As one of the oldest forms of gambling in the casino industry, blackjack is a very easy game to learn and extremely fun to play but there is a few rules to the game of blackjack all players should memorize when first learning to play. Would you believe there are more than 3,000 possible situations in blackjack without even mentioning the different variations or rules of different blackjack games? In this article about the rules of blackjack, we will focus on the more popular “basic” blackjack rules.

Blackjack is a game for single or multiple players. Unlike the card game of Poker, blackjack players are competing only against the dealer to win. It does not matter what the sum of any other player’s cards is the object of playing blackjack is to beat the dealer draw by achieving a higher number of draw cards or by simply allowing the dealer to “bust” (hit over 21) depending on which rules of blackjack strategy you are following.

Let’s start with the fundamental rules of Blackjack…

The rules of Blackjack are designed so the desired outcome is to develop a hand that is closer to 21 than that of the dealer’s hand, without going over the sum of 21.

Blackjack Rules Card Values

Each card in the blackjack deck has a specific value. The values of all your up cards are combined into a total sum which hopefully culminates in blackjack or a sum of 21. Every blackjack player and the blackjack dealer starts with two dealt cards, and the highest possible sum one can achieve with two cards is 21. This would be done by being dealt an “ace and a face” or one of 4 aces in each deck combined with one of the 16 other face cards in the deck to make a total blackjack card value of 21.

A “face card” is any of the 16 cards with a value of ten or more – specifically any ten, jack, queen, or king. There are four of each card in every blackjack deck. Below is a list of card values about basic blackjack rules:

2-9 = Respective Card Value (2 =2, 3=3, 4=4, etc.)
10, J, Q, K = 10 or “face”
Ace = 1 or 11

The Ace is the most versatile card in Blackjack because it can have two values, either 1 or 11. When combined with a 10 or Face Card (Jack, Queen, or King), the sum is 21 Blackjack baby

The most valuable hand in Blackjack is 21 because it pays out higher than 1:1 (1-to-1), normally paying 3:2. When not using the ace to make blackjack or a “stand hand” you can assign the value as one. A great example of using this in the blackjack strategy would be to assign the value of one to an ace and an 8 as dealt cards. With this hand, your value is 8 or 18 and against a dealer upcard of 9 or higher, this would be a good time to hit when following the rules of basic blackjack strategy. Standing on 18 might seem like the proper play, but the blackjack rule allowing the Ace to e used as a value of 1 gave you a more profitable option, in this case, “hit”.