The Best Blackjack Betting Strategy Guide

Blackjack is undoubtedly one of the most—if not the most—popular table games at brick-and-mortar and online casinos around the world. Here at Mega Dice, blackjack enthusiasts worldwide regularly hit our vast selection of online and live dealer blackjack games to test their luck—as well as their preferred blackjack betting strategy—at this classic table game. 

Intro

The objective of blackjack is simple: to bust the dealer’s hand by getting your card total as close to 21, or blackjack, without going over (or busting out). Just like most table games, much of blackjack relies on the luck of the draw. However, pro gamblers come to the table with a blackjack betting strategy to help tilt the odds in their favor and give them the best chance at profitability. 

So if you’re asking the question of what is the best betting strategy for blackjack, you’ve come to the right place—this guide will give you the complete rundown on blackjack betting strategies.

Blackjack Betting Strategies Explained

The appeal of blackjack isn’t just solely dependent on luck and randomness—it’s a complex dance between chance and skill. And while beginners might find the thought of elevating their blackjack experience from pure gambling to approaching it with blackjack strategies daunting, a solid betting strategy is part and parcel of mastering blackjack and reducing the variance that Lady Luck brings to the blackjack table.

Strategy is, after all, what separates the chancers from the pros. While beginners may rely solely on the luck of the draw, experienced blackjack players often employ effective blackjack betting systems to make informed decisions, improve their odds of turning in a profit in every session, and mitigate their losses simultaneously. 

In essence, the blackjack strategy simply applies the mathematical concepts of probability to predict the odds and carefully plan out your bets. The right blackjack strategy will lower the game’s inherent house edge and give you a better chance to win—and executing it well can be the difference between leaving the blackjack table with a win or a loss. The right blackjack betting system will also help you get the most out of your sessions, and take advantage of hot streaks while putting a cap on your losses, making them an essential part of your success.

Fundamentals

While blackjack rules may differ depending on the blackjack variant you choose to play, most brick-and-mortar casinos and online blackjack games play with American blackjack rules.

In American blackjack, all players are dealt two face-up cards. The dealer also receives one face-down and one face-up. 

The goal is for players to put together a hand of two or more cards that add up to 21 or as close to 21 as possible without going over or “busting out.”

Once the first two cards are dealt, each player can either “hit” or get dealt another card, “stand” or stay with the cards they are dealt, or, depending on the situation, double down, split pairs, or surrender. 

You can only double down if you’re dealt an opening hand total of 9, 10, or 11. Splitting, meanwhile, takes an opening hand consisting of pairs and splits it into two separate hands, effectively doubling your stake, but only allowing one more “hit” on each separate hand.

Exceeding a hand value of 21 is a “bust,” leading to the player busting out and losing their entire stake.

Once each player acts, the dealer will then reveal their face-down card. The dealer must hit if their total hand value is 16 or less and must stand if it’s 17 or greater. 

All players with a higher hand total than the dealer win. If the dealer busts out, all remaining players still in the pot win. 

If the dealer is dealt a natural blackjack, or a hand value of 21 with the first two cards they receive, the face-down card is revealed, and all players that don’t have a natural blackjack automatically lose. 

A natural blackjack usually pays out at 3:2 odds, while beating the dealer in any other way pays out even money. 

Needless to say, the basic strategy for blackjack is immensely helpful in reducing the casino’s edge to less than 0.5%, giving players the best possible chances of winning. Basic strategy is a set of rules that informs you of the best game-theory optimized action to take in any given situation based on your hand and the dealer’s face-up card. While most pros will have memorized the basic strategy, beginners could take advantage of cheat sheets such as the following and use them each time they hit the blackjack tables.

Popular Blackjack Betting Systems

Blackjack enthusiasts have been devising betting systems to help reduce the casino’s inherent house edge ever since the game was invented. That has given rise to popular betting systems being applied to blackjack. These include the Martingale system, a widely popular negative progression system that seeks to offset a losing streak by doubling the amount of your stake until you win, as well as the Paroli system, a positive progression betting system that seeks to take advantage of winning streaks by increasing your stake in every win and returning to the original stake size after you lose. 

