No matter what type of blackjack game you prefer – a normal land casino, or online blackjack – the most important thing to do before you start gambling with real money is to studiously learn the terms of the games, just like you don’t start reading in a language before you learn all the letters. For players in Canada, this means doing your research to see which online casinos allow Canadian players to legally participate in addition to learning all the necessary vocabulary.

On the whole, blackjack is a very simple game, so the terms and expressions used during the games are also very logical and not difficult to comprehend.

Stand – When the dealer asks whether you want to get another card and you reply with “stand”, that means that you don’t want another card.

Hit – If you say “Hit” to the dealer while he offers you another card, which means that you take the offer of getting another card which is then pulled from the pack.

Soft hand – A hand that contains the Ace card, so it can be summed in two ways: with the Ace’s value equal to either 1 or 11.

Hard hand – A hand that doesn’t contain an ace, which means it can only be calculated in one way.

Blackjack – a hand worth exactly 21. The only way to get a Blackjack is to have one ace and another card whose value is 10.

Double – Doubling the amount of the bet and dealing a last card to the gambler.

Split – When the hand contains two identical cards, like 5 and 5, players say you can split the hand and play two different hands. In order to do that, you have to double the bet. This option is worth choosing when you are dealt a hand whose value is too high to draw another card and too low to stand.

Insurance – If the dealer draws an Ace to his own hand, players then have the insurance option, which means that if the dealer then draws a card whose value is 10 to form a Blackjack, the player who chose insurance is immune and will not lose his bet. The insurance money is lost when the dealer doesn’t draw a 10. The insurance cost is about half of the bet.

Surrender – Surrendering means that you lose before the winner is determined by the results of the game, and the surrendering players loses half of the bet.