Learning Blackjack by Playing Solo: A Step-by-Step Approach

How to Play Blackjack by Yourself: What You’ll Learn

• Solo Blackjack Practice: Discover how how to play blackjack by yourself and how it can help you focus on mastering the basic strategy without the pressure of a live game environment.

• Understanding the Downsides: Learn about the potential drawbacks of solo play, such as the lack of social interaction and the challenges of maintaining focus during fast-paced gameplay.

• Advanced Techniques Insight: Gain insights into practicing card counting and decision-making by utilizing multiple betting spots, especially in casino settings.

• Optimizing Practice Sessions: Find tips on the best times to visit a casino for solo practice, enabling you to maximize table availability and minimize distractions.

• Enhancing Blackjack Skills: Understand the importance of patience, practice, and real-world experience in improving your blackjack skills and reducing the house edge.

If you’re looking to improve your Blackjack game, you don’t have to wait until your next casino visit to do so. This article will show you how to practice and play Blackjack on your own.

Blackjack is one of the most popular casino games because it uses a straightforward set of rules, it’s a lively social game played at a moderate pace, and – most important perhaps – it’s a game that offers players the opportunity to reduce the house edge to a percentage point or two by using a well-known set of pre-optimized decisions known as basic strategy.

This article will explore all the ways you can practice and play on your own. Whether you’re a beginner looking to master the basics or an experienced player seeking to refine your strategy, these approaches provide valuable opportunities to enhance your skills and confidence when it’s time to sit down at a table and face off against a Dealer.

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Practice Makes Perfect

Casinos welcome players to carry and use basic strategy cards while sitting at a Blackjack table. But as you gain more experience, you’ll want to commit basic strategy to memory, making every hit, stand, double down and split an automatic decision.

If you want to take it further and turn the house advantage in your favor, you’ll want to consider learning how to count cards. Before you can do that, basic strategy must be second nature.

Drills and practice games described below will make you comfortable with the games flow and mechanics. It’s also a great way to prepare yourself for a real-world casino environment without the pressure that comes with putting real money on the line, not to mention the presence of a dealer and other players.

Self-Driving Blackjack

It’s easy to find a quiet spot at home or in a coffee shop and simply deal the game to yourself, acting as Dealer and Player. But there’s a few things to know along the way.

How to Play Blackjack by Yourself: Rule Decisions

Every casino has its own set of house rules for Blackjack that alter gameplay and the house advantage slightly. If you know the rules at the casino where you plan on playing, you should set your rules up to match. If you’re not sure, just use the most common rules variations.

Here’s the list, in rough order of how common you’ll encounter them and how important they are in terms of house advantage:

• Payoff on a natural Blackjack. Unfortunately, many larger casinos – especially in Las Vegas – have reduced the payout on a two-card 21. Since natural 21’s occur once per 20-25 hands, this rule has a major impact on the house advantage
  • Blackjack pays 3:2 – This is the traditional rule, sometimes called a ‘time-and-a-half’ payout
  • Blackjack pays 6:5  – This reduced payout results in the house gaining a 1.4% advantage versus the alternative. Avoid these games if at all possible.

• Double-down options. Many games have rules on which card combinations can be doubled. It can’t hurt to practice with the most lax variation possible so you learn how to play, just remember you’ll win more than you would if you play in a stricter casino.
  • Any two cards – the most lenient casinos let you double down on any two cards; this is great news because you’ll find it profitable to double down against weak Dealer hands.9, 10, or 11 – this is the next best thing – where casinos extend allowable double opportunities down to a hand of 9.
  • 10 or 11 – Most casinos only offer double down when your first two cards make 10 or 11.

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• Dealer’s holds soft 17: While the Dealer always stands on a hard 17, about one hand in 30 is a soft 17 (Ace – Six or Ace and any cards that add up to six) the rules vary.  
  • Dealer hits – gives the Dealer a chance to improve their hand without risk of busting. (Remember, if the Dealer draws a Five or higher, the Ace simply reverts to being worth 1 instead of 11.)
  • Dealer stands – less common, but gives a .2% advantage to the player over the alternative Every edge counts!

• Other rules to consider:
  • While the number of decks in your shoe doesn’t change basic strategy too much, it becomes very important when you start counting cards. I recommend shuffling four decks together to practice at home.
  • Late surrender isn’t worth it if you’re playing basic Blackjack strategy, but if you plan to play at a table that allows early surrender (that is, you forfeit half of your bet before the Dealer checks their hole card for Blackjack), the presence of that rule moves the house advantage in your favor a little over .6%.
  • These nuances have a very small impact on the house edge, but establish the rules before you start practicing. Your best bet is to go with standard post-split restrictions as follow:
    • No hitting after splitting Aces.
    • No re-splitting of Aces.
    • No double-down allowed after a split (also known as DAS)
    • Players are limited to splitting three times (to make four hands)

Play Cards First, Win Money Second

If your goal is simply to get familiar with basic blackjack strategy, you’ll learn quite a bit by just dealing cards to yourself and focusing on getting the math right and making solid in-game decisions. Here’s your checklist for dealing a solo game:

• Combine four standard decks of playing cards, Jokers removed. If possible, use cards with identical backing.

