How to Play Blackjack: Complete Beginner's Guide

The girl was twenty-three, blonde, from California. She had a thousand dollars. She had never played blackjack. She walked up to a table with a $15 minimum and asked the dealer what the rules were.

The dealer explained blackjack takes about ninety seconds to really understand. You get two cards. The dealer gets one card face up. Your goal is to get to 21 without busting. Higher than the dealer wins. Ties lose if the house has blackjack.

She nodded and bought in for $100.

The Basic Play

The girl got dealt 5-7. That's 12. The dealer showed a 6. She asked the dealer what to do.

The dealer, following house rules, said "I can't tell you."

She hit. Got a 10. She busted. She lost $15. She had $85 left.

Over the next hour, she lost the $85. She bought in for another $100. She asked fewer questions. She just moved cards around based on what the dealer did. She played maybe 30 hands. She lost the second hundred. She asked the dealer what she was doing wrong.

The dealer pointed to the basic strategy card on the table and said "That tells you what to do on every hand."

Basic strategy is a chart. You find your hand on the vertical axis. You find the dealer's card on the horizontal axis. You look at the intersection. It tells you to hit, stand, double, or split.

She looked at it for two minutes. Then she started playing better. Over the next hour, she lost $30 from her third hundred. Much better.

The Real Beginner's Game

For a new player, here are the core rules:

Blackjack pays 3 to 2 at decent casinos. That means if you get 21 on your first two cards, you win 1.5 times your bet. This is the only hand that's special.

You always split aces and eights. Always.

You never split fives or tens.

You double down on 11 if the dealer shows 2 through 10. Always.

You stand on hard 17. Always.

If the dealer shows 6 or lower, they might bust. You can hit hands that look weak because the dealer might not be able to beat you anyway.

Soft hands (hands with an ace counted as 11) are different. Soft 17 (ace-6) should be hit, not stood on, because you can't bust.

The Math

With basic strategy, the house edge is about 0.5 percent. That means for every dollar you gamble, you lose half a cent to the house on average. Over 100 bets of $25 each, that's $12.50 to the house.

This assumes perfect strategy. The girl probably played worse than that, which is why she lost more.

The Lesson

The girl left after losing three hundred dollars and learned something valuable: the house has a mathematical edge and you cannot overcome it through luck or intuition. But you can minimize your losses by playing correctly.

If she'd read a basic strategy card before she played, she would have lost maybe $15 instead of $300. Knowledge is cheaper than experience.

"Blackjack looks simple until you realize how quickly bad decisions add up."