here’s what you need to know about a traditional deck
of cards.

Let’s start with the suits. A traditional deck of cards has
52 cards total, but they’re of 4 different suits:

Clubs
Diamonds
Hearts
Spades

As you can see, the clubs and spades are colored black while
the hearts and diamonds are colored red. Every card of each suit
includes the symbol for that suit (i.e., all the cards that are
designated “hearts” have a heart symbol on them, all the cards
that are designated “diamonds” have a diamond symbol on them,
and so on).

Now let’s look at the ranks. A traditional card has 13 ranks,
as follows.

All the cards shown here are clubs, but each suit contains
one card of each rank. So there’s an ace of clubs, of diamonds,
of hearts, and of spades in every deck. There’s also a two of
each suit, and so on. The number or letter in parenthesis after
each ranking is the shorthand form that’s used to describe that
card when writing about blackjack.

The ace is the “1”, but it is also often considered the
highest card in the deck. It’s not just a “1”, in other
words—it’s an ace!

The jack, queen, and king are all called face cards.

Scoring in Blackjack

In blackjack, the suits only matter in certain rare
variations of the game. For the most part, you can almost always
ignore the cards’ suits. It is important to realize that there
are only 4 cards of each rank in the deck, though. (4 suits, 4
cards of each rank).

In blackjack, hands are given a score based on the ranks of
the cards in the hand. These scores are given as follows:

Ace – Worth 1 or 11 points.
Face cards – Worth 10 points.
All other cards – Worth their rank in points.
- For example, the 3 is worth 3 points, the 4 is worth
  4 points, and so on.

To calculate the score for a hand of blackjack, you simply
add the points up for all the cards in the hand. The hand with
the HIGHER total is the winner.

Notice we use the word “higher”, not “highest”. That’s
because you only use the superlative (“highest”) when comparing
3 or more items. In blackjack, you’re ALWAYS only comparing 2
hands’the player’s hand versus the dealer’s hand. Other hands
might be in play, but for purposes of calculating a win, there
are only 2 hands that matter.

There’s one other catch. Any hand with a total of 22 or
higher is considered a bust, which is a dead hand and
automatically loses immediately.

Why Blackjack Is THE Best Bet in the Casino

All casino games have a built in mathematical edge for the
house. Blackjack is no exception. But if you know how to play
well, the game has the lowest house edge in the casino.

It’s also one of the most fun games in the casino.

How does the house edge work?

It’s expressed as a percentage. Over the long run (thousands
of hands), the house edge is the percentage of each bet that the
casino mathematically expects to keep. This number can range as
high as 40% for some games (like keno) to as low as 0.5% or less
for other games (like blackjack).

Example

You’re playing slot machines, and these games are programmed
with a house edge of 15%. (They’re at the airport, which offers
some of the worst odds in town.) You’re playing for a dollar per
spin, and you’re making 600 spins per hour. That means you’re
putting $600 per hour into action.

15% of $600 is $90. That’s how much the casino expects you to
lose every hour while playing that game. That number takes into
account the occasional wins and payoffs you get. If you play
long enough, you will certainly go broke.

Any casino bet can be looked at in terms of an expected
hourly loss. This is how casinos make projections and plan their
floor space. They want to maximize the amount of revenue they
generate per square foot.

Roulette is another good example. The house edge for this
game is 5.26%. You’ll rarely find a roulette game which will
accept a bet of less than $5 per spin. Let’s assume you’re
playing at a roulette table where you’re able to place 60 bets
per hour. (Notice how much slower a game than slots roulette
is.)

60 bets per hour at $5 per bet is $300. 5.26% of $300 is
$15.78, which is your expected hourly loss. Even though the
house edge for this game is almost 1/3 that of the slot machines
we discussed earlier, and we’re placing bets that are 5x greater
than we were placing on the slots, we’re still losing a
considerably lower amount of money per hour. That’s because the
lower speed of the game limits your exposure.

When we say that blackjack offers a house edge of around
0.5%, we’re assuming a good set of rules options. Different
casinos and different tables within the same casino offer
different options to their blackjack games which affect the
house edge. For example, a game that uses 8 decks has a higher
house edge than a game which only uses one deck.

What’s your hourly expected loss at the blackjack tables?

Assume you’re playing for $5 per hand. Let’s also assume that
you’re playing 100 hands per hour. You’re putting $500 into
action each hour—almost as much as when you were playing the
airport slot machines in the earlier example.

But you only expect to lose 0.5% of that. That means your
expected hourly loss is only $2.50.

Compare $2.50 with $90, or even with $15.78. It’s clear to
see which game offers the best odds.

And the other beautiful thing about blackjack is that you can
get an edge over the house through multiple advantage play
techniques. Most of these are too much trouble for the casual
blackjack player, but we’ll cover the basics of those later on
this page, too.

Blackjack Basics

Blackjack is played at a blackjack table, which usually seats
around 7 players on one side and a dealer on the other. You’ll
see some words printed on the table, or on a sign sitting on the
table. These words will usually include the following:

Blackjack pays 3 to 2.
Dealer must hit soft 17.
Insurance pays 2 to 1.
$5 minimum, $500 maximum.

Here’s what those phrases mean:

Blackjack pays 3 to 2

A blackjack is a 2 card hand that totals 21. That’s an
automatic winner, unless the dealer also has a blackjack. In the
latter case, the casino considers this result a push, so you
don’t lose or win any money. Your bet is returned to you.

But if you don’t have a push, you win, and your bet is paid
off at 3 to 2. So if you had placed a bet of $20, you’

Blackjack For Beginners