Vegas Strip Blackjack is one of the most popular online blackjack variants. In order to ensure that you play with optimum strategy you need to use the strategy card. This strategy card has 250 cells, which means that you need to memorise the optimum move for 250 different circumstances. If you are a professional blackjack player depending on the game for your living then you have no option but to do so. But if you play blackjack for leisure or entertainment then it is unlikely that you make the effort.
If you go only by your gut feeling, your average return is likely to fall drastically. This article presents a simplified strategy card for Vegas Strip Blackjack. It has only 22 cells and hence is easy to remember. You lose only 0.15% in the average return that you can get with the optimum strategy. The simplified blackjack strategy card works in the following manner. The optimum blackjack strategy card can be divided into blocks. Most of the cells in the same block have the same optimum move. The simplified card ignores the few moves that are different and assigns to them the majority decision.
The optimum blackjack strategy card has a separate column for each dealer face up card. The simplified card has just two columns. The first column deals with the Gclub dealer face up card from 2 to 6. The column deals with the dealer face up card from 7 to K and A. The player’s hand value has the same three broad sections – soft totals, hard totals and pairs. There is grouping of rows within each section.
For hard totals of 4 to 8, you always hit. For a hard total of 9, you double if possible for the first column and hit for the second one. For hard totals of 10 or 11, double if you have more points than the dealer. Treat a dealer ace as 11 points. For hard totals of 12 to 16 stand for the first column and hit for the second one. For hard totals of 17 to 21 always stand.
For soft totals of 13 to 15 always hit. For soft total of 16 to 18, you double if possible for the first column and hit for the second one. For soft totals of 19 to 21 you always stand. You always split pairs of eights and aces. Never split pairs of fours, fives or tens. Other pairs should be split for the first column and not the second one.
