Splitting 8’s and 9’s in Blackjack

What do you do with a pair of 8's in online blackjack when the dealer has a 10, face card or an ace? This is an area of disagreement among the experts as some will say to split while others will say to hit. The bottom line is that the total of 16 against a dealer's up card of a 10 or an ace is not very good. If you split the two 8's you probably are still in trouble against the dealer's 10 but now it is twice as bad. Now you have two hands where you are probably in trouble instead of just one. There is no right or wrong answer for you on 8's against the dealer's face card. Those people that are aggressive can split them, but those that are conservative will probably just hit and move on.

What do you do in online blackjack when you have a pair of 9’s against a dealer’s 9? This is not the same as the 8's against a 10 where you have a bad situation. The odds show that if you stand with the 18 you lose 18 percent of your bets, but if you split the 9’s you lose only 12 percent of your bets. You are still going to lose money in this situation but splitting the 9's is the better mathematical option in this case.

Posted: Jul 1, 2009