I usually get an email or phone call a few times each month from a blackjack player who asks me the following question: “Your article said to stand on (a specific hand). I’ve read in a book (or on the Internet) that you should hit that hand. Who’s right?”
When you are dealt a pair of 9s in blackjack you have two viable playing options:
Perhaps it is no coincidence that Las Vegas is located only 277 miles away from Hollywood. The short drive across the desert or one-hour flight via private jet provides easy access to casino tables for celebrities who look as striking on casino surveillance monitors as they do on the big screens where they prefer to be seen.
In the previous article in this series about my personal experiences with blackjack, I explained how I first learned how to play blackjack, and how I mastered the basic strategy (circa 1969). In this second article, I’ll explain how I decided to become a card counter and how I learned to count.
In this article you will learn how to play a hard 16 when you play blackjack.
A hard 16 is a blackjack hand that contains either no Aces, or if an Ace is present, it counts as one. Some examples of hard 16 are:
