Blackjack Basic Strategy Chart: The Whole Thing, and Why It Changes

Basic strategy is the single highest-value thing to learn in a casino. It takes the house edge in blackjack from roughly 2% for an average player down to about 0.5% — better than any other bet on the floor. It is also the most commonly mis-taught, because almost every chart you find online is printed without saying which rules it assumes.

The chart is not one chart

This is the part most guides skip. "Basic strategy" is the output of a calculation, and the calculation takes your table's rules as input. Change the rules, and some cells change.

Seven rules move the answer:

Rule Effect on house edge Changes any decisions?
Dealer stands on soft 17 (S17) −0.22% for you Yes — several
Dealer hits soft 17 (H17) worse for you Yes — 11 vs A, soft 18 vs 2, A-7
Blackjack pays 3:2 baseline No
Blackjack pays 6:5 +1.4% for the house No — but don't play it
Double after split allowed −0.14% Yes — many pair decisions
Late surrender allowed −0.07% Yes — 16 vs 9/10/A, 15 vs 10
Number of decks (1 → 8) up to +0.5% Yes — mostly doubling

The single biggest number in that table is 6:5 blackjack. It costs you more than every strategy mistake a typical player makes in a session, combined. If the felt says 6:5, the correct basic strategy is to stand up and find another table. That's not a joke — no amount of correct play recovers 1.4%.

The chart (6–8 decks, dealer stands on soft 17, double after split, late surrender)

The most common shoe game. H hit, S stand, D double (hit if not allowed), P split, R surrender (hit if not allowed).

Hard totals

You 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 A
17+ S S S S S S S S S S
16 S S S S S H H R R R
15 S S S S S H H H R H
13–14 S S S S S H H H H H
12 H H S S S H H H H H
11 D D D D D D D D D D
10 D D D D D D D D H H
9 H D D D D H H H H H
5–8 H H H H H H H H H H

Soft totals (an ace counted as 11)

You 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 A
A,9 (20) S S S S S S S S S S
A,8 (19) S S S S S S S S S S
A,7 (18) S D D D D S S H H H
A,6 (17) H D D D D H H H H H
A,4–A,5 H H D D D H H H H H
A,2–A,3 H H H D D H H H H H

Pairs

You 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 A
A,A P P P P P P P P P P
10,10 S S S S S S S S S S
9,9 P P P P P S P P S S
8,8 P P P P P P P P P P
7,7 P P P P P P H H H H
6,6 P P P P P H H H H H
5,5 D D D D D D D D H H
4,4 H H H P P H H H H H
2,2 / 3,3 P P P P P P H H H H

Insurance: never. Not with a good hand, not with blackjack, not "just this once". It's a side bet with about a 7% house edge, and it has nothing to do with the hand you're holding.

What changes if the dealer hits soft 17

Four cells, and they're worth knowing because H17 tables are extremely common:

That's it. If you learn the S17 chart and these four exceptions, you have both.

The seven rules that cover most of it

Memorising 300 cells is unnecessary. These seven rules get you through the large majority of hands, and the chart above fills in the rest:

  1. Always split aces and eights. Never split tens or fives.
  2. Hard 17 or more: stand. Always.
  3. Hard 12–16 against dealer 2–6: stand. Against 7–A: hit. The dealer's weak cards are 2 through 6, because those are the ones that make them draw and bust.
  4. Hard 11: double. Hard 10: double against everything but a 10 or ace.
  5. Soft 17 or less: never stand. Hit or double, but never stand — you cannot bust.
  6. Soft 18: stand vs 2, 7, 8. Double vs 3–6. Hit vs 9, 10, A. The one soft hand people get wrong constantly.
  7. Surrender 16 vs 9, 10, A and 15 vs 10 if the table allows it.

Why "learning the chart" usually doesn't stick

Because reading a chart and playing from it are different skills. You can hold the whole chart in your head at a kitchen table and still hesitate on 12 vs 3 with a dealer waiting, other players watching, and money on the felt. The knowledge is there; the recall under pressure isn't.

The fix is the same as for any recall problem: repetition with immediate correction, on the actual decision, not on the chart.

That's what Casino Trainer is built to do. It deals real hands, and when your play differs from the solver's it names the correct action and prices the mistake in expected value — so the feedback is specific ("standing on 16 vs 7 costs 4.2 cents per dollar wagered") rather than "wrong". The solver is exact and composition-dependent rather than a lookup table, which means the strategy stays correct when you change the rules: switch to H17, or to a double-deck game, and the recommendations change with it.

Every game runs on virtual credits. There is no real-money play anywhere in it, and nothing about it is a gambling product.

The honest summary

Basic strategy does not make blackjack a winning game. It takes a ~2% house edge down to ~0.5%, which means a longer session for the same money and a real chance of walking out ahead on any given night. Over a long enough run, the house still wins — that's what a house edge is.

What basic strategy buys you is that every hand you lose, you lost correctly.

Ready to practise the chart on real hands with the correct play named for you? Get Casino Trainer — virtual credits only.

Want the correct play named for you, hand by hand? Get Casino Trainer — virtual credits only, never real money.