How to play Blackjack: a beginner’s guide to who does what

Blackjack is the card game most people feel they already half know. A table, a dealer, and an aim you can say in one line: finish closer to 21 than the dealer without going past it. The higher total wins.

You put a bet down before any cards come out when you take a seat at a Blackjack table. The house is the casino, with the dealer as its hand at the table. What is less obvious is that only one of you gets to make a decision, and it is not the dealer. Learn the order a hand happens in, and you can follow any table from the first card to the last.

What the cards are worth, and why the tens matter

Every card has a fixed value, and there are only three rules to it. Number cards carry their own value, so a Seven is seven. The Jack, Queen and King are each worth 10. An Ace is worth one or 11, whichever suits the hand.

21 from the two cards you are dealt is a natural, also called a Blackjack: an Ace beside any card worth 10. It wins at once, unless the dealer is showing an Ace or a ten. Then the dealer’s own hand is settled first. The word does double duty: Blackjack is the name of the game and the name of that hand.

Then the arithmetic the rest of the game leans on. A deck holds 52 cards, and 16 of them are worth 10: four 10s, four Jacks, four Queens and four Kings. That is close to three cards in every 10, which is why a hand already in the teens sits so near to going over.

You go first, and you can go out before the dealer plays

Once the bets are down and the cards are out, the players act first, each in turn. You take cards one at a time, face up, with two plain choices each time: take another card, which is a hit, or stop where you are, which is a stand.

Go past 21, and you are bust, meaning the hand is over and lost there and then, before the dealer has played a card.

Take two hands. You are holding a Nine and a Six, which is 15, so anything from a Seven upwards takes it past 21. Now hold an Ace and a Six instead. That is seven, or it is 17, because the Ace can be either one or 10. Draw a 10 to it, and the Ace goes back to being one, so no card in the deck can bust it.

Blackjack is a game of chance. You choose when to stop, and nothing you choose changes which card comes next off the deck.

The dealer’s turn is not a decision

When the players have finished, the dealer plays, and the dealer is not deciding anything. The rule is written down before the first card comes out: on a total of 16 or less the dealer must keep drawing, and once the hand reaches 17, they stop. That is the whole of it, and it does not move with what anybody else is holding.

A dealer who goes past twenty-one loses to everyone still in the hand. Otherwise, the higher total takes it, and a player whose total matches the dealer’s neither wins nor loses, which is a push: the bet comes back.

One part of the rule varies from room to room. Where a 17 contains an Ace counted as 11, a soft 17, some rooms have the dealer draw again and some have them stop, and the rules where you play say which.

Why you go first, and what it costs you

This is the part the order is built around. If every player at the table has gone past 21, the dealer wins without turning a card. That is what going first costs you, and it is why the dealer’s rule can afford to be fixed: the dealer acts last, sees every hand, and is allowed to do nothing about any of it.

The last piece of the order is the British one. In British casinos, the dealer takes their second card only once the players have finished, so nothing on the table is being kept from you while you decide. The dealer’s hand is not hidden. It does not exist yet.

Which leaves one open question in the whole hand, and it is yours: when to stop.