In Part 1, I summarized the differences in playing rules between playing blackjack in U.S. vs. abroad, specifically focusing on the no-hole-card rule. In this article, I will discuss the surrender rule.
Blackjack is blackjack: your goal is to beat the dealer whether you play in land-based or online casinos in the U.S., Europe, Asia, Caribbean, or any other part of the world. However, playing blackjack abroad in a land-based casino has some differences compared to playing in the U.S. The following table summarizes the differences.
Several years ago, I gave a blackjack seminar in front of an audience of about 100. At the start of my seminar, I posed this question to them. “How does the casino get its edge in blackjack?”
Basic strategy players and card counters have asked me that question umpteen times over the course of nearly 50 years of playing, teaching, and writing about blackjack. This is what I told them.
Note: Click here to read Part 1 of this article.
As promised, at the end of this article you will find the questions with answers to the challenging 21-question test given to the elite blackjack pros at the 2020 Blackjack Ball. Give yourself one point for each correct answer. (If you got 13 or more correct, you did better than all the blackjack pros that took the test.)
(Note: Several active players listed below used pseudonyms to protect their identity.)
I was not able to attend this year’s Blackjack Ball because of my wife’s unexpected surgery that occurred the week of the Ball. Nevertheless, my good friends Rick Blaine (co-author of the excellent Blackjack Blueprint book) and Max Rubin (co-host of the Ball) provided me with the details that I used to write this article.
When you are dealt a pair of 4s in blackjack you have three viable playing options:
Which blackjack strategy you should invoke depends upon what the dealer’s upcard is, the number of decks of cards being used, and whether double down after pair splitting is allowed.
The basic playing strategy for a double- or multi-deck game where doubling down after pair splitting is not allowed (NDAS) is to
