APS
Get the system — $297

Free · no account · nothing saved

The Basic Strategy Chart

Every correct play for every hand you can be dealt against every card the dealer can show. Computed here from the same engine that grades the trainers — not copied from anywhere.

This chart was re-derived from scratch, and it is re-checked every time the software is built.

Most published charts are copies of copies, and nobody can tell you where the original came from. This one was computed twice, independently: once as the tables the trainers grade against, and once from first principles — working out how often a dealer reaches each total, then pricing stand, hit, double and split against those odds. The second calculation shares no table with the first. It was written so that it could disagree. It did not.

340 of 340 cells · 160 hard (5–20) + 80 soft (13–20) + 100 pairs, each against ten upcards · re-checked by tests/derive.law.test.ts on every build

Computed for this game

A chart is only true for the game it was computed for. Change the deck count or the dealer's soft-seventeen rule and some of these cells change with it — which is why the rule set is printed above the chart rather than buried in a footnote, and why the soft-seventeen switch redraws the whole thing.

The five answers

H
Hit — take another card
S
Stand — take no more
D
Double — double the bet, take exactly one card — hit if doubling is not allowed
P
Split — split the pair into two hands
R
Surrender — give up half the bet — hit if surrender is not offered

How to read it

Find your hand down the left, find the dealer's up card across the top, and read the cell where they meet. Pairs first: if you hold two of the same card, that table decides before any other. Then soft totals if you hold an ace that can still count as eleven. Then hard totals for everything else.

Two of the answers depend on what the table offers. Double means double if you are allowed to and hit if you are not. Surrender means surrender if it is offered and hit if it is not. Neither is a coin toss — each is the better of the two available answers, in that order.

Why this comes before counting

Basic strategy is the floor. Counting adds a small edge on top of it, and it adds that edge to whatever you are already doing — so a counter playing sloppy basic strategy is adding a fraction of a percent to a much larger leak, and going backwards while feeling clever.

The order is not a matter of taste. Learn the chart until it is automatic, then learn to count. Doing it the other way round is the most common way people lose money at this while believing they are winning.

Memorise it, then throw it away

This page prints, and printing it is a reasonable thing to do while you are learning. But a chart in your pocket is not a chart you know, and you cannot consult one at a table anyway.

The trainer below drills the same cells this page shows, one hand at a time, until the answers stop needing to be looked up. That is the point at which the chart has done its job and can be put away.