Hard Hands and Soft Hands in Blackjack

In Blackjack, a hard hand is a hand which has an Ace card which is valued as “1”. On the other hand, a soft hand is a hand which has an Ace card whose value is 11. Blackjack allows players to assign the value for Ace cards as 1 or 11. Therefore the value of Ace's card depend on the player, but this causes certain hands to have a dual value which is lesser the hand bust. That is, if a hand of A/2 can be valued as Soft 13 or Hard 3, it depends on how the Ace value card is calculated.

Let us look on some examples of hard hands and soft hands of blackjack:

If you are dealt with:

An Ace card and a 7 card can be valued as Hard 8 or Soft 18.
An Ace Card and a 9 card can be valued as Hard 10 or Soft 20.
An Ace Card and a 6 card can be valued as Hard 7 or Soft 17.

Learning to tell apart a hard hand from soft hand is a part of the basic blackjack strategy. Some basic blackjack strategy relies on blackjack players to determine which is a hard hand and which is a soft hard. However, when a player utilizes the basic doubling down strategy, he/she must be aware of the difference between hard hands and soft hands. Though, this is only a small part of the blackjack basic strategy, this is quite essential for a player to learn and play blackjack well.