What are Splitting and Doubling Down in a Blackjack strategy?

If you are looking for ways to lower the house edge in Blackjack, and don’t mind taking a risk, there are a couple of moves you can turn to. The Blackjack Strategy of doubling down or the strategy of splitting will give you the chance to raise the total payouts for your hand. Many brick-and-mortar casino players are card counters, but when you’re playing online you won’t find card-counting easy to do. Many casinos use continuous shuffling machines to make it practically impossible. Your best bet, in that case, are a pair of high-risk but high return strategies.

How to use the Splitting Blackjack Strategy?

In most Blackjack versions, if you’ve been dealt a pair of cards of the same value, you’ll be allowed to split them. Splitting is not compulsory, so you’ll have to make a careful decision on whether or not to split. Sometimes, it’s not a good idea to split, and if you’ve played long enough you’ll realize when you shouldn’t.

Splitting means you get two new hands, two new bets, or two chances to beat the dealer (or lose, for that matter.) The dealer deals you two more cards (one card for each hand) and you play each hand normally.

Knowing when to split is an excellent skill to have in your Blackjack strategy book for high-level play. You should use the opportunity wisely, or it’s wasted! You may have heard the basic strategy is to split aces and eights. The chances of hitting Blackjack twice when you split a hand of aces are quite high since there are sixteen cards of value 10, so usually, it’s recommended that you split the aces when you’re dealt a pair. If the dealer deals you a second pair of aces, split again, say, experts.

The same goes for a pair of eights. The chances of being dealt a 5 to hit Blackjack for your pair of eights is slim. It’s usually a better option to split the eights. Re-split if you’re dealt an 8 again.

Split the 9s only if the dealer shows anything other than a 7, 10 or ace.
In a good Blackjack strategy, you should almost never split your hands. If you get a pair of 4s, don’t split. A bad hand will only get worse when you split the 4s. Nor should you split a pair of 5s. Instead, you could consider hitting for an ace or doubling down if the dealer doesn’t show an ace, a 10 or a 9.

Splitting 10s won’t give you two better hands, so don’t split a pair of 10s either.

When can You Use Doubling Down?

Another Blackjack strategy is doubling down. You’ll have the option to double down after you’ve been dealt that hand. This means you can double the size of your initial bet and get a hit. The call is not always risk-free, but it’s often a last-ditch attempt to hit Blackjack. By doubling down, you could either immediately get Blackjack or lose to the house.

It’s a good Blackjack strategy to double down when you have a hand with a value of 10 or 11. There’s a high chance of you scoring 20 since there are as many as 12 face-cards valued at 10 and four 10s. Double a hand of 11s and you increase your edge since the chances of hitting Blackjack are high with this strong hand.
You should also consider doubling down when you’ve got an Ace and another card with values between 2 and 7. Just be careful when the dealer shows a 2, 7 or higher-valued card.

The Blackjack strategy tips mentioned above are not set in stone but more or less usually followed. For other hands, you’ll have to roll with the situation. For instance, when the dealer shows an eight you may want to split twos and threes but leave the sevens alone.