• Printouts or immediate access to basic strategy tables.

• Scratch paper to track wins, losses, to add card values up, and to make notes.

While you might be tempted to add in an imaginary stake with every bet, I recommend playing without a bet to start with. Make sure you have a firm foothold on basic strategy before bringing money into the equation.

• Skip the unnecessary casino ceremonies; don’t bother cutting the deck or burning the first card of the shoe. And definitely don’t ask the Pit Boss for help, you’ll be waiting a long time.

• Deal the Player hand in front of you and the Dealer hand across from you, just as it will be at a real table.

• Deal the cards in correct order; give the Player hand a single card face up, then the Dealer gets a card face down. Deal the second cards face-up to both Player and Dealer.

• In a casino Blackjack game, if the Dealer’s up-card is an Ace or 10-card, they peek at their hole card. If they have a 21, they flip it and the hand is over. However, if their upcard is an Ace, the Player gets a chance to buy insurance or declare a surrender before peaking.

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NOTE: You might wonder how it’s going to work if you are playing both sides and occasionally peek at the Dealer’s hole card. After all, isn’t the point of this game that you don’t know what the Dealer’s holding?

This actually shouldn’t matter. In fact, you could just as easily deal all Dealer cards up in your solo game because you’re not practicing your ESP skills or your judgment, you’re practicing this way because the goal is to recognize and make the right basic strategy move. You’re here to learn, not to win hands.

Example: in your solo game, you deal an Ace-Seven to the Player (soft 18) while the Dealer shows a 10-card. Acting as Dealer, you peek at the hole card and see a Seven, giving the Dealer a total of 17 against your Soft 18. You have the Dealer beat by just standing pat!

But remember, the point of this exercise to learn basic strategy, not to notch wins against an imaginary Dealer. Correct basic strategy on soft 18 against a 10-card is to take a hit, so exactly what you should do. Always practice making the correct basic strategy move, regardless of what you know about the Dealer’s hole card.

SUB-NOTE: Let’s not go overboard; the idea discussed above is for practice only. Leave it at home when you play for real money. If you happen join a real stakes Blackjack game and the Dealer is tipping their hole card, you should absolutely throw basic strategy out the window and take advantage of this extra intel.

How to Play Blackjack by Yourself: Bankroll Practice

Keep dealing solo until the basic hit/stand decision is second nature to you, along with the most common double down scenarios. Learning the hands to split might take a little more time, but the more reps you do, the less you should be relying on the strategy charts.

The next level of solo practice requires bringing an imaginary bankroll into the picture. Ideally you have poker chips or coins; give yourself a nice round stake (say, enough chips to make 20 minimum bets) and provide the imaginary Dealer with a bank of chips to pay off any bets you – as Player – make.

If you don’t have chips (or coins or peanuts) you can always use a pad and pencil to track your bets and your balance.

There are several benefits to including bets in your solo practice:

• Get familiar with the physical process of making bets and how chips move around the table. Designate a spot on the table as your betting circle and practice realistic bet placement for double downs and splits.
  
• Start tracking wins and losses in a session; it’s good to have realistic expectations for the range of possible outcomes if you start a Blackjack session with 20 chips’ worth of bets (for example). As you accumulate more practice, you’ll have data on long-term profit and loss that might be able to spot trends in terms of your wins and losses.
  
• Imaginary betting also lets you get familiar with the fine art of bankroll management. How will you split up the money you bring into a casino?  What happens if you hit a rough patch and lose half of your bankroll in under an hour? Will you continue to buy in or take a break?
  
  The best Blackjack players not only make the optimal moves during the game, they also have learned the art of self-control and keep close tabs on the state of their bankroll.

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Simplified Drills to Master Basic Strategy

You might argue this section belongs before the part describing solo gameplay, but now that you know what a full self-dealt Blackjack game looks like, you can more easily see the value of simpler focused drills.

A stripped-down approach to solo practice can be useful for working through weaknesses in your game, and it can drastically increase the pace of your practice.

No, it’s not Three-Card-Monte, but if you deal three cards at a time from a shuffled deck, that’s enough for a simple basic strategy drill.

