Select cards for the player and the dealer's upcard to simulate games played with basic strategy. Setting the dealer's hole card is optional.

Simulation Results:

Monte-Carlo simulate your game to estimate long-run results. All computation runs in your browser.

Same configuration + same seed → identical results. Unchecked = new random seed each run (SCORE can still swing ±5–10 at 3M rounds — that is normal).

Rules are checked top → bottom; the first matching rule sets the bet. Add conditions to switch approaches by hand, streak, or standing vs the leader. An empty condition list always matches.

Enter the shoe composition, rules and your hand to compute the exact expected value of each option. The best play is highlighted. Computation runs in your browser.

Click a card to add it. In multi-deck shoes you can add the same card more than once (e.g. drawn-to hands). Click a card in your hand to remove it.

Most side bets are unbeatable, but a few become +EV when the shoe is depleted the right way. This now covers the blackjack variants too — including Push 22 (Free Bet & Double Down Madness), the most countable variant side bet. Pick a bet to see its math, then use the composition and drill to learn when it turns positive. EVs are estimated by sampling the shoe in your browser.

Try a composition

Set the cards remaining of each rank and estimate the live EV (suits spread evenly).

Take-it-or-skip-it drill

Counting the blackjack variants

Which of the variants in this simulator can be beaten by an advantage player, and how:

• Spanish 21 — beatable by counting. With liberal rules (player 21 always wins, redoubling, late surrender, the 5/6/7-card and 6-7-8 / 7-7-7 bonuses) the off-the-top edge is small. Because the four 10-pip cards are stripped from every deck, Hi-Lo is unbalanced here: start the running count at −4 per deck and divide by ~5.5 "Spanish decks" instead of 6. A two-level count (e.g. Hi-Opt II / Zen) is more efficient. Use the Spanish 48-card shoe toggle above to study its side bets. Tip: the bonuses reward long small-card hands, so they add value as low cards deplete.
• Free Bet Blackjack & Double Down Madness — base game only weakly countable: the dealer-pushes-on-22 rule cancels much of the upside a high count normally gives. The real edge is the Push 22 side bet above, which counts in reverse (small-card-rich / negative counts).
• Breakout Blackjack — the Player bet counts like ordinary blackjack (high count good); the Dealer bet is its mirror (high count bad), so the count tells you which side to back. Sweet 17 is situationally countable (above). Breakout Bonus, Super Tie, Pair Up are pair/jackpot-style bets with no published player edge.

Risk of ruin, goal/time probabilities, result ranges and required bankroll — computed from your game's win rate and variance. Run a simulation first to auto-fill the win rate & variance, or enter them by hand.