There are 52 cards in a deck of playing cards. The face cards – hearts, diamonds, and spades – are each worth 10 points. A face card is also worth 1 point when counting as part of the hand.
The other cards – two through ten – are each worth their face value. Aces are worth 1 point, two through nine are each worth face value plus 1 or 2 points, and 10s are worth nothing.
In a standard blackjack game, players get two hands of cards. Each hand has 17 cards, with an Ace being counted as 1 point. After both players have given their hands of cards, the dealer then deals 3 additional cards to the player to the left of the player who was initially dealt the dealer’s hand.
This gives each player a total of 18 cards. The remaining card in the deck is placed face down in the middle of the table as the “draw” card.
Now it’s time to start playing blackjack! The object of the game is to get as close to 21 points as possible without going over. To do this, players must either draw cards and add them to their current hand, or else discard unwanted cards to reduce their hand size until they reach 21 points or less. If a player gets a total of 21 points or more in one hand, that player wins the game!
Here’s an example of how a typical blackjack game might play out:
Player A starts by drawing one card from the draw card (the “hole card”). Player B doesn’t have anything to add so far, so Player A continues playing with one card (the Ace). Player C drAWS another card (an eight), which means that he now has 10 points in his current hand and 1 point remaining on his draw card (the hole card).
Player B now has three options: He can discard one card from his current hand (a two) to bring it down to 9 points; he can keep playing with one card and lose; or he can discard both cards from his current hand (a four and a six) and reduce his total to 8 points. Player C chooses option 3 and loses because he doesn’t have anywhere near enough points yet to win!
A typical blackjack game will usually last around 20 hands or so before somebody wins or loses. During this time,Player A will most likely have at least two different hands totaling more than 21 points – meaning that he is very likely to win!.
