Blackjack Strategy

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:

• Hit
• Split or
• Double down

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

After nearly 50 years of playing blackjack, I could write a book that would contain all the misinformation on blackjack I’ve read in books and the Internet, and heard in casinos (of all places) and from fellow players. But rather than write the book, I decided instead to write this article for your enlightenment.

If there is one playing decision that seems to confound most blackjack players, it’s knowing when to split a pair (and when not to). Don’t believe me? Assume you are playing a six-deck game with the dealer standing on soft 17 (S17) and doubling down after pair splitting is allowed (DAS). How would you play the following initial two-card hands vs. the dealer’s upcard?

I’ve been asked the above question hundreds of times from blackjack players. What follows is a synopsis of what I tell them. 

The subtitle of this book is “The Pros’ Approach to Beating Today’s Blackjack.” Trust me; this is exactly what this book is all about. 

The book chronicles how a recent college graduate (Colin Jones) took the advice from a friend and learned card counting, and subsequently used the power of team play in today’s casino environment to extract millions of dollars from them over two decades. His experiences and results with card counting that are detailed in the book substantiate that the naysayers, who claim that card counting is dead, are dead wrong. 

Over the past 50 or so years, I’ve read my fair share of books containing trip reports written by card counters. But none was as unique, and well-written, as the recently published The Blackjack Insiders. (Publisher: Huntington Press). 

This is not a how to play and win book on blackjack; rather it’s an interesting and thrilling story about how a blackjack dealer decided to turn the tables on the casinos and beat them at their own game.