Blackjack Basic Strategy Chart

This is the mathematically optimal play for every blackjack hand — hit, stand, double, or split — against every dealer upcard, for the rule set stated below. It isn't a rule of thumb: every cell is the highest-expected-value action out of a full decision tree, computed by the same engine that runs the live trainer and proven correct by an independent test suite.

Rules assumed: 6-deck shoe, dealer stands on soft 17 (S17), double after split allowed (DAS), no surrender, blackjack pays 3:2. Different rules shift a handful of cells — mainly hard 16 vs. 9/10/A and hard 15 vs. 10, which become surrender plays at a table that offers late surrender.

Find your hand along the left edge and the dealer's upcard along the top — the cell where they meet is the play. Hit, Stand, Double (fall back to hit, or stand for soft 18, if doubling isn't available), Psplit. Hard totals assume no ace is in play; soft totals count an ace as 11; a "pair" is two cards of the same blackjack value, so a ten, jack, queen, or king paired with another counts as 10-10.

None of this is a hunch. Every cell comes from weighing the expected value of each legal action for that hand against that upcard and keeping the best one — the same math a casino uses to compute its own edge, aimed at the player's side of the table for once. Playing this chart perfectly, without deviation, gets the house edge on this exact rule set down to roughly 0.5% — one of the best bets on the floor. Every deviation from it, including "safe-feeling" ones like always standing on 16, hands that edge back.