Blackjack is a casino game that involves players making bets and the dealer dealing two cards to each player and two to himself (one card face up, one card face down). A hand wins if it is closer to 21 than the dealer’s or if the dealer busts. The cards are valued as follows: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and Ace, which can count as either 1 or 11.
Players can choose to stand, hit, split, surrender, double down, or ask for another card. The dealer acts last and must hit on 16 or less and stand on 17 through 21. If the dealer has Blackjack, he pays out the players’ bets at one and a half times their bet amount.
A blackjack dealer’s job is to serve the casino’s customers by providing them with information on the rules and procedures of the games they play. They also must be able to answer any questions that the players might have. In addition, a blackjack dealer should be able to explain the rules of other casino games and encourage players to try them.
The game of blackjack has been around for centuries. Snyder points out that a predecessor was the Italian game Sette e Mezzo, popular in the seventeenth century, which was played with a 40-card deck (with all of the 8s, 9s and 10s pip cards removed). The objective of the game was to have a total closer to seven and a half than the dealer without going over.
Roger Baldwin, Wilbert Cantey, Herbert Maisel, and James McDermott, referred to as the Four Horsemen of Aberdeen, are considered to have developed the first reasonably accurate basic playing strategy for blackjack in 1956. They used hand calculators to prove that blackjack offered the best odds if the players followed a certain set of playing rules.
Julien Braun is the blackjack programmer whose work with Thorp on the second edition of his book Beat the Dealer helped to develop the Hi/Lo counting system – which is still in use today. The computer skills of Braun and others have helped to make the game more mathematically sound, and blackjack enthusiasts are grateful to them for that.
Casinos are implementing more advanced security measures, and it is important that blackjack dealers understand these. This will help them better serve their online and mobile casino customers.
Blackjack is a fast-paced game, and the dealer must be able to perform mental math and follow a list of steps quickly. If they are unable to do so, they will not be able to keep track of player bets or pay out winning hands promptly. Moreover, they will be wasting valuable time that could have been spent training on their other skills. To increase their chances of success, a dealer should practice performing simple calculations in their free time. They should also be able to communicate effectively with their teammates and co-workers.