An elaborated article about blackjack:
How do you play blackjack? There are a few basic steps to follow:
1. Choose a suit.
Blackjack is played with cards that have either two of a kind, three of a kind, or a straight. Some casinos offer an option to play with one or more jacks or Better Blackjack, which adds another card to the deck and alters the rules slightly.
2. Stand.
The first player to stand loses the hand. If there is a tie at the start of the hand, each player takes a turn being the first to stand until someone loses.
3. Deal the cards. The dealer deals two cards face down and one card face up to each player, starting with the player to the dealer’s left and proceeding clockwise around the table. When it is your turn to draw from the deck, you must place your bet before drawing your card (unless you are using one of the special hands).
You can only count down from 10 if you are playing with standard blackjack rules – if you are playing with better blackjack or one or more jacks, you can also count up from 2. If you have a natural (a number that appears as part of your draw), then you may also choose to add it to your bet (this is called “raising”).
4. Play hands. After everyone has had a chance to look at their hand, players place their bet and then play cards according to their rank – Ace high (one over), two through ten low (two under), Jack high (three over), Queen high (four over), King high (five over). If someone has an Ace, two, three or four in their hand, they can “stand” instead of playing any further cards – this is known as “going bust”. Bust means that all players lose their bets and the hand is over; if someone has a five or higher in their hand, they must play at least one card before going bust. If someone does not have any cards that rank higher than five, they “draw” (take) all of their cards and lose automatically – this is known as “hitting”.
If somebody drAWS four cards in succession without including an Ace or King in any of those hands, they automatically lose – this is called “running out”. Once all players have had an opportunity to play some cards and make bets, the dealer turns over the next card – this is known as “the flop”. The dealer then flips another card face up onto the table and sets it in front of herself; this is known as “the turn”. The next card that is turned over becomes “the river” (or fourth card) and finally determines whether somebody wins or loses. The following descriptions assume that somebody has lost all their chips: After an player has lost all their chips, they leave the table and forfeit any further participation in that particular game; if there are still active players at that table who wish to continue playing blackjack, another player will become dealer for that particular game and will proceed with steps 1-4 above while those remaining players ante up new chips into the pot (this continues until there are no active players). If there are no active players remaining at that table who wish to play blackjack, then that particular game constitutes a loss for everyone involved – including the dealer who receives whatever money was already in the pot prior to those last few hands being played.
