These days even some of the leading bingo operators such as Mecca are providing online games. Of these games online blackjack is probably the most loved, vibrant and fascinating game. It offers reasonable chances, is easy to pick up and can involve complicated strategies. The rules are fairly simple, but to play it without giving the house too big an advantage involves an element of strategy. Often, success in playing online blackjack is a reflection of ability as well as pure luck.

As with most online casino games, there is of course to opportunity to first try your hand before risking real money - With free expert advice, many people new to the world of online gambling are honing their game skills and playing free online blackjack at online casinos such as Riverbelle.

It’s a enjoyable and relatively inexpensive way to become familiar with the rules and terminology of the game as well as developing your strategy – provided you know your limits. Remember, knowledge is power and the more you know, the more comfortable you are making decisions at the table.
 
The Aim of Blackjack

The basic premise of the game is that you want to have a hand value that is closer to 21 than that of the dealer, without going over 21. Other players at the table are really of no concern. Your hand and your game is played out against the hand of the dealer. The rules of play for the dealer are strictly dictated, leaving no decisions up to the dealer. Therefore, there is not a problem with the dealer or any of the other players at the table seeing the cards in your hand. In fact, if you're playing at a shoe game, the player cards are all dealt face up.

A standard blackjack deck contains 52 cards in four suits (hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades). Each suit consists of numerical cards 2 to 10 and a jack, a queen, a king, and an ace. Two or more decks of cards may be combined.
 
Cards values in Blackjack:

The values of the cards contained in a deck of cards are as follows:

    * A card from 2 to 10 has its face value
    * A jack, queen, or king has a value of 10
    * The value of the ACE depends on the sum of your cards if the sum is lower than 21, the value of your ACE is 11 however if the sum of your cards increase to more than 21(if ace counts =
for 11) then your ACE drops to the value of one.

Examples of Ace Value:

Suppose that you have the beginning hand (Ace, 5). This hand can be either 6 or 16. If you stop there, it will be 16. Imagine that you hit and draw another card to the hand and now have (Ace, 5, 3). Your total hand is now 19, counting the Ace as 11. Let's pretend that instead of drawing a 3 you had instead drawn a third card which was an 8. The hand is now (Ace, 5, 8) which totals 14. Notice here we’ve now counted the Ace as only 1 to avoid going over 21 and bust. In this case 24
 
If an Ace can be counted as either 1 or 11 without the total going over 21 the hand is referred to as ‘soft hand’. For example (Ace, 6) is a soft 17. The description stems from the fact that the player can always draw another card to a soft total with no danger of "busting" by going over 21. The hand (Ace,6,10) on the other hand is a "hard" 17, since now the Ace must be counted as only 1, again because counting it as 11 would bust the hand .

The value of any hand is simply the sum of the point counts of each card in the hand. For example, a hand containing (5,7,9) has the value of 21.