Flip the cards, determine your move, and check the chart to see if you got it right.  Learning the Dealer’s hole card and playing out hands to their conclusion has its place, but it’s strictly optional when you’re trying to get basic strategy reps.  

Start with Simple Hit/Stand Decisions

Forget splitting, doubling, and surrender for now. Focus on hit/stand decisions for hard and soft Player hands. While you wouldn’t want to play Blackjack without those more advanced moves at your disposal, you can blend them in to your practice game once you’ve mastered the basics.  Repeat these drills until you can make decisions confidently without referring to the chart.

Progress to Double-Down, Split and Early Surrender Decisions

Once you’re comfortable with hit/stand decisions, move on to more complex scenarios, such as when to double down or split pairs. Declare your own hand to be an 11, and go through the deck turning a single card over that plays the part of the Dealer’s up card. When you reach the end, practice as if your hand was a 10 for an entire deck. Then a 9.

From there you can move onto the doubling on soft hands chart, starting with dealing yourself an imaginary Soft 18. Are you doubling against a Dealer up card of 2? Or a Dealer showing 9? These abbreviated drills are a great way to cement your understanding of some of the more complicated areas of the basic strategy charts.

How to Play Blackjack by Yourself: Card Counting

Card counting is an advanced technique that can actually turn the small house edge in the Players’ favor. This section will provide the briefest of introductions on counting concepts and offer some practice tips.

Counting is a massive subject with entire books dedicated to counting systems, betting strategy, how to adjust basic strategy to optimize for certain situations, along with the fine art of counting cards without looking like it. Why do you have to hide it? 

While counting is not illegal, casinos are under no obligation to accept your action if they think you are playing with an advantage, so if you get exposed as a counter, you’ll be asked to leave the table, and possibly the property.

Card Counting Theory

The Dealer plays out their own hand according to a set of pre-determined rules that never change. Players, on the other hand, have options. They can adjust their in-game decisions based on the Dealer’s up card. Research has shown that this slight rule imbalance makes certain card values slightly better for the Dealer and some better for the Player.

So if you knew that the remaining shoe contained an imbalance of advantageous cards, your chance of winning each hand would be higher than normal and you could increase your wager to take profit from your knowledge.

As an example, 10-cards are slightly better for the Player than the Dealer. So when the remaining cards in the shoe have an unusually high number of Tens, Jacks, Queens, and Kings, the Player hand will win more (assuming perfect basic strategy) than if 10-cards were relatively scarce.  

Note: A simple analogy is helpful in understanding why counting works.

Imagine a game where you bet on randomly drawn marbles from a jar. When a black marble comes up, you win your bet. When red comes up, you lose. If the jar starts with, say, 200 red marbles and 200 black marbles, you know you’ll win as many bets as you lose. So if you made the same wager every time, your bankroll would fluctuate, but by the end of the jar you’d break even.

But what if you could vary your bet? Imagine you started over with a new jar, betting $1 per round. After 100 rounds you’re down $60 because 80 red marbles were drawn to only 20 black marbles.

But since you know the jar started with an equal number of red and black marbles, you can deduce that the remaining marbles are heavily tilted to winning black ones. Now if you double your bet and play to the end of the jar, you’re guaranteed to make back your early loss and more!

Counting cards is the same principle at work. No matter how many decks are combined in a shoe, the proportions of each card rank is known. So if you carefully track which cards get dealt out of the shoe, you can draw some inferences about the composition of the cards yet-to-be-played.

But unlike our red and black marble example, different cards only confer small advantages to the Player or Dealer hand rather than acting as automatic winners. And just as important, casinos don’t play every card in a deck or a shoe. Dealers typically reshuffle with 1/3^rd or 1/4^th of the shoe remaining.

How to Play Blackjack by Yourself: Card Values

There are dozens of variations of card counting systems that vary in complexity and effectiveness. Some are better for multi-deck games, some are optimized for single-deck games. A great system for beginners is called the Hi Lo. It’s useful in any type of game, it’s effective, and it’s easy to learn quickly. Here’s how it works:

• Deuces, Threes, Fours, Fives, and Sixes count as +1
  
• Aces and all 10-cards (Tens, Jacks, Queens, Kings) count as -1
  
• The remaining cards – Sevens, Eights, and Nines – can be ignored

After a shuffle the count starts at 0. As cards are dealt (to both the Player and Dealer hands) your job is to add their points up into a single net score, known as the running count.  When the count is more positive, the Player hand is at an advantage.

When the count is negative, the Dealer hand is at an advantage. Card counters typically make minimum bets until they get a highly positive count, at which point they start betting more per hand.

