Spanish 21 Cheat Sheet: Choose the Right Move for Your Rules

Use a Spanish 21 basic strategy chart that matches your table’s rules—not a standard 52-card blackjack chart. Below is a full reference for dealer stands on soft 17 (S17), followed by the changes for dealer hits soft 17 (H17), both without redoubling.

The number of cards in your hand, possible bonus combinations and sometimes suits change the recommended move. The chart guides decisions within a specified mathematical model; it does not guarantee profit.

Check the table rules first

Use this cheat sheet only after checking the dealer, surrender, doubling, splitting and bonus rules. The name Spanish 21 alone is not enough to establish a match.

Read the posted rules or ask staff to confirm:

• S17 or H17: does the dealer stand on soft 17 or hit it?
• Decks: are there six or eight 48-card decks?
• Dealer blackjack checks: when does the dealer peek, and how are wagers settled against dealer blackjack?
• Late surrender: when is it available, and what dealer-blackjack check must happen first?
• Doubling: can you double down on a multi-card hand? Is only one double allowed, or is redoubling available? Is double down rescue offered?
• Splitting: can you double after splitting, draw to split aces and re-split aces?
• Bonuses: do they remain available after splitting, and are they void after doubling?
• Payout Table: which payouts and eligibility restrictions apply at this particular table?

A 48-card deck removes only the four numbered 10s. The face cards—J, Q and K—remain and are worth 10 points each. That leaves 12 ten-point cards out of 48, or 25%, compared with 16 out of 52, or approximately 30.77%, in a standard deck. That fraction alone does not determine the right move: the other rules and bonuses also matter.

Under typical Spanish 21 rules, a player’s natural blackjack wins even against dealer blackjack. A player’s multi-card 21 can also beat an ordinary dealer 21. Settlement is not universal, however: Massachusetts Gaming Commission rules, version 5, approved March 27, 2025, §5(b), make a multi-card 21 lose to dealer blackjack. The local settlement procedure takes precedence.

The charts below come from the Wizard of Odds six-deck combinatorial analysis, updated August 3, 2026, using typical published bonuses and liberal splitting and doubling rules. They are not certified for every eight-deck or online implementation. Do not automatically transfer them to a no-surrender game, Pontoon or an online game with a similar name.

How to look up a move

First check whether the hand has already been settled. Then use the pair row when splitting is legal; otherwise, look up the hard or soft total and apply the card-count and bonus exceptions.

1. Blackjack and completed 21: apply the settlement rules first. Never hit a settled blackjack or hard 21.
2. Pairs: use the pair chart when splitting is available. Play 4,4 as hard 8 and 5,5 as hard 10. Two ten-point face cards make 20: never split them.
3. Other hands: a soft hand has an ace currently counted as 11. Without such an ace, the hand is hard.
4. Dealer upcard: the 10 column includes J, Q and K; A means ace.
5. Exceptions: count every card in your hand and check whether a 6-7-8 combination is possible, including any required suit.
6. Already doubled hands: use the separate double down rescue guidance, not the ordinary action tables.

What the codes mean

The letter gives the action. A number beside it gives the card-count threshold at which you hit instead.

For example, S5 means stand with four or fewer cards, but hit with five or more. D4 means double down with fewer than four cards if legal, but hit with four or more.

This is composition-dependent basic strategy, not a card-counting system. Dn does not mean redoubling. A fallback action does not repair a rule mismatch either: different restrictions require a matching chart.

Full S17 chart without redoubling

Use these tables when the dealer stands on soft 17 and the other rules match the source model. All ten dealer upcards appear separately.

Source: Wizard of Odds Spanish 21 strategy, six-deck model, updated August 3, 2026. Apply the codes and exceptions explained above.

Hard hands

Find your hard total and the dealer upcard, then apply any card-count threshold or bonus marker.

Soft hands

Use this table only when an ace counts as 11. Merely having an ace does not make a hand soft.

S6 for soft 19–20 against 10 means hit with six or more cards only while the hand is still live and another draw is legal. It is not permission to keep playing a settled 21.

Pairs

Use a pair row only when splitting is legal and the rules for playing the split hands match the model.

