Blackjack strategy trainer

The trainer deals you two cards and shows the dealer’s up card. Pick Hit, Stand, Double or Split, and it tells you at once whether the move matches basic strategy for our table, why, and how much each move wins or loses on average per 100 debens. Your score and streak are kept below the buttons.

Each hand is three cards drawn from a full six-deck shoe, so hands come up as often as at a real table: about three in four are hard totals, one in seven is a pair, one in ten is soft. A pair of tens alone is almost one hand in ten, so you will see plenty of 20 — and the answer is always stand. Blackjacks are skipped, because there is nothing to decide.

The buttons above the cards narrow the deal to hard totals, soft totals or pairs. Use them when one part of the chart keeps tripping you up.

The dealer is assumed to have checked for blackjack already, as ours does with an ace or a ten showing. That is also why there is no insurance button: the right answer to insurance is always no, and the insurance page shows the arithmetic.

After each answer the trainer lists every move with its average result per 100 debens bet. The numbers come from the same exact calculation as the chart: six decks, your two cards and the dealer’s card out of the shoe, best play afterwards. For hard totals they are averaged over all the ways to make that total, weighted by how often each comes up.

Take 16 against a ten. Hit shows −53.5, Stand −54.0, Double −107.0. Both sensible moves lose more than half the bet, and hitting loses half a deben less per 100. Now take 11 against a 6: Double +67.7, Hit +33.8. Here the right move earns twice as much, and missing it is a real loss.

A negative number next to the best move is normal. Some hands are simply bad, and the strategy is about losing as little as possible on them and winning as much as possible on the good ones.

1. Start with Hard only. Learn the 12–16 rows first: they decide one hand in three.
2. When you can play 50 hard hands in a row without a mistake, switch to Soft. At a real table only about one hand in ten is soft, so the filter lets you see enough of them.
3. Then Pairs. The core is short — always split aces and eights, never tens and fives — and the small pairs take a few sessions.
4. Finish with All hands until a streak of 50 feels routine.
5. Then play at the Scribes’ Table with the chart open next to the game, and look at it only when you are unsure.

How long does it take? In our experience the hard totals stick after an hour or two of practice spread over a couple of days. Soft hands and small pairs take longer, simply because they come up less often. Short daily sessions work better than one long one.

Spend the time where the debens are. A wrong answer on 16 against a ten costs almost nothing, while the habit of standing on 12–16 against a 7 or higher costs 2.6% of everything you bet.

These cells trip up almost everyone at first. If the trainer keeps catching you on one of them, you are in good company:

• 12 against a 2 or 3 — hit. Standing feels safer, but it costs 2–4 debens per 100 bet.
• Soft 18 against a 9, 10 or ace — hit. 18 looks finished, yet against a ten hitting saves 3.7 per 100.
• 11 against an ace — hit, don’t double: +14.7 against +12.3.
• Soft 13–17 against a 5 or 6 — double. Many players never double a hand with an ace in it, and A,6 against a 6 earns twice as much doubled.
• 9,9 against a 7 — stand on 18: +40.0 against +36.9 for the split.
• 4,4 against a 5 or 6 — split, thanks to doubling after the split: against a 6, +16.6 against +12.4.
• 10 against a ten — just hit: doubling turns +2.6 into −0.6.

The trainer uses the same keys as the blackjack tables in the game: H to hit, S to stand, D to double, P to split. At the table you get 15 seconds per move, which is plenty once the chart is in your head. The residents marked AI who fill empty seats play this same basic strategy, so watching them is another quiet lesson.

One thing the trainer can’t show: at the table, after a hit you may hold three or more cards and can no longer double. Then a D in the chart means hit, and Ds means stand.