Card Values

Blackjack hands are scored by their point total. In Blackjack, cards are valued in the following way:

• An Ace can be counted as either 1 or 11 (it is explained below).
• The cards from 2 through 9 have their face values.
• 10, Jack, Queen, and King are all valued at 10

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

An Ace can be counted either as 1 or 11. An Ace always has the value that makes the best hand. Suppose you have (Ace, 7). The value of this hand can be either 8 or 18. If you stop here, it will be 18.

Let’s assume you’ve drawn one more card. The hand contains (Ace, 7, 8). Its total value is 16.