Easy Double Double Down Strategy in Spanish 21

Published: November 6, 2014

In Spanish 21, you have to deal with a very interesting dynamic. The 48-card Spanish deck gives the house a bigger advantage than usual, and then you have a number of special rules that help you to overcome that advantage. One of those is the double double down rule which states that you have the options to double, stand or surrender after doubling. This creates an entirely different level of the game where you have to make good decisions after doubling if you want to maximize your payout rate. We want to help you to play these scenarios the easy way.

Let's start with general rules for soft hands since they're the easiest to play. For a soft hand 17 and lower, you'll want to go ahead and double again regardless of the card you're facing. Along similar lines, you're going to want to stand on a 19 or higher 100 percent of the time. With a soft 18, you'll only double against a four, five or six, and you'll be standing the rest of the time. These guidelines will have you playing perfectly when you're in these soft hand situations after you've already doubled earlier in the hand.

With hard hands, as usual, things are a bit more complicated. You're going to tend to always double with a hard 11 or lower when you're facing a seven or lower, and you're going to stand with a hand that's 12 or higher against a 7 or lower. That covers more than half of the possible combinations of starting hands and dealer cards. From there, you have to look at how to play against an eight or higher which are the strongest cards that the dealer can have in this game.

So now we're facing an eight or higher with a hard hand. If we have a total of eight or less, we're going to surrender, and if we have a total of 12 to 16, we're also going to surrender. Totals of 17 or more will stand, and totals between 9 and 11 will always double. While this isn't a 100 percent perfect strategy, it'll have you playing perfect the vast majority of the time without making any major mistakes. On top of that, these strategies are easy to learn without too much studying which allows you to get in the action sooner rather than later.