So in blackjack, you keep getting cards until you’re all like “whoa, I’m too close to 21 and I can’t go over or I’ll lose.”

And sometimes this happens when you have 21, which is the best (it’s called “Blackjack”, and you win extra if that happens right away).

But sometimes it happens when you have like 14 or 15, which is the worst because you know the other guy is gonna get at least like 18 or 19 and win. So you have to make a choice, and you base it on the dealer’s card that you can see.

Losing is called “busting” in the casino, and winning is called awesome anywhere. Especially at an online casino USA.

Maybe I’m not explaining this too well. So the dealer gives you two cards, and you look at them in secret, and you decide whether you want to stop there or not. So you can do like “hit me”, which gets you another card, or you can be all “stand” which stops your cards right there.

If you’re really ballsy, you can be like “double down” which gives you one more card but no more than that. If it gets you closer to 21 than the dealer (or if he totally busts), you just won twice as much money. Sweet! You’d usually need to play online slots for that kind of payback.

If you have two of the same kind of card (like two threes, or two eights, et cetera), you can say “split” which makes it so that you have two separate stacks of cards, each starting with one of the pair that started this sentence in the first place. It’s like playing two hands at once, except that you start off already knowing what your first card is!

One cool thing is that the dealer can’t do just anything he wants, but he has to keep hitting until he has 17 or more, and then he stops right there (wherever ‘there’ is, I mean). He can’t do all the splits and double downs and stuff, and he doesn’t win any more money when he hits a 21.

His only goal is to keep you from winning, and he must be stopped at all costs. By winning, I mean.