Blackjack is a game of skill in which players compete against the dealer for a higher unbusted hand. The objective is to beat the dealer by getting closer to 21 than him or her, and the player wins if they do so. A blackjack hand consists of an ace and a ten-value card and pays 3:2 on the bet. Players may also choose to purchase insurance which pays 2:1 if the dealer has an ace up. Some casinos reduce the standard payout of blackjack to 6:5 reducing the house edge, but this practice is widely decried by professional card counters.
After the players make their bets, they are dealt two cards each and the dealer is given one card face up and one down. The player may then ask the dealer for another card if they feel their current hand won’t bust and they want to increase its value, or they can stand on their initial hand. The player should not ask for another card if their current cards are too close to 21 or they will end up losing to the dealer.
If the dealer has a blackjack, all other hands lose to him or her, except those of players who have also drawn a blackjack. The dealer’s only choice is to hit on a soft 17 (a total of 17 with an ace counting as a value of 11).
In some games, a player may split pairs of cards if they are of the same rank. Usually, after the first card is split, the second is dealt to each of the splitting cards. The player then acts on each of these two hands independently. Aces can be split as many times as the player wishes, but a player cannot split a pair of aces after they have already split them once.
The game can be played with a minimum of equipment, including the cards and the players’ money. The game can be as informal or as formal as the players wish, but it is important to reshuffle the cards at regular intervals in order to maintain the integrity of the deck and to prevent biased shuffling. Some players even use a specialized device to track the size of the shuffle.
Some of the more advanced strategy techniques in Blackjack involve card counting, although this is a highly illegal practice at most casinos. Arnold Snyder, author of the book The Shuffle Tracker’s Cookbook, was among the first to bring this technique to the public. Other legal methods of gaining an advantage in Blackjack include a variety of strategies for obtaining information about the dealer’s hole-card or the next card to be dealt.
The rules for Blackjack vary from casino to casino, but most allow a player to double down on any two-card hand, and to split pairs of cards. Most Blackjack games also require a re-shuffle after each round of play. In some casinos, the dealer must hit on a soft 17, and in others he or she must take a card on a hard 17. In either case, the dealer must always check for Blackjack before paying winning hands.