Your hand
What the game costs
Strategy chart
- Maths reviewed by Josh Miller
- Tested by Diana Westfield
Double Exposure Blackjack strategy works from more information than any other blackjack game: you see both dealer cards before you act. Enter your hand and the dealer’s two cards in the free CasinoCalcs calculator to get the best play, or use the charts by dealer total.
Double Exposure Blackjack strategy: think in totals
With both cards showing, you’re no longer playing against an up card. You’re playing against a known total, and the dealer wins every tie. Some results look odd until you remember that:
- Against a dealer 20, you hit 19. Standing loses for certain; hitting at least gives you the ace.
- Against a dealer hard 18, you hit hard 18, because a tie is a loss.
- Against a dealer 12 to 16, you stand on your own stiff hands, even 12, and let the dealer draw. Standing on 16 against a dealer 16 is worth about +23% of the bet; hitting it about −41%.
- Against a dealer 20, 8,8 is a hit, not a split: two 18s would both lose.
The price of seeing both cards
The house charges for the view in two ways: blackjack pays only even money, and the dealer wins ties. A player blackjack still beats a dealer blackjack. With the rules used here (dealer hits soft 17, doubling on hard 9 to 11 only, doubling after a split allowed, resplits), our infinite-deck model gives a house edge of about 0.77%. Six-deck versions of these rules are usually quoted near 0.68%, and stand-on-soft-17 tables a bit lower.
At £10 a hand and 60 hands an hour, that’s around £4.60 an hour, cheaper than most side bets by a long way, as long as you use the strategy. Playing normal basic strategy here throws away a lot of the advantage of seeing the hole card.
For other variants, see Free Bet Blackjack and Blackjack Switch, or the standard blackjack strategy chart.
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