In the S17 model, A,A against A changes to H if drawing to split aces is prohibited. This is an important limitation of the chart, not blanket permission to draw after every split.

H17 changes without redoubling

If the dealer hits soft 17, replace the cells below; all other cells remain as shown in the S17 tables. Redoubling is still excluded.

These are the 15 changed cells for H17 without redoubling, from the same Wizard of Odds analysis.

Three differences are especially easy to miss: 8,8 against an ace is surrender rather than split; hard 16 against an ace becomes RH; and hard 9 against 6 becomes D rather than D4.

If redoubling is allowed, these tables are not the right reference. Use the separate pre-double and post-double charts in the Wizard of Odds Spanish 21 strategy section for that rule.

For a paper cheat sheet, select the matching variant and print this page through your browser in landscape orientation. Keep the code legend and table profile with it: the grid alone is easy to misread.

Worked examples: the same total can require different moves

Choose the action using the actual hand, dealer upcard and rules—not the total alone. These examples use S17 except where an H17 comparison is stated.

Do not extend the hard-17-versus-ace example to every upcard or card count. In S17, hard 17 stands against 2–7. Against 8, 9 and 10, S6 means hit with six or more cards.

Bonus 21: payouts and restrictions

Bonus 21 depends on the card count, ranks and suits. A six-card hand is not automatically a winner simply because it has six cards.

The typical bonus schedule in the source model is:

These ratios describe profit, excluding the returned stake. With a 10 USD stake, a winning five-card 21 earns 15 USD profit and a total payout of 25 USD. A six-card 21 earns 20 USD profit and a 30 USD payout; a seven-or-more-card 21 earns 30 USD profit and a 40 USD payout.

Three bonus payout rows from the original English Fallsview Spanish 21 brochure

Excerpt from the original English Fallsview bonus table, page 3. Document created October 28, 2022; accessed October 13, 2026. This historical source does not certify the rules at every current table.

Doubling voids bonuses. Rules after splitting vary: the 2022 Fallsview brochure, page 2, explicitly permits bonus 21 on split hands but excludes Super Bonus after splitting or doubling. The restriction in Massachusetts Gaming Commission rules, §10(e), differs. Check your table’s posted Payout Table.

Super Bonus requires suited 7-7-7 against a dealer 7, plus the applicable eligibility conditions. The named Fallsview brochure lists 1,000 USD for stakes of 5–24 USD and 5,000 USD for stakes of 25 USD or more. Those are documented thresholds, not advice to raise your stake for a rare combination.

Late surrender and double down rescue

Late surrender reduces the loss on the initial wager. Double down rescue lets you give up an already doubled hand at the stage specified by the rules. They are different actions.

With legal late surrender on a 10 USD wager, you lose 5 USD and receive 5 USD back, after the required dealer-blackjack condition has been resolved. See the blackjack surrender guide for the procedure.

If you double a 10 USD wager once, you add 10 USD, bringing the total exposure to 20 USD. On a non-busted hand, double down rescue returns the added 10 USD while the original 10 USD is lost. Rescue is unavailable after a bust: the loss is then 20 USD.

For the ordinary game without redoubling, the strategy source recommends rescue on an already doubled hand with:

• Hard 12–16 against 8, 9, 10 or A.
• Hard 17 against A.

This is not a recommendation to rescue every doubled hand. After repeated doubles, the exposure and rescue conditions must be checked separately. Rescue cuts a particular loss; it does not undo a failed wager or make betting profitable. Official surrender and doubling procedures also appear in Massachusetts Gaming Commission rules, §§8–12, whose scope is that jurisdiction.

House edge: three different profiles

The original model gives a house edge of 0.40% for S17, 0.42% for H17 with redoubling, and 0.76% for H17 without redoubling. These figures exclude Super Bonus and assume correct strategy for each profile.

Source: Wizard of Odds Spanish 21 mathematical model, updated August 3, 2026. The redoubling figure does not apply to the ordinary action charts above.

These figures are not a universal RTP for all Spanish 21 tables and do not guarantee a small actual loss in a short session. Playing errors, different rules and additional wagers affect the model’s applicability.

Calculate expected loss with the calculator

For a hypothetical 100 rounds with a fixed 10 USD initial wager and a 0.