Doubling Down and Splitting in Blackjack

Blackjack is a really fun game to play, whether you do your gambling in a land based casino or via an online betting site or app. The fact that it is a game of chance and that it is very easy to learn how to play make it very accessible to people at all levels of experience, and many people enjoy the fact you can play at a table with your friends or new people you can meet but you aren’t actually playing against them like you are in poker. While blackjack is very easy to play, you get the best chance of winning by learning what is know as basic strategy.

Basic strategy tells you what decision (out of stand, hit, split or double down) has the best statistical chance of success considering the cards you have been dealt and the value of what the dealer is showing.

When a lot of people begin to learn basic strategy, they focus on the stand and hit decision, because this is important on every hand. In actual fact though, your best chance to profit is if you learn full basic strategy and always split and double down when the strategy charts indicate that you should. It may seem like a lot to learn, but it is important if you want to give yourself the best chance of walking away from a blackjack session with more chips (real or digital) than you came in with.

Essentially, you can split whenever you have two cards of the same value, and turn them into two separate hands each with their own stake. This means you need to wager twice as much, but you have two chances to win. You therefore do it when you have two cards of a value that, on its own, is a good one to start with. Strategy charts will tell you which cards will give you this.

Doubling is a good thing to do if your first two cards will give you a good chance of getting 20 or 21 if you hit (you have to hit when you double down). The ability to double down gives you a really good opportunity to win more money if you use it properly, and so it pays dividends to make sure you pay attention to this part of the strategy chart and use it when you play.

Don’t consider splitting and doubling as ‘advanced’ things you don’t need to learn. You will have more fun and win more money if you get into the habit of using them.