Blackjack Tournament Strategy Tips

Strategy Tips for Blackjack Tournaments

This page has strategy tops for the Blackjack Tournaments that are available for players with a free REAL Platinum Play, Royal Vegas, 7Sultans or Vegas Palms account.
( You can read more about getting started here: Getting started with Blackjack Tournaments )

The most important thing to remember in Blackjack is your basic strategy.
The simpler you keep it, the better.

The widely accepted single-deck Blackjack strategy can be neatly summarized in a table which indicates what the most optimal response is to the cards being dealt to you, and also how they match up against the dealer’s hand.

Blackjack Abrevation Explanations

H	Hit
S	Stand
D	Double if allowed, else hit
D/St	Double if allowed, else stand
P	Split
P/H	Split if double after split, else hit
P/D	Split if double after split, else double
Su/H	Surrender if allowed, else hit
Su/S	Surrender if allowed, else stand

Quick info: a soft hand has an Ace that counts as 11, whereas a hard hand is a hand with no Aces, or where an Ace counts as 1.

Single-deck, dealer stands on Soft 17
Your Hand	Dealer's card
	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	A
8	H	H	H	D	D	H	H	H	H	H
9	D	D	D	D	D	H	H	H	H	H
10	D	D	D	D	D	D	D	D	H	H
11	D	D	D	D	D	D	D	D	D	D
12	H	H	S	S	S	H	H	H	H	H
13	S	S	S	S	S	H	H	H	H	H
14	S	S	S	S	S	H	H	H	H	H
15	S	S	S	S	S	H	H	H	H	H
16	S	S	S	S	S	H	H	H	Su/H	Su/H
17	S	S	S	S	S	S	S	S	S	S
A,2	H	H	D	D	D	H	H	H	H	H
A,3	H	H	D	D	D	H	H	H	H	H
A,4	H	H	D	D	D	H	H	H	H	H
A,5	H	H	D	D	D	H	H	H	H	H
A,6	D	D	D	D	D	H	H	H	H	H
A,7	S	D/St	D/St	D/St	D/St	S	S	H	H	S
A,8	S	S	S	S	D/St	S	S	S	S	S
2,2	P/H	P	P	P	P	P	H	H	H	H
3,3	P/H	P/H	P	P	P	P	P/H	H	H	H
4,4	H	H	P/H	P/D	P/D	H	H	H	H	H
5,5	D	D	D	D	D	D	D	D	H	H
6,6	P	P	P	P	P	P/H	H	H	H	H
7,7	P	P	P	P	P	P	P/H	H	Su/S	H
8,8	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P
9,9	P	P	P	P	P	S	P	P	S	S
10,10	S	S	S	S	S	S	S	S	S	S
A,A	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P

Knowing your basic Blackjack strategy – familiarizing yourself with a pattern – is not a guaranteed way of winning, -It simply helps you understand the Blackjack basics better.

If the dealer has an Ace-up Blackjack, you will probably lose all bets made, from doubling to splitting. In this event, rather stand (if possible) or fold.

If the dealer has an upcard of 7 or higher, keep hitting until you have a hard count of at least 17 or more, or a soft count of 18 or more.

Always split Aces and eights, - they are the best-odds pairs to do this with.

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