Splitting Strategies Covered for Multi-Deck Blackjack Games

Published on: December 17, 2014 

When it comes to studying blackjack strategy, a majority of the time is spent on learning the patterns and correct ways to play when you're playing a soft or hard hand. Not much time is spent on playing splitting scenarios correctly, and this is a shame because it's one of the easiest places for most intermediate players to step up their payout rates. It's also extremely important to have a solid splitting strategy to use as a base when you're learning more complicated games like Spanish 21, so here we're going to look at patterns found when playing standard blackjack games with paired hands.

Your first decision in paired starting hand scenarios will always be to figure out if you're going to split or not. From there, you'll base your play on what kind of hand you end up with after the splitting decision (ie: a normal hard hand if you don't split). To start things off, 2s, 3s and 7s are always played the same way in that you'll split when facing a seven or lower and hit if you're facing an eight or higher. You'll play 6s the same way as well except that you'll also hit against a seven, and this makes sense because of how often you're going to just lose when the dealer has a ten card against your 12 if you don't split.

Always split aces and eights, and never split fives or tens. From there, you're almost always going to split nines except that you'll stand against a seven, ten or ace. This seems like an odd set of hands to stand against, but just remember that splitting against a ten or ace would double your bet size when you're at a disadvantage, and you'll want to stand against a seven because your hard total of 18 is so strong when the dealer catches a ten a high percentage of the time to just give you the win right there.

That leaves us with the fours which are a little tricky. Split against a five or six only, the two weakest dealer cards, and play it like a normal hard hand to the rest of the time. If you pay attention and use these guidelines when you're playing with paired hands, you'll do pretty well in almost any form of blackjack. Just remember to try to compensate a little for any special rule changes in the specific game you're playing.

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