Soft hands are hands that can take two distinct values because they contain an ace which can be treated as either one point or eleven points. All other hands are hard hands. If not specified, one can safely assume that a hand total is hard, since soft hands are always qualified as such, while hard hands are only qualified to distinguish them from soft hands (“Was that a soft 17?” “No, it was a hard 18!”). Soft hands are called by their higher potential value. For example, soft-17 refers to a hand that could take the value of either 7 or 17. A hand with an ace that can only be treated as a 1, since treating it as an 11 would result in bustingBusting is the act of getting a point total higher than twenty-one in blackjack, which results in an automatic loss for whoever busts. If both... More, is considered a hard hand because it cannot take two values.
Soft 17 is particularly important because, while dealersA "croupier" is primarily a European term, referring to the casino game attendant responsible for managing the betting and game actions of table games, especially... More must always stand with hard 17s (or more), they often must hit soft 17s. To avoid confusion, casinos usually print that rule directly on the blackjackBlackjack, also referred to as 21, is a popular casino card game where players attempt to have a hand value closer to 21 than the... More table felt: “Dealer must hit soft 17” or “Dealer must stand on all 17s”. While the dealers’ best strategy is to stand with hard 17 or more, it is better for the casinos (worse for the players) if dealer’s hit soft 17s.