The flexibility soft hands give to the blackjack player is what makes them so valuable. If you catch a higher card, like 9 for instance, your ace will automatically assume the value of 1, preventing the bust and giving you a hand total of hard 17. You can draw again without the risk of breaking your hand. If you draw another deuce on your soft 16, you will end up holding soft 18. The reason for it is that any other card in the deck will either be equal to or less than 21 and there is no chance for players to go over this total.įor instance, a hand containing A-2 is soft 13 while one consisting of A-2-3 is a soft 16. Players have such a hand when one of the cards is an ace valued as 11, meaning that they will not go bust next time they take an extra card. Players need to know how to proceed in cases where they have soft hands as such situations occur more often than gamblers realise.

But first, let’s explain what the term “soft hands” refers to. Such is often the case with soft 13 through soft 17, so these are the hands we are going to examine today.

However, some basic strategy plays are not so intuitive, causing novices to frequently misplay certain hands. For example, they understand that hitting hard 16 is recommended whenever the dealer has a ten or an ace or that they should split 8s when the dealer starts with a 5 or a 6. Many of the moves from the basic strategy chart are logical and intuitive to novice blackjack players.

What is a soft hand blackjack