Challenging Blackjack Situations

All games, especially card games, have their own rules and strategies. Blackjack is one of them. You can’t simply memorize all the tables and think you’re an expert at the game. You have to learn all the situations individually. It’s the only way to upgrade from being a blackjack aficionado to being a blackjack king.

This article will show you some of the more difficult blackjack combinations reported by online casinos at nolimitway.com. With this information, you can quickly learn how to avoid the mistakes that beginner players make most often.

Equal stakes

If a player consistently goes for a 1:1 bet, he’ll increase his odds of winning at the casino by an average of 4% when the dealer’s ace is open and the player’s blackjack hand is open. So you don’t have to bet equal all the time. But every rule has its exceptions. In this situation, those are the cases where the player keeps a card count and that count is not in his favor.

So, the following combinations are considered tricky in blackjack:

Sixteen points for the player and seven points for the dealer

The most common mistake amateur players make is to reach for a sixteen when the dealer’s hand is ten, or, conversely, not reach for seven when the dealer’s hand is seven. In both cases, the chance of overcall is the same. However, the chance that the player will win with a seven from the dealer is much higher, since the player may face a small card, and the dealer will draw a ten.

If you do the maths, you can see that if you raise sixteen against ten, your chance of losing goes down from 77% to 76%, and against seven, it goes down from 74% to 70%.

Conclusion: Rebuy in both cases.

Two eights for the player and ten for the dealer

Many players can’t flip a pair of eights when the dealer has a ten, so there’s a big risk of losing by two. In this case, both options (splitting and no splits) leave the player in no good conditions. However, splitting eights increases the chance of winning.

Conclusion: it is mandatory to split eights into two boxes.

Player’s eleven and dealer’s ten

Anyone who’s played blackjack at least a couple of times knows that you’re supposed to double up on eleven hands when you play at an online casino. But many hesitate to do so if they see the dealer holding an open ten. You always think that fate is about to flip a small card and the dealer will always draw a ten. But it’s just an illusion. The dealer’s chance of winning is much smaller than the player’s. If the player always rebounds in these cases, he will win 56% of the time. With a double, however, the probability of winning drops to 54%, but only if you double the bet.

Conclusion: do a double at eleven against ten.

Twelve for the player and two for the dealer

If the dealer has an open deuce and the player has twelve points, it’s a very bad situation. If you make a rebound, there’s a good chance you’ll be outnumbered. If you don’t overcall, there’s a good chance that the dealer will win by seventeen points or more. In such a situation, it’s better to draw a card, since there’s a better chance of not going overboard.

Conclusion: always take a card.

Ace and Eight for the player and nine for the dealer

When the player is holding an Ace and Eight (a soft eighteen) and the dealer has nine points, you should not be afraid to catch up. Under these conditions, the player wins about 40% of the time. As long as the player is going to rebound at a soft nineteen or a hard seventeen, the probability of winning rises to 45%.

Conclusion: Always draw cards.

Conclusion

Using the information in this article about online casinos, you can understand what to do in difficult situations, but you should not forget that there is the theory of probability, which can also help the player. One should forget about fear, take risks, rely on intuition, and, of course, learn all the best strategies for a particular situation. Only by following these rules can one become a true blackjack pro.