Splitting Eights & Nines in Blackjack

What do you do when you are playing blackjack and get dealt a pair of 8’s or a pair of 9’s? When do you split them and when do you stand. And with a pair of 8’s should you ever hit them? Let’s take a look.

You always hear in blackjack strategy to split 8’s and aces all the time. While that is technically correct, it is a very close call with 8’s against a dealer’s 9, 10, face card or ace when playing blackjack online at the casino. Technically the correct answer is to split the 8’s in long-term blackjack strategy. There are some problems with this decision though. You have 16 against the dealer’s up card of 9, 10, face card or ace and that is a bad situation as you are going to lose most of the time. If you split the 8’s you are not in much better shape. Many times you are going to lose two hands instead of one but the math still points to splitting the 8’s but just barely. If you are a conservative player you may just want to hit your pair of 8’s, accept the likely loss and move on instead of potentially losing two hands.

When you get a pair of 9’s the basic blackjack online strategy says to split them when the dealer’s up card is 2 to 9 and stand when the dealer has 7, face card or an ace. The one situation where it is close is when you have a pair of 9’s against a dealer’s 9. Your odds improve by about 6% if you split those 9’s but you are risking twice as much money in that situation which doesn’t hold much appeal if you are a conservative player.