When considering fun and expected return blackjack is without any doubt the best game in the casino for me. I spend 95% of my playing time at the blackjack table. Over at least 200 hours of playing time I can confidently say that I have won more than I have lost.
The great thing about blackjack is that it is not hard to understand the game well enough to have nearly a break even chance. With additional study you can have an edge over the dealer, the more you study and practice the greater your edge can be. Many people have made their living by playing blackjack professionally.
What makes all this possible is the players who don't know what they are doing. To everyone who has never studied the game I thank you because you keep the game profitable for the casinos, which keeps the rules attractive for me. If everyone played as well as I did the casinos wouldn't make any money on the game and would have to tighten the rules to their advantage.
However if you are willing to learn then I'm willing to teach you. The first step to improving your play is to learn the basic strategy. The basic strategy chart below tells you how to play every hand:
Sorry, I lost the basic strategy image.
To use the chart look up you hand along the left vertical edge and the dealer's up card along the top. There are three possible classifications your hand may have: A hard total, a soft total, of a possible split. If you have a hard total (no aces) look up your total along the left edge and towards the top of the chart. Next along the left edge are the soft hands (one ace) and finally the splittable hands. The letter and color indicate how to play your hand. Here is a key:
Some obvious situatioins have been left out to keep the chart as small as possible they are:
Finally, never take insurance, even if you have a blackjack. The average casino advantage in the insurance bet is 7.7%.
The chart above can be found in any introductory blackjack book. It was first created by Edwin Thorp, the first person to study the game with computers. He programmed a computer to play millions of hands to determine which is the best way to play every situation. Depending on the number of decks and the table rules the house advantage will only by about 0.5% if you use the basic strategy correctly.
99% of those reading this who don't already know the basic strategy will not memorize it correctly, if at all. That won't bother me because if everybody knew it the casinos would either stop offering blackjack or make the rules tighter. However if you want to be able to walk into any casino and have about a break even chance then you must memorize the basic strategy. You can even play with it written down but everybody will get impatient with you every time you consult it. Every card counting strategy assumes you already have perfect knowledge of the basic strategy. If you want to improve your blackjack there is no short cut around learning it. I can not stress enough how important this is if you want to be a good blackjack player.
I should mention that there is more than one basic strategy chart, depending on conditions like the number of decks and whether doubling after splitting is allowed. The chart above is specifically for multiple decks games in which doubling after splitting is not allowed. However the differences between this and the other charts are not many and only in the borderline cases. You can successfully use this chart under any conditions.
The best way, I have found, to memorize the basic strategy is notice paterns and to try to understand why you should play every situation as the chart says. Then make flash cards and go over and over them until you know it cold. Do not deal out cards to yourself because the soft totals and especially the splitable hands will not occur often enough to test your knowledge.
After, and only after, you know the basic strategy cold can you improve your odds by counting cards. My opinion is that counting cards is only worth the bother in single or double deck games. These can only be found in the state of Nevada, to the best of my knowledge. So I wouldn't bother learning to count cards if you can't often get to the Nevada casinos. Atlantic City has terrible conditions for counting and is strictly ignored by the professional players.
Personally I used to use Revere plus/minus strategy when I lived in California but have become rusty at it since moving to the east coast in 1992. As I said it is a waste of time to count cards in Atlantic City. Although the title is rather pretentious I think The World's Greatest Blackjack Book is a great source for further study of the game. I'm not going to explain card counting strategy here because I know that everybody would jump right to that, skipping the basic strategy.
Finally if you aren't willing to spend the time to memorize the entire strategy the least you can do is memorize the hard totals. Those will happen most of the time and can be committed to memory without much effort.
Many you will scoff at this strategy because you have played some hands according to the strategy anyway and have lost. Let me make this perfectly clear: You will not win every hand with this strategy! Just because you bust by hitting a 16 doesn't mean the strategy is wrong. It is simply saying telling you which way your odds are better of winning. Finally even if you do follow it you won't win every sitting. Depending on the table conditions you will have a disadvantage of zero to one half of one percent. According to the laws of averages your money will go up and down like a roller coaster in the short term. Only after many hours of play will the expected return approach what actually happens.
Even if you are not counting it is better to play at a single deck game for reasons that are hard to explain. Single deck black jack is offered all over Reno, Lake Tahoe, and Laughlin. In Las Vegas it is offered at many of the downtown casinos and a few of the strip casinos. Strip casinos that I know have single deck are Circus Circus, The Frontier, and the Aladdin. The last time I went to Las Vegas (August 1996) some of the downtown casinos had cut back the number of single deck tables. However they could still be easily found at The Pioneer and Binion's Horseshoe. The Golden Nugget and Fitzgeralds had cut back substantially, the rest I didn't check, although they had single deck the previous time I was there. One place you should be wary of is the Las Vegas Club in downtown. They have a big marquee stating that they have the most liberal blackjack rules in the world. They do offer about about six rules like surrendering and drawing to split aces which are good but these situations do not occur frequently enough to make up for the disadvantage of playing a shoe, especially when you could play single deck across the street.
For the serious player who already knows the basic strategy you may want to know some modifications based on variations in the rules. I should stress that using the chart above will work under any circumstances. However there are some marginal plays that under certain conditions merit going against the basic strategy chart above. By following these exceptions you will add a little to your odds of winning. If you don't know the basic strategy yet please don't bother with these exceptions as I don't want to overload you with information. But for the serious player, please consult my blackjack appendix. Good luck and say hello if you see me at the blackjack table.