How much cards are worth in blackjack

Even a quick brush with the rules of blackjack makes the main thing clear: the player’s job is to reach 21, ideally on two cards. Card values seem about as simple as it gets, and yet there are nuances worth going into in more detail. If you’re only just learning the rules or have limited time at the table so far, this breakdown will help put everything in its place.

Card values: the base values of every card

For anyone starting from the very basics, let’s begin with a table of card values.

Card values in blackjack are always the same: the value doesn’t depend on the rule variant, the number of decks or the specific table. The conditions of play change — but not what each card is worth.

Important: you only need to remember three things — number cards are worth their face value, all face cards and the ten are worth 10, and the ace is flexible (1 or 11). Every bit of strategy from here builds on those values.

10-value cards: ten, jack, queen, king

The deck holds more 10-value cards than any other: the ten, jack, queen and king. In an ordinary game — without specific side bets, i.e. additional bets¹, which aren’t offered at every table — their value to the player is identical. And all the ten-value cards are very useful:

• paired with an ace, such a card makes the combination known as a natural blackjack — 21 on two cards, the strongest hand², which under most rule variants loses to no one and means a 3:2 payout³;
• two 10-value cards (and there are 16 in a 52-card deck — so they turn up as a pair not all that rarely) add up to 20, also a very strong hand.

The abundance of valuable 10-value cards directly affects card counting, but we’ll get to that below.

Important: the face cards (jack, queen, king) and the ten are entirely equal for the main bet — they all add exactly 10 to the hand. No king is ‘stronger’ than a queen until rare side bets come into it.

The ace — the most special card

In blackjack only one card has a floating value, and for the player that’s not a drawback but the opposite — an advantage, letting you make the most of whatever landed in your hand.

1 or 11: soft and hard hands

The ace can mean 1 point or 11, and the holder of the hand decides how to count it — it all depends on what’s more favourable. An ace and a seven, for instance, can be treated as either 8 or soft 18 (soft 18)⁴; 8 does the player no good at all, but on soft 18 there are several options:

1. if the dealer’s upcard (upcard — the first card they show) is worth 9–11, you can still lose with 18, so the player hits, knowing that on a ‘bust’ the ace drops to 1 and the hand simply turns hard;
2. if the dealer’s card is a 2, 7 or 8, it very likely means they’ll either fail to reach the same 18 or bust, so the player is better off not taking more cards;
3. if the dealer’s upcard is worth 3 to 6, the player’s odds of losing one way or another are higher still — here it’s wise not just to hit but to double the bet⁵.

It’s also important to understand how the dealer acts: they always stand once on 17 to avoid a bust, but the question is whether they’ll stop on soft 17, since a bust from an extra card there is impossible. The table rules should spell out clearly what an ace is worth in the dealer’s hand: if the host always treats it as 11, that’s a plus for the player — the dealer will more often stand on a weak 17 even where they could have hit.

Natural blackjack

The ace is valuable, too, because without it you can’t assemble the most profitable combination — a natural blackjack, i.e. 21 on two cards. Given what the king, queen, jack and ten are worth, an ace paired with any of the 16 ten-value cards (in a full deck) forms the best hand there is, one that beats even a 21 built from more cards. The payout for a natural blackjack is 3:2 (sometimes 6:5) — the only bet (apart from the rare, always unfavourable side bets) where the win is larger than the stake itself.

Important: a 6:5 payout instead of 3:2 looks almost the same, but noticeably trims the player’s profit on every blackjack. Check the wording on the felt before you sit down.

Splitting aces

Two aces in one hand is an uncommon situation, but a possible one; technically it’s 2 or 12, yet it’s far wiser to split such a hand — repeat the bet and effectively play two hands, each holding an ace. That way a formally poor hand turns into two good ones: the player keeps a shot at two natural blackjacks at once or, at the least, two strong hands. The dealer never splits, so for them a pair of aces is more of a problem. That said, in a popular variant — Atlantic City Blackjack — the player isn’t allowed to split aces either. In theory the same rule may apply at some other tables that don’t mention Atlantic City in the name, so before you start, be sure to study the detailed rules of the specific table.

Insurance on a dealer’s ace

Bets beyond the main one in blackjack are usually a rarity, available only at rare, specific tables; the one exception is insurance against a dealer blackjack (Insurance), which is taken everywhere. Here’s how it works: if the dealer’s upcard is an ace (a natural blackjack is likely), the player can immediately make an insurance bet of half the main stake and, if the dealer really does have a natural blackjack, is paid 2:1 on the insurance. The main bet against a natural blackjack usually loses — then the insurance payout covers the loss and gets the player back to even.