Other popular blackjack betting systems include flat betting while adhering to the basic strategy, while other highly skilled players use techniques like card counting to vanquish the house edge. Here are some of the most popular blackjack betting systems as follows.

Martingale System

The Martingale betting system is a negative progression strategy that attempts to offset losing streaks by doubling your stake after each hand you lose. The concept is that you can always break even and sit on a decent profit in one fell swoop with one win no matter how many hands you’ve lost before that.

However, since the Martingale strategy is a negative progression betting system, you’ll need a substantial bankroll to avoid the real risk of getting felted in real money casino games like blackjack.

Here’s how it works. For instance, let’s say your initial stake and betting unit is $10. If you lose your first hand, you double your stake or betting unit, meaning you’ll have to bet $20 (two units) on the next hand. If you lose that hand, your next bet will be $40, or 4 units. You’ll keep doubling your bet until you hit a winning hand. If, for instance, you win on the next hand by wagering $80 (8 units), you instantly offset your previous losses and be $10 in profit. 

Here’s the thing: losing streaks of ten straight hands in a row or more aren’t exactly rare in blackjack. This means the Martingale strategy isn’t the best betting strategy, especially if you’re not playing with a sizable bankroll.

Paroli (Reverse Martingale) System

The Paroli system (aka Reverse Martingale) is a positive progression system designed to maximize winning streaks, where players increase their bets after every winning hand.

As the name implies, the Paroli system is the complete opposite of the traditional Martingale system wherein you double your stake each time you win. You get to determine how long your set number of consecutive wins and how much your initial stake or betting unit will cost. 

For instance, using $10 as your initial stake size (where $10 = 1 unit), and your predetermined win streak to end at three consecutive wins, here’s how it’s going to play out. Let’s say you win your first $10 bet. Your next wager will then be $20. If you win that bet, you double that to $40. After your third win in a row, which is your predetermined win streak and stopping point, you go back to betting your initial $10 stake and restart the sequence from there. At any time you lose a hand, you go back to your initial stake size.

By setting your win streaks at short lengths, the Paroli system ensures you don’t burn through your bankroll too soon and prevents you from betting carelessly. Test this system at Mega Dice crypto casino with a 200% welcome bonus for a fast win!

Oscar’s Grind

The Oscar’s Grind strategy is a more conservative betting strategy that can be applied to any game offering wagers that provide even-money payouts. The idea behind Oscar’s Grind is to keep the same stake size after every loss and increase it by one unit, repeating until you’re up one unit and returning back to the initial stake size after. 

The system’s goal is to one exactly one unit every sequence, then start another sequence with the initial stake size. 

For instance, let’s say your initial stake size is $10. If you lose that blackjack hand, your next bet will be $10. You’ll keep repeating the same stake until you get a winning hand. After said winning hand, you increase your next stake to $20. You then keep betting $20 until you win, after which you increase your stake to $30. 

Every sequence goes on like this until you’re in profit. Once you’re in profit, the sequence is completed. You then restart a new sequence with your initial $10 bet or 1 unit. Oscar’s Grind works best with a sizable bankroll that can survive prolonged losing streaks, just as the Martingale system does.

D’Alembert System

The D’Alembert strategy is a negative progression betting system where players increase their stakes by one unit after each loss and decrease by one unit after each win. In essence, it’s a more conservative negative progression system, cushioning players against ringing up huge losses on their bankroll. 

Let’s say $10 is your initial stake representing 1 betting unit and you lose your first hand. This means you increase your next bet by one unit, equating to a $20 bet in total. If you lose twice more, you would then increase your wager to $30 (3 units) and $40 (4 units), respectively. If you eventually win the next hand, your next bet will revert back to 3 units at $30. 

The important thing about the D’Alembert system is to set a predetermined win target wherein you stop betting and leave the table once you’ve reached it since it’s easy to lose yourself in the action and be overtaken by greed—leading to potentially disastrous consequences for your bankroll.

Progressive Betting Strategies

Progressive blackjack betting strategies are among the most popular systems among casino enthusiasts. Most have simple rules, while others can be a bit more complex. Their popularity stems from the belief that they can maximize winning streaks, leading to big-time wins. 

The idea behind progressive betting strategies is to increase your stake size if your previous hand won. How you adjust your stakes is based on whether you use a positive or negative progression system.

