Playing blackjack like a professional player needs years and years of practice and experience, playing blackjack like a good player also needs good approach. You can either play blackjack as a beginner or drown your hard earned money or can learn to play with a smart approach and make your money grow.
Mug up the rules
Needless to say, the most important step on the road to become a professional is to know the game. When you get the hang of the rules, different Hit and Stand possibilities as well as the right time to Split or Double, you know you are ready to play the next level of Blackjack the professional level.
Get familiar with the variants
Blackjack can either be played as a simple game with the basic variant, where you play against the dealer or can be played like a professional where you play different variants with better payouts. In order to become a blackjack expert, it is important you are familiar with different variants involved in this game.
Not only does it helps to understand the different possibilities in blackjack, but also introduces you to various gaming options to make blackjack more fun and adventurous.
Have strategies to follow
Strategies are not just for beginners, even professional and the most smart blackjack players follow strategies to increase their odds in the game. some of the basic strategies that you must adopt in your game play are, Double Down on a hand with first two cards totaling to 10 to 11, Double Down when the dealer’s hand is 9 or lower, avoid splitting pairs other than eights and aces, when the dealer’s hand keep drawing cards till you reach a hard hand totaling 17 or higher.
Understand the basics of mental card counting
Card counting is considered as cheating in many casinos, but a mental track of cards that have been dealt and that have the possibility of being drawn is not wrong. Every blackjack expert, while playing blackjack, does a mental card counting.
Card counting is nothing but simple Math and a simple calculation habit can help you improve your beginner’s gameplay into a professional attitude. Remember when a deck of cards is short of high cars like Ace and 10s, the winning odds are low for the player, similarly if the cards from 2 to 8 (lower cards) are low the odds improve for the player.
Hard hand versus Soft Hand
Most of the blackjack strategy are based on simple basics of hard and soft hand, thus it is important to understand the difference between them. Playing blackjack professionally requires a player to understand the hard and soft hand situation. Only by understanding the difference between a Hard Hand and Soft Hand, will you be able to decide the count of your hand and make strategic decisions like Hit, Stand, Insurance or Double.
A hand where Ace is counted as 11 is termed as Soft Hand, while a hand with Ace equaling to 1 is called Hard Hand.