Experienced players generally don’t take insurance: bet on it regularly and the house edge climbs to 1.97% against an average of 0.5% without insurance (playing by basic strategy). The math is this: in six-deck blackjack with a full deck, the probability of an extra 10 to go with the dealer’s ace is 30.87%, so it happens less than one time in three; given the 2:1 payout, insurance would only make sense if the dealer made natural blackjacks 33.3% of the time or more. In practice, players who count cards well do take insurance — but only when the shoe (the remaining deck) is heavily weighted toward high cards, thanks to a mass exit of low cards into the discards.

Hi-Lo / counting: card values in the count

There are several card-counting systems, but the simplest — and therefore the most popular — is the Hi-Lo system. The player doesn’t have to memorise the suits of the discarded cards, or even their exact rank: starting from zero, you simply add or subtract points for each card that goes to the discards.

A big positive count means the shoe now favours high cards — the player will more often make, if not natural blackjacks, then at least simply strong hands like 20; in that case it’s wise to raise your bets. Conversely, a negative count says there are fewer tens, jacks, queens and kings in the shoe, a natural blackjack paying 3:2 is unlikely, and so bets are better lowered — sometimes it’s a signal to end the session altogether.

We mentioned above that insurance against a dealer blackjack sometimes becomes worthwhile: that happens when the count shows a big remainder of tens, jacks, queens and kings in the shoe, since they’re then more likely to fall alongside the dealer’s ace. So on a high positive count, an Insurance bet can turn out to be justified.

Important: here we’ve only touched on the basics of counting — at a minimum the player also needs to adjust for the number of decks. Our site has a separate, detailed piece on how to count cards — be sure to read it.

Card draw probabilities

The number of decks in blackjack matters for card counting and directly affects the probability of certain cards coming out once the round is underway and some cards have gone to the discards. But the first card from an untouched shoe always comes out with the same probability of 1/13 — that is, 7.69%. By the same logic, above we worked out the probability of a ten-value card landing alongside the dealer’s ace — there it comes to 4/13.

Since the most valuable card for the player is still the ace, it’s natural to want to know the odds of catching one in your own hand. Here it doesn’t much matter whether the ace comes out first (the same 7.69%) — it’s enough for it to be at least one of the first two cards. The formula becomes more involved, 1 − (48/52)·(47/51), and gives the probability of an ace in two cards at 14.9%⁶. That last figure holds only for single-deck blackjack, where there are just four aces.

Basic strategy for the key hands

Playing blackjack, the player shouldn’t rely on gut feeling or constant mental arithmetic: there’s what’s called basic strategy, which prescribes the actions for different situations that win with the highest odds. Important to understand: basic strategy doesn’t guarantee success, it only maximises the probability of a win, while the final result still depends on the cards the player and dealer draw.

Basic-strategy tables let you cut the house edge dramatically (typically to about 0.5%, and at some tables even to 0.15%), but you should only use the table whose recommended plays are calculated for your exact rule variant. Our site has detailed tables for all kinds of blackjack variants; here we show examples for a 4–8 deck game with the dealer standing on soft 17. The notation is as follows:

1. H — hit (take another card);
2. D — double down;
3. S — stand;
4. R — surrender (if the table rules allow);
5. P — split the hands.

With hard hands (either no ace at all, or one already counted as 1) we proceed like this.

And this is how — with soft hands, where the ace is counted as 11 for now; remember that you can always hit a soft hand without the risk of busting.

For hands that are a pair of equal-value cards, there’s a third table — the difference being that such hands can also be split.

Diligent players usually aim to learn the basic-strategy table by heart, but in practice using a printed version as a prompt isn’t forbidden even at land-based venues, where the dealer can see you — let alone online.

Footnotes

1. At some tables the player is offered unusual side bets, whose payout can substantially exceed the standard 3:2 for a natural blackjack. A Lucky Ladies bet, for example, can bring a huge payout of up to 200:1, but for that the player’s first cards must be two queens of the same suit (hearts or spades, depending on the table); so in a given situation a queen can turn out to be far more valuable, even though its point value hasn’t changed. ↩

2. A combination of cards held by one player. ↩

3. At some tables the payout for a natural blackjack is 6:5, but that rule should be carefully avoided — it makes the player regularly forfeit profit. ↩

4. A ‘soft’ hand means it contains an ace that (for now at least) counts as 11; if the player decides to take another card, they definitely won’t bust — if needed the ace then counts as 1, and the hand turns ‘hard’. ↩

5. Bear in mind, though, that doubling down lets you take only one additional card — no more. ↩

6. Simply multiplying 7.69% (the probability of any one card) by two is wrong, because after the first card is dealt the deck holds not 52 but only 51 cards. ↩