Make a Difference With Accurate Play in Single-Deck Blackjack

Published: January 1, 2015

If you look at all online casino games that use an element of skill, single-deck blackjack games are probably the type of game that is affected the most by being accurate in your decisions. A small mistake in strategy can spell a big loss on your overall payout rate in this game, and this means that accuracy is a pretty big deal. In fact, it's probably more important to be very precise with your play than in any other form of blackjack in the world. We're going to show you some situations to look at where you are probably lacking in terms of accuracy in your games and what you can do about it.

To start with, you have to really push the advantage hard when it comes to scenarios where you can double. This includes doubling sometimes with hard eights and nines, situations that are often ignored. With an eight, you're going to need to double when facing a five or a six. With a nine, you'll double against all cards between a two and a six. What you should notice here is that you're being extremely aggressive, and you're going to do the same thing with soft hands.

If you're facing a four, five or six, and you have a soft hand that's between 13 and 18, then you should always be doubling. This includes a ton of hands that you wouldn't be playing in multi-deck games. With a soft 17, your hand is so overwhelmingly powerful that you'll be doubling against anything from a two to a six, and you'll also be doubling a soft 18 from three to six. Finally, in a particularly aggressive move, you'll double with a 19 when you're up against a six.

Your aggression is matched with a few other interesting scenarios. If you have a soft 18, you're going to want to hit when you're up against a nine or a ten. This is partially because standing is going to put you in situation where you're just losing if the dealer's down card is a ten. Aside from this, there are very limited scenarios where you should be surrendering. You should surrender a hard 16 against a ten or ace. You should also surrender a pair of sevens when you're up against a ten only even though you don't surrender other hard 14s.