To truly become a master at playing blackjack and lose as few hands as possible, professionals who have been playing blackjack for years will tell you that understanding certain statistics can massively help.

What exactly is blackjack?

Blackjack is a popular card game you can enjoy playing today at any land-based or online casino. When playing at land-based casinos, you can usually only play for real money, but when playing blackjack at online casinos from a smartphone or tablet device, you can generally play in the free-to-play and real money modes.

In this iconic card game, the aim is to try to beat the dealer. You don't compete against any other players. You must try and get as close to 21 points with the cards you are dealt and without exceeding this number.

The Ace is worth either 11 points or 1 point. The Jack, Queen, and King are all worth 10 points, and the remaining cards, the 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, and 2 cards, are worth their face value in points. Therefore, the best possible hand would be a 10, J, Q, or K, and an Ace (10 points + 11 points = 21 points).

Learning how to play blackjack is really straightforward and should only take a few hands for most people to get to grips with.

Rules

You must start by selecting how much you would like to bet. Let's just say that it's only you against the dealer. In this case, as soon as you have placed your bets and started a new round, the dealer will now deal two cards each.

One of the dealer's cards is always face up for everyone to see, which helps you decide what move to make next.

Let's just say you're dealt a 5 and a 6 on your first two cards, and the dealer shows a 7. You know he has 7 points, but you don't know his face-down card. Your hand is worth 11 points (5 + 6 = 11).

You can now try to improve your hand by taking another card. Alternatively, you can fold (exit the game). However, there's no point in exiting at this point because you could still win. The best card you could hope to get is a 10, J, Q, or K, which would give you 21 points.

The dealer's card is now also shown to reveal the total value of his hand. If he turns over a 10, for example, his hand would be worth 17 points, so you have won, and a new round can begin.

The dealer usually has to hit on any total of 16 points or lower and must stand on 17 points or higher. You also have several other betting options, such as SPLIT, DOUBLING DOWN, and INSURANCE.

How can learning different stats help?

Learning simple things like the payouts in blackjack is important, but on the whole, stats can't help you too much when playing blackjack online. Learning the odds/payouts is a good place to start.

Blackjack usually pays 3:2. However, it could pay 6:5 or 1:1 (evens). Remember, the outcomes of regular online casino blackjack games are often determined by Random Number Generators (RNGs), so counting cards is basically impossible online.

RNGs do NOT determine results/outcomes in live dealer blackjack games. In live dealer blackjack games, it's completely down to lady luck and not some mathematical algorithm program that produces fair and realistic results with no pattern.

Top blackjack games to play online today

If you're looking for some popular blackjack games to play online today for real money, some of the best titles to keep an eye out for are Blackjack from Relax Gaming, European Blackjack Multihand from Play'n GO, Blackjack from Realistic Games, Black 21+3 from Felt Gaming, and First Person Blackjack from Evolution Gaming.

If you enjoy playing these games, you must also check out Live Lightning Blackjack from Evolution Gaming, Live Super Stake Blackjack from StakeLogic, and Live Infinite Blackjack from Evolution Gaming, to name a few great games.