Get Started Off Playing Pontoon on the Right Foot

Published: November 21, 2013

A lot of people who are fans of blackjack tend to try pontoon at some point. Pontoon is similar in some ways, but it's different enough to have some substantially different points regarding strategy. If you don't know these points, then you're going to have a really hard time winning at this game. The main two differences are that five card hands beat everything but a pontoon (this game's version of a blackjack) and the dealer is never given an up card. Almost of the strategic differences in pontoon come from these two differences, so it's key to understand how they impact the way the game should be played.

First off, no dealer up card means that the only information you have for playing your hand is the value and the number of cards in your hand. This is good in that it makes the basic strategy easier to learn for pontoon, and it's bad because there are fewer areas to improve once you learn the basic idea of how to play. You have similar extra betting options as blackjack as far as splitting and doubling goes, and though you can double at any point in a hand, you can only double once per hand.

The five card hand rule is pretty important because it changes the value of a hand based on how many cards are in it instead of just what your total is and whether your hand is hard or soft. For this reason, you should almost always be doubling when you have a hard hand with four cards. If your total is 16 or lower, you should double, and if you have 17, you should just hit. Hard totals of 18 and higher should just stand even with four cards.

Soft hands can be played very aggressively with doubling. However, something that's important to realize is that because you can double at any point in a hand, it doesn't make sense to ever double with a two-card hand unless you have a hard 10 or 11. With soft hands, you'll rarely be doubling with three cards as well, and you'll only be doing so when you have the higher totals. However, you'll double with every single four-card hand that's soft because you're guaranteed a five-card hand since it's impossible for you to go bust. These are the major strategic ideas that drive pontoon.