That’s the essence of counting cards, but there’s much more to learn before you can turn it into reliably profitable play. When you’re ready to go further, here are some additional topics that are outside the scope of this article:

• Estimating the true count – That is the running count in proportion to the size of the remaining shoe. For example, a count of +4 with 200 cards remaining in the shoe isn’t nearly as advantageous as a +4 count with 50 cards remaining in the shoe.
  
• Keeping side counts – Required under some counting systems where you track certain card ranks (namely Aces) separately
  
• Basic strategy variations – You did all that work committing the strategy charts to memory, but once you become a card counter, optimal play requires certain adjustments depending on the count.
  
• Bet sizing and camouflage – You make money counting cards by betting bigger in advantageous situations. Unfortunately, sudden changes in your bet size is also the easiest way for casinos to identify you as a card counter.

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How to Play Blackjack by Yourself: Counting Practice

Counting cards takes lots of practice. The math isn’t difficult, but Blackjack games can move fast, and it’s easy to get confused. Unlike basic strategy, there are no cheat sheets or references you can bring with you to the table. The only way to get good at it is to practice at home until evaluating card values and netting their points into a count is second nature.

How to Play Blackjack by Yourself: Flip Drill

This is exactly what it sounds like. Like in your solo Blackjack game, you’ll want to combine several decks to practice counting. Simply turn the cards over one at a time and keep a running count.

• Start Slow: Flip cards over one at a time and keep a running count. Focus on accuracy at first rather than speed.

• Increase Speed: Gradually increase the speed of your card flipping as you become more comfortable with the system.

• Flip Multiples: Instead of a single card at a time, see how you do when you flip two or three cards over. Add complexities like placing cards into multiple stacks in front of you rather than a single pile.

• Check Your Work Frequently: Once you’re comfortably recognizing your plus and minus cards and feel you can keep the count by flipping new cards over once every second or two, it’s time to put your skills to the test. Halfway through your deck, stop and write down what you believe the count to be. Then do a slow speed audit of the dealt cards to check your accuracy.

• Simulate a Game: Deal a full mock game, except this time, simulate four or five Player hands. In addition to keeping the running count, see how well you’re able to execute on making the correct basic strategy decisions as discussed in the first section of this article.  

How to Play Blackjack by Yourself at a Casino or Online

We’ve talked about practicing Blackjack at home by yourself, but what about playing in a real casino? If you’ve been used to practicing solo, you might want to find a quiet table and play alone in the real world.

The rules don’t change of course, but there are a few things you should know about playing by yourself. First the benefits:

• No Distractions: Playing alone allows you to focus entirely on making the right basic strategy move without interference from other players.

• Dealer Interaction: Don’t underestimate the benefit of building rapport with the Dealer. Good ones will help you understand the rules of the game, remind you of the best basic strategy decisions, and make for a positive overall experience, win or lose.

• Set Your Own Pace: With no other players at the table, you can take your time to make decisions without feeling pressure from other players to act. If you’re new to the game, you also don’t have to worry about getting blamed for blowing up a hand if you make the wrong move.

• Avoid “Dumb Plays”: In the long run, if you play with others who don’t pay attention to basic strategy, their mistakes that help you win hands you should have lost will even out with mistakes that cause you to lose hands you should have won. But it doesn’t feel like it when it costs you a big bet.

Playing solo has its downside too:

• Less Interesting: Blackjack is a social game. All players are in a battle with the Dealer and it’s fun being at a winning table with others.

• Fast-Paced Gameplay: Yes, you can take your time making each decision, but if you’re playing by yourself, there’s no letup. In multiplayer games the focus switches from player to player, but if you’re the only one at the table, it stays on you.

• Challenges for Counters: The simpler table set up of a 1 on 1 game makes it easier to keep a running count, but you’ll get all the attention from the Dealer and other casino personnel. It’s harder to disguise your approach if you’re counting, especially if you’re winning.

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Playing Multiple Hands of Blackjack

Some casinos allow solo players to occupy multiple spots on a single Blackjack table if there’s room. Ask the Dealer if you’re allowed to bet multiple hands, then the game goes as you would expect – just place your bets and play out your hands one at a time.

Note that in single deck games, cards are often dealt face down, and the casino will make you play out your first hand before looking at other hands. But if you’ve got the bankroll, solo play in a casino using multiple betting spots can be a great way to practice decision making and counting.

Visit the casino during off-peak hours (e.g. in the morning or early afternoon) to increase the chances of finding a table with space.

How to Play Blackjack by Yourself: Practice Makes Perfect Strategy

Taking your Blackjack game to the next level requires a combination of patience, practice, and real-world experience. Practicing alone is a great way to master basic strategy, something you’ll need to master before attempting any advanced gameplay techniques, such as card counting.

By dedicating time to practice and learning through experience, you’ll be better equipped to reduce the house edge and maximize your chances of success at the Blackjack table.

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