Although soft hands are safer and essentially give you a second chance with the double-duty Ace card, there are some basic strategy guidelines that can increase your chances of winning even more. As a general rule of thumb,  hit on hands lowed than 13 and stand on hands higher than 18 because they’re already strong enough to stand a good chance of beating the dealer.

For all other soft hands, you need to make different moves depending on what the dealer’s visible upcard is. The actions you take are based on the fact that there are more 10-value cards than anything else in a Blackjack deck, so you’re likelier to get a 10-value card if you add another card to your hand, and the dealer’s face-down card has a greater chance of being worth 10 than anything else.

In addition to mathematical probabilities, soft hand https://onlineroulette.net.nz/blackjack/ strategies also consider the fact that the dealer usually has to stand on hand totals of 17 or higher and hit if their first 2 cards total 16 or less. You don’t need to perfect card counting as the genius Professor Edward Thorp did; you just need to remember a few simple guidelines! Check them out below.

Soft 13 and 14

  • Double down if the dealer upcard is a 5 or 6, because they’re likely to have to hit which will cause them to bust.
  • Hit when the upcard is anything else, because the dealer is likely to outscore you in this case.

Soft 15 and 16

  • Double down when the dealer is showing a 4, 5 or 6, because they’re mathematically likely to get a total of less than 17 (the only way they won’t is if their face-down card is an Ace) and be required to hit which will cause them to bust.
  • Hit when the dealer is showing anything else, since they’re less likely to bust but you have nothing to lose by trying for a better hand, without risking any more betting funds.

Soft 17

  • Double down if the dealer’s visible card is a 3, 4, 5 or 6, since the dealer is likely to have to hit and will then bust, and you stand an excellent chance of winning if they don’t bust but you’ve boosted your hand total with an extra card. Remember, with a soft hand you never run the risk of busting.
  • Hit if the dealer’s visible card is anything else, because their risk of busting is less, so even though you won’t bust your chances of winning are less.

Soft 18

  • Double Down when the dealer upcard’s a 3, 4, 5 or 6 because they’re likely to hit and then bust.
  • Hit when the dealer’s upcard is a 9, 10 or Ace since they probably won’t bust and have a better chance of winning.
  • Stand if the upcard is a 2, 7 or 8 because they’re mathematically more likely to have a total of 12, 17 or 18. The 12 would bust, you’d beat the 17 and the 18 would push. In other words, stand and you can’t lose!