Added: June 21, 2012
If you are the type of players who isn't completely married to the pokies, you are exploring other games in the online casino. One of those, without a doubt, is blackjack. And with that game, you could have different rules going from one casino or variation to the next. So how do you deal with the different rules from a strategy standpoint? We'll explore it.
There is no doubt that the single factor that affects your Basic Strategy the most is the set of rules that are in effect for the game. Naturally, there are going to different rules at different games, and in online casino gaming you are more likely to find more game variations for blackjack than you will in the land-based casino environment. Space restrictions won't allow a physical casino to have ten different kinds of blackjack, but online, there's theoretically all the room in the world.
There's also an opportunity to have the kind of games that might lure players in by virtue of the kind of rules that are offered. When that happens, you may want to adjust your Basic Strategy accordingly.
It is no secret that a rule change can affect what you expectation is. Much of the time it is the result of an option that might otherwise be expected to exist, but is not allowed. And that would, in turn, render many of the basic moves you would make to be useless. One of the killers is when a game does not allow you to execute the option of soft doubling, which involves being able to double on hands that contain an Ace.
If soft doubling is prohibited, it would require you to hit any hands that range from Ace-Three through Ace-Six when the house is showing a three through six as the upcard. There is less of a gain to be made when that happens. Also, it is informative to observe what happens if the option of Doubling Down After Split is not allowed. This option, which is known by some players as DDAS, would make you split your hands more because of the possibility of making more hands. Without it, less splitting will be done.
Basically (pardon the pun), this is what you would be looking at with or without certain rules that would be considered to be advantageous for players: when you are not allowed to Double Down After Split, you would SPLIT pairs of 2's and 3's against the Dealer's upcard of 4 through 7, rather than the upcards of 2 through 7. A slight strategy adjustment is made when you have a pair of sixes, in that you would split them against a dealer's 3 through 6, rather than 2 through 6, and you would not split a pair of fours (4's) at all.
If you can't do Soft Doubling, you're going to hit all soft hands that range from Ace-2 through Ace-6, and when you have an Ace-7, you'll stand when the dealer shows anything from 3 through 6, instead of doubling, which is what you would normally do.
And remember that you can also find games of blackjack where the surrender option is allowed. This should be good for you. When surrender is in the rules, you would take the combinations of 10,6 and 9,7, which add to 16, and surrender when the dealer shows a 9, 10 or Ace. Also, with the combos of 10,5 and 9,6 that add to 15, you'll surrender when the dealer shows a ten.
Remember that sometimes the rules change your game!
