Beginner's Introduction to Basic Strategy

When you read about blackjack, you will always read something about basic strategy. Beginners may find it strange that a game with a random shuffle of cards will have some sort of strategy playable on it. The truth is that blackjack, like poker, has a bit of math to it that players can take advantage of. This makes the game really interesting since there is really a chance for players to beat the casino in blackjack.

Basic strategy, when dealing with blackjack, refers to the optimal play of each hand dealt to you given what rules are in place at a table and what the dealer shows as his up card. This is called optimal strategy, which does not necessarily mean that you will win every single hand if you practice basic strategy. What you have instead is a statistically correct move for every hand that is the best one possible in a given situation.

It is observed that players who practice basic strategy in blackjack are better off than other players who don't use any strategy at all. If a player practices basic strategy, that player is able to bring down the house advantage and gain an edge in the game.

You will often find a lot of basic strategy charts online that tell you what to do given the cards you have in your hand and the dealer's displayed up card. Most people will have difficulty committing all that information to memory if a basic strategy chart is presented in tabular form. One must first translate a basic strategy chart into something more comfortable before the information contained in it can be memorized.

One fundamental principle that will help in this arduous task will be to assume that the dealer's down card is worth a ten, which assumes some form of worse case scenario. Given this assumption you can then gauge what you have against what the dealer probably has since you are already preparing for the worst. Keeping this in mind will aid you in committing a basic strategy chart to memory.

A good technique to memorize your blackjack basic strategy chart is to use flash cards. Write down what you have on a basic strategy chart onto flash cards. Write the dealer's up card and the cards you have in your hand on one side of a card and the correct move at the back. You then flip the cards and try to guess the correct move for each condition you see. Another way to go about memorizing is to translate the basic strategy table into words on a sheet of paper. Choose a method of learning basic strategy most comfortable to you. Learning basic strategy in blackjack gives you an edge in the game.