Soft hands: the ace that can't bust you

Two players are dealt seventeen against the dealer’s 7. One holds an ace and a 6; the other holds a 10 and a 7. Which of the two hands should take a card?

Leoformer dealer · rules and maths

An ace is the only card in the shoe that has not made up its mind. While the ace can still count as 11, the next card cannot break the hand: the worst that card does is push the ace down from 11 to 1. 9.5% of the hands dealt to you start as a soft hand, an ace with a card from 2 to 9.

One card cannot break a soft hand

Six decks are shuffled together and dealt from a shoe at B.C. tables. Build sixteen two different ways out of that shoe — a 10 with a 6, and an ace with a 5 — then deal a 10 to each of the two hands and watch what the same card does.

In the row without an ace, the shaded totals are over 21 and the hand is lost. In the row with the ace, every total is 21 or under. The last column stands for four ranks in every thirteen: the 10, the jack, the queen and the king all count ten.

A hand stops being soft without anyone saying so: the dealer does not call it, and nothing on the felt marks it. An ace and a 6 that draws a 10 is a hard 17 from that moment on, and from that moment on the hard-totals chart answers that hand and the soft-hands chart does not.

Leoformer dealer · rules and maths

A card taken on a soft hand costs nothing to take, because that card cannot take the hand over 21. It can still leave you on a lower total than the one you were holding, which is why the chart keeps some soft hands instead of taking a card on every one of them. Where the chart does ask you to take the card and you stand instead, you hand a little money back to the house — sometimes cents a hand, sometimes dollars a hand.

The same number, two hands

Two seventeens, one dealer card. Any card from a 5 upwards takes the 10 and the 7 over 21; no card takes the ace and the 6 over 21, so the two charts give the two hands different answers.

Each amount is an average over every order in which the shoe can come out, not what any one hand of yours will do.

Leoformer dealer · rules and maths

Take the last row of that table, the soft 18 against a 9. Standing on that hand is no obvious blunder: eighteen feels finished, and the amount standing gives up is the smallest amount in the table. It is still money handed back, and the reason is the same one every time — the card you are turning down cannot take a soft 18 over 21, and a 9 leaves the dealer finishing above eighteen often enough to pay for taking that card.

The soft-hands chart

• Soft 18, an ace and a 7, is the row worth knowing by heart, because a soft 18 does not have one answer — what the chart asks for changes as the dealer’s card changes: against 2 to 6, double, and stand if you cannot double; against 7 and 8, stand; against 9 to ace, take a card.

Two letters in one cell

You may double on the two cards you are dealt and no later, at B.C. and Quebec tables alike. Take one card and doubling is no longer a move you are turning down — doubling has gone out of reach for the rest of that hand. That is why 20 cells of the soft-hands chart carry two letters: the first letter is the move on the two cards you are dealt, and the second letter is the move on the same hand once a third card has arrived.

• One card. A double buys exactly one more card, and the hand ends on that card.
• Full size. A double puts out a second bet as large as the first, and every cost given here for a double is worked out at that size. B.C. rules let you double for less than the first bet, down to the table minimum, and lesson 7 works out what doubling for less does to the hand.

What the table sign changes

The dealer makes no choices at all, but the table can be run under one of two rules: the dealer draws a card on a soft 17, or the dealer stands on every 17. The sign standing in front of you says which of the two rules this table uses. At B.C. tables the dealer draws.

Both cells lose the double: a dealer who draws on a soft 17 takes an extra card, and that extra card is what your second bet was paying for. The sign moves 2 of the 80 cells in the soft-hands chart.

Both bars are averages per hand on an example bet of $10, drawn to one scale, so the length of each bar is the size of each mistake. Reading the sign wrong costs cents a hand at both of the cells the sign moves. Reading a soft total as a hard total costs cents a hand in a handful of cells and dollars a hand in most of them. Check the sign — and learn the difference between the soft-hands chart and the hard-totals chart first.

At the table, with Maya

Mayaformer floor supervisor · manners, money and breaks

Three things to keep straight at the table, and not one of the three is arithmetic.

