Hand rankings
Each row is one player starting hand against one dealer upcard. Win, push and loss probabilities assume you play perfect basic strategy from that point on. Click a column header to sort.
| Your hand | Type | Dealer shows | Best play | Win % | Push % | EV / unit |
|---|
Win % is the chance the hand wins money under the best non-surrender play. Where surrender is marked as the best play, it beats even that line's expected value by losing only half the bet. EV is the average profit per unit wagered.
Notes on the table
The top of the ranking is no surprise. Hard 20 wins or pushes against everything, and it does best against a dealer 7 or 8, since those upcards most often finish on totals of 17 or 18 that a 20 simply beats. The strongest hand that involves an actual decision is 11 against a dealer 6: you are drawing to a one-card total that cannot bust, against the upcard that busts most often, which is why doubling there carries an expected profit of about two thirds of a bet.
The bottom of the table is dominated by hard 14, 15 and 16 against a dealer 9, 10 or Ace. These are the stiff hands: too weak to win by standing unless the dealer busts, and likely to bust if you draw. Nothing rescues them. The best available play merely loses the least, which is exactly why late surrender exists for the worst four of these spots.
Scan down the dealer column and a pattern emerges that explains most of basic strategy: the dealer's 4, 5 and 6 are weak because the dealer must draw from them and breaks roughly 40% of the time, while 9, 10 and Ace are strong because the dealer usually arrives at a made hand. Almost every stand-on-a-stiff, double and split in the game is an attack on that weakness.
Finally, some pairs sit lower in the ranking than the play suggests. A pair of 8s against a 10 has a poor win rate however you play it, yet splitting is still correct: the ranking sorts by win probability of the best single play, but the split's value comes from losing less across two hands, which the expected value column captures.