Blackjack Doubling a Soft 19 - Doubling Soft Nineteen |
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| How to Play Blackjack |
When to Double Down on a Soft Nineteen
A lot of players have a lot of different advice to offer when you are dealt a soft nineteen, some players base their advice on a hunch, basic strategy, math, card counting or just some random form of guessing. As I always like to advise against guessing and playing a more consistent strategy, such as basic strategy for blackjack. Basic strategy for blackjack is a great way to play based on calculated odds, instead of guessing. Basic strategy is easy to follow, because you can find and purchase a small, credit card sized chart that fits in to your pocket and is very inexpensive for the value that it provides. It can be bought in a casino gift shop or on the Internet as well. When using a blackjack basic strategy card, it is very important that you remember to make sure that the basic strategy card you are using is designed for the blackjack rules you are going to be playing by. For example, the basic strategy card I follow is designed for tables where the house stays on all seventeens, as opposed to the dealer hitting soft seventeen. If the casino you plan to play in hits the dealer's soft seventeen, then I would suggest getting a basic strategy card for blackjack that applies to that condition. The basic strategy card for blackjack that I am looking at now, says that when you are dealt an ace and an eight, for a total of a soft nineteen, and the dealer is showing an up card of a two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten valued card or an ace, you should not hit you soft nineteen, you should not double down on your soft nineteen, you should simply stand on your soft nineteen. That is right, no matter what the dealer is showing as an up card, you should never hit and never double down on a soft nineteen, you should always stand on a soft nineteen. Some players may try and convince you to double down on your soft nineteen, but according to the math, the odds and basic strategy for blackjack, you will not succeed nearly as often as you will fail to make money. Granted, just because you stand on all of your soft nineteens and never hit or double down on them, like the good basic strategy card for blackjack dictates, does not mean you will win every time you stay on a soft nineteen, or lose every time you break the rules and double down on a soft nineteen, nor does it mean if you have a large bet out there and are dealt a soft nineteen and you stay on it, that you will be happy with the results, you could very easily lose on your soft nineteen, but hopefully if you follow the book every time, you will come out ahead more often than not. |
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