• Say the higher total to yourself. An ace and a 6 is seventeen, not seven, and seventeen is the total you play. Call an ace and a 7 eight rather than eighteen and you will take a card on a hand the chart keeps: against 7 and 8 the soft 18 cell is a stand.
• Doubling is a second bet out of your pocket. The soft rows ask for that second bet in a larger share of their cells than the hard-total rows do, and every one of those second bets can lose — the chart’s move on a soft hand still loses some of the time.
• A strategy card. The B.C. rules do not settle whether you may keep a strategy card on the table, so ask the dealer before you put one there. One operator hands strategy cards out in the room, which tells you what that one operator allows, not what the operator of your table allows.

What the chart does to the price

Play the whole chart — these soft rows, the hard totals and the pairs — and at B.C. rules the house still keeps about 0.53% of every bet you place. The chart cannot take that share to zero, and every move made off the chart adds to it.

1. One hand at $10, the example bet used all through this lesson and not a suggested bet.
2. 70 hands an hour at a table that keeps moving.
3. About $3.68 an hour, on average, with every move on every hand following the full chart.

That hourly figure is an average over a long run of hours, not a forecast for one evening: a single hour can cost more or cost nothing at all. Work out the figure for your own bet in Price of an hour.

Making the statistically correct play does not settle how a hand ends.

Mayaformer floor supervisor · manners, money and breaks

Decide how long you are staying and how much money the evening gets before you sit down (Game plan walks you through both decisions), and take the break when the time you set is up. A run of losing hands is not a debt the table owes you: betting more to get those hands back only makes the hour dearer. If the money on the table starts to feel like money you need, stop playing and call one of the lines below.

The lesson on one card

That is the lesson. Here is the whole of it on one card: print the card, or keep the card on your phone. The B.C. rules do not settle whether you may keep a strategy card on the table, so ask the dealer before you put it there.

Practice table

Three levels, and every hand dealt in all three is a soft hand. Level 1 deals a soft total and the hard total of the same number side by side and asks only about the hand with the ace; level 2 deals the soft hand on its own, with no hard hand beside it; level 3 deals three cards, where the second letter of a cell is the answer. Decide with the buttons or the keys H, S and D; the table tells you what the chart says, why the chart says it, and — on levels 1 and 2 — what each of the three moves costs on average on an example bet of $10. That amount is only an example, not a suggested bet. The lesson is one run: every square on the strip below is one hand of it, and they are all there from the start. Only your first move on each hand counts, and when a level’s squares are full the next level begins by itself. The hands are dealt for the rules in this lesson; for another table’s rules, the same engine answers in our Blackjack strategy tool.

Check yourself

Mayaformer floor supervisor · manners, money and breaks

Five quick ones. Pick an answer, then check it. No timer, no points: just whether it stuck.

Where to play, and further reading

19+ (18+ in AB, MB, QC) · Play responsibly · help, day or night: Gambling Support BC 1-888-795-6111, 24 hours

Further reading

• Rules of Play for Table Games: Blackjack · British Columbia Lottery Corporation (BCLC)The rules this track follows section by section: six decks, the dealer on soft 17, doubling, splitting and surrender.
• Game rules: Blackjack · Loto-Québec (Société des casinos du Québec)Québec’s rules: one to eight decks, a face-down dealer card, and the soft-17 rule left to the sign at the table.
• Playing Blackjack · Fallsview Casino Resort and Casino NiagaraOne Ontario operator’s own booklet, including both blackjack payouts and both dealer rules it may post.
• Blackjack: how to play · OLG PlaySmartOntario’s beginner page: the moves, the hand signals it describes, and what insurance is.
• Know the game: Blackjack · Casinos Regina & Moose Jaw (SaskGaming)A Saskatchewan operator on what the chart does and does not do, and where to pick one up in the building.
• Blackjack basics · Wizard of OddsWhat three common ways of playing blackjack without the chart cost, on that author’s own table.

How it’s worked out