Positive Progression Systems

Positive progression systems are built behind the idea of increasing your stakes to maximize winning streaks while protecting your bankroll from decimation if you run into the wrong end of a losing streak. The rules of positive progression betting systems are as follows: 

• Increasing your stakes when you win;
• And decreasing your stakes when you lose. 

It’s also important to remember that positive progression systems won’t influence your overall chances of winning a blackjack round, nor will they guarantee a winning session every single time. However, it will be less detrimental to the state of your bankroll compared to negative progression systems that could obliterate your bankroll in one fell swoop.

Positive progression systems include the Paroli (Reverse Martingale) system, the Oscar’s Grind system, and more complex strategies like the 1-3-2-6 system and the Fibonacci system.

Negative Progression Systems

Negative progression systems, such as the Martingale system and the D’Alembert system, involve placing higher stakes after losses and recouping them in one fell swoop. However, they run the risk of burning through your bankroll faster. They follow the rules below: 

• Decreasing your stakes when you win; 
• And increasing your stakes when you lose.

The idea is to eventually get a winning hand and that all your wins will come at higher stakes than your losses, leading to potentially higher overall profits. However, it is important to remember that it is impossible to determine when a losing streak ends, and you can lose substantial amounts of your bankroll or exhaust it if it isn’t sufficient to cover your losses.

Flat Betting Strategy

Flat betting is one of the most simple and straightforward blackjack betting strategies around, where you wager the same stake size regardless of the outcome or any winning or losing streaks that may emerge. This way, you can minimize variance and easily track your gambling spend, allowing you to stay within your predetermined budget.

To implement the flat betting strategy, simply set your bankroll, divide that by how many hands you wish to play, and you’ll have determined the amount of each unit or bet size. Paired with the basic blackjack strategy, the flat betting strategy can offer the most value and extend your bankroll over the long run. 

However, it isn’t without its drawbacks. The main drawback of the flat betting system is that you can miss out on big-time profits if you’re on a winning streak. However, it ensures that you won’t get felted if you go on an extended losing streak.

Advanced Techniques

Now that we’ve gone over the most popular blackjack betting strategies, let’s discuss more advanced techniques experienced blackjack players use to gain a competitive edge over the house.

Card Counting Basics

Card counting is a technique immortalized in the world’s most iconic blackjack movies and media. The premise behind card counting is to make big bets when the shoe is weighted towards aces and high cards, while making small bets if the shoe is weighted towards lower-value cards.

By keeping track of the cards that have been dealt, pros can estimate the composition of the remaining cards in the shoe, allowing them to make better betting and bankroll management decisions. 

When the shoe is rich in aces and 10s, it is immensely favorable to the player. Experienced card counters can leverage these situations and boost their stakes to profit. A shoe rich in low cards, meanwhile, favors the house. In such situations, pros can reduce their stakes or sit out rounds entirely to prevent losses. 

Effective card counting can help you increase your chances of winning; however, it takes years of practice and discipline to master. Casinos are also skilled at identifying card counters and may take action to prevent it. Online casinos, meanwhile, employ continuous shuffling machines to make it impossible to track the cards that have been dealt. 

Deck Penetration and True Count Conversion

Deck penetration refers to the amount of cards that the dealer cuts off relative to the cards that they dealt. This directly influences the success of card counting. Deeper deck penetration means more cards are dealt, leading to more complex card counts that can result in longer stretches of favorable or unfavorable conditions. Experienced card counters can then recalibrate their betting strategies and play style based on the true count, which is obtained from the running count of cards dealt and the number of remaining decks in the shoe. 

The true count is a key metric for card counters. It involves adjusting the running count of cards dealt to account for the number of decks remaining within the current shoe. This is critical because the more cards are dealt, the lesser the impact of each individual card’s effect on the overall deck composition becomes.

Bet Spreading

Bet spread refers to the range of stake sizes that a player uses in response to the current count of the cards. Professional card counters then keep track of the cards as they are dealt in order to determine when exactly the shoe provides favorable betting conditions. The goal of spreading is to bet less when the casino has the advantage by way of the count foreshadowing an extended stretch of low-value cards being dealt, and bet more when the player has the advantage by way of the shoe being more likely to provide aces and 10s.

