Do you know your blackjack Basic Strategy DOWN COLD?

Before you even sit down at a BJ table, you should 1) know not to play 6:5:shit under any circumstances (ANY circumstances) 2) know Basic Strategy 3) trust in Basic Strategy.

It actually makes the game more fun to simply know what you should do in every situation. Play for more than two minutes and you'll see somebody staring at a hard 16 against a dealer 10 and gritting their teeth and straining as if they were giving birth to a porcupine, trying to divine if the dealer has a large or small card in the hole.  The Basic Strategy player just shrugs and hits. He might know that by doing so, you increase your chances of winning from about 24% to about 26%. Still crappy, of course, but 16 is a loser no matter what. But making the proper decision 50 times will eventually save you one bet. All Basic Strategy decisions do that one way or the other.

So WITHOUT looking at a Basic Strategy chart, can you answer the following five questions?

1) Against which dealer upcards do you split 99?

2) Which actions do you take with soft 18 (A7) vs. all the various dealer upcards?

3) When do you double a hard 9?

4) With a hard 12 through a hard 16, you stand against all dealer 2 through 6 EXCEPT in which two instances?

5) Do you ever double with a soft 19 (A8), and if so, when?

If you don't absolutely know the correct answers to all these questions, you have no business playing the game, or at least no business complaining when you lose! (These are not the five most important decisions as such, but the five I've seen that people get consistently wrong.)

6) Do you complain and whine when someone plays incorrectly (or correctly) and say it's their fault you lost when the card they took would have made the dealer bust?

I read the book and memorized basic strategy at one point many years ago......and then discovered blackjack puts me to sleep after about 10 hands.    That's actually true for most table games for me.     Craps is the only game that really keeps my interest.    The players tend to be more cordial too.

Lets give it a try:

1) 2,3,4,5,6,8,9 (not the seven)

2) Double down against 3,4,5,6.

3) Against 3,4,5,6.

4) Hit a hard 12 against a 2 and 3.

5) Not sure but probably never.

Lets give it a try:

1) 2,3,4,5,6,8,9 (not the seven)

2) Double down against 3,4,5,6.

3) Against 3,4,5,6.

4) Hit a hard 12 against a 2 and 3.

5) Not sure but probably never.

Sorry for the duplicate post...too early in the AM.

2) Yes, but you also hit A7 vs. a 9, 10, or A.

5) Double A8 vs. a 6.

#4 is the one that pisses people off at the BJ table.  Here I am doing the right thing and the guy with two $500 hands is pissed I took 'the dealers bust card'.  lol 

What they don't realize is that there's no functional difference between the dealer taking the next card (if you stand) and the dealer taking the second card (if you hit). It's random either way. And of course, they're not going to embrace and kiss you if you take the card that would have given the dealer a 21.

Like so many other activities, blackjack is worsened by the presence of other humans.

I do laugh when people leave in disgust over another person's play as though the outcome of their good or bad play affects their cards.  I'm barely proficient at perfect Black Jack strategy, but I do know the basics and how to find a good table, so it's usually just a casual game with friends in Vegas, no one is really counting or worried about anything more than having fun.

At the M Resort on my last trip, there was a cowboy from Colorado who was in town for NFR, we chatted a bit while we played. One player cut the deck, and the table did well, so the cowboy asked that the same guy cut the deck again. The dealer said she had to offer the cut to each player, we all waived it off and the "lucky guy" cut again. The next deal, I was tipping for my drink when the dealer offered me the deck, I cut the cards, forgetting about "lucky guy". Cowboy made a scoffing noise and pushed his chips in to color up and he left, I had screwed up his "luck", it was pretty funny.