7 Blackjack Basics

Do you spend your casino session spinning the reels at the slots machines or trying your luck at roulette? Or maybe you’re more into sports betting or hitting the felt at the online poker rooms? Or perhaps you’re totally new to the world of online gaming? Whatever the truth is, sometimes a game just slips through the net. Even if it’s huge, you might not know all that much about it. And for some people, that game is blackjack. So here are a few basic blackjack tips you should know before you try your try your hand at it.

1. Blackjack pits you against the dealer

When you play blackjack, you’re essentially up against the dealer. That’s who you’re betting against and your ultimate goal is to out play them at every step. A lot of the time a dealer in card games is seen as neutral and beyond the game. But that is certainly not the case in blackjack!

2. Your goal is to get to 21

The game of blackjack centres around racing against the dealer to get as close to 21 points as possible during the game, without tipping over. If you get 22 or more points, you go bust and lose the game. If you don’t quite get to 21 but you get closer than the dealer does, you’ve still won.

3. Starting hands include public and private cards

The dealer starts by dishing out one face up card to every player and to the dealer themselves. Then everyone at the table gets dealt another face up card. This is called your starting hand. However, there is one card that no one knows about. The dealer gets dealt their second card face down.

4. Calculating points is easy in blackjack

It’s simple to quickly figure out how many points you’ve got in your hand. The numbered cards are worth their face value. So, for example, a four of hearts is worth four points. Then all royals are worth 10 points each. And things get interesting with the Ace, which can be worth either 1 or 11 points.

5. The four actions you can take during blackjack

Out of all the blackjack tips, this is one of the most important. You can take one of four different actions during the game. You can choose to hit (get another card), stand (keep your hand unchanged), double down (double your bet, get another card and then stand) or split (if you have two cards of the same value, you can create a new hand with each of them).

6. Insure yourself against a face-up ace

If the dealer’s face up card is an ace, you can take out insurance. Insurance costs half the amount of your original bet and means if the dealer wins, you don’t lose any money. Except of course the cash you spent on the insurance.

7. Online is one of the best places to start

When you’re just starting out at blackjack, or any casino game for that matter, it’s really nice to play online for a bit until you get your bearings. There are a few different reasons for this. When you play online, typically you can start with very small bets. That’s really great because it means that you can budget for a few games while you’re getting your head around how it all works.

It’s also really nice not to sit down in real life and face a dealer and a crowd of players when you’re not really 100% sure what you’re doing yet. Playing online means you can take your time and make your decisions, even have your blackjack tips sheet out, without anyone looking on and making comments.

If you’re looking for somewhere to start off your blackjack journey, we’d recommend trying out bet365. It’s got a range of bet levels and lots of different blackjack tables so it’ll suit you when you’re a newbie and beyond. Plus you can play regular online blackjack or the Live Casino blackjack, where you’re hosted by a real life dealer and the action is streamed into your home.

And if you’re totally new to bet365, here’s a great bet365 bonus code to make signing up even better.

Bet365 Games and Bet365 Casino, all under one roof, offer casino gamblers the chance to play dozens of table games such as blackjack. Players can find access to games such as 3-card poker, craps, three card brag online and baccarat, to name a few.