Bet spread is part and parcel of effective card counting since it allows you to maximize your profits and reduce the likelihood of losses over the long haul, leading to a better-expected value. As the true count increases, you can proportionally adjust your stake size based on your bankroll and whether you have the advantage over the house. However, bet spreading isn’t enough to ensure a profit every single time you play—it is but a part of a more holistic strategy involving optimized basic strategy, keeping impeccably precise counts, and effective risk management.

How to Choose the Right Strategy

Choosing the right blackjack betting strategy boils down to the following factors.

Bankroll Considerations

Bankroll management is probably the single most critical aspect that determines the success of any gambler, regardless of the game they choose to play. Simply put, bankroll management refers to the allocation, preservation, and use of funds to set yourself up for long-term success. 

The concept behind effective bankroll management is to prevent any single wager or a series of losses from obliterating your gambling funds. Pros usually follow strict rules about how much of their bankroll they’re willing to risk on any given bet. This is generally no more than 1% to 2% of their total bankroll per bet. 

For instance, if your bankroll is $1000, you can set your betting units at $10 or $20. Your base unit should generally not exceed 5% of your bankroll to prevent you from losing too much of your gambling funds in the event of a losing streak. Do remember that if you’re using a negative progression strategy like the Martingale system, you’ll need a significantly larger starting bankroll. 

By setting hard limits on wins and losses, you can avoid the trap of chasing losses in a losing streak or becoming loose and overconfident after big wins. Likewise, it’s important to regularly recalibrate and adjust your bankroll based on your current performance. This could mean increasing it when you’re on a winning streak, or cutting back when losses start building up.

Short vs. Long-Term Play

The question of which betting strategy works best for blackjack also depends on whether you wish to play short sessions or look at the longer-term play.

Quick sessions favor positive progression systems such as the Paroli system or Oscar’s Grind, which involve you increasing your stakes after you win and reducing them after you lose. They also help you maximize your profits in case you rattle off a series of consecutive wins while preventing you from overplaying your roll and increasing your risk of losing. 

For extended play, it’s best to employ flat betting and adhere to the basic strategy as much as possible, which reduces the variance and the house edge to give you the best chance to stay in profit over the long run. More advanced techniques such as card counting are also ideal for long-term play and conducive to staying profitable over time; however, it takes years, if not decades, to master the art of card counting.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which strategy has the lowest risk?

In general, the flat betting strategy paired with the optimal basic strategy is considered the lowest risk for blackjack since your stake sizes are fixed. The optimal basic strategy reduces the house edge to a miniscule 0.5%. This controls variance and gives you the best chance to be profitable while allowing you to keep a tight rein on your bankroll.

Can card counting get me banned?

Yes, card counting can get you ejected and banned from a physical casino. While it isn’t illegal, casinos may consider it as giving you an unfair advantage and could refuse service to anyone they think could be counting cards.

What is the basic strategy in blackjack, and how does it reduce the house edge?

The basic strategy is a mathematical approach that outlines the optimal move for each possible hand in blackjack. By using a strategy chart to determine the best play for every hand, players can reduce the house edge to as low as 0.5%, improving their long-term chances of winning. Read more about it here.

Is the Martingale system profitable in the long run?

While the Martingale system may lead to short-term wins, it’s an extremely high-risk strategy that can exhaust your bankroll rapidly. It has limitations that prevent it from being a profitable strategy over the long run, such as requiring a large bankroll and a blackjack table with high table limits. It also doesn’t affect the inherent house edge in blackjack. Over time, the house edge ensures that the casino will eventually erode your bankroll the longer you play. 

Do I need to adjust strategies for online blackjack?

The core principles of blackjack strategy remain mostly unchanged for online blackjack. However, there are several important differences that can affect your approach. These can be game variants, the use of continuous shuffling machines that prevent card counting, and casino software variations that may pose differences in random number generators and game mechanics.

What’s the best strategy for beginners?

The best strategy for beginners is to master the basic strategy that informs how you should act in certain situations based on your hand and the dealer’s face-up card. This includes standing on a 17 or higher, hitting on a 16 or lower, doubling down on 11, splitting aces and 8s, and refraining from splitting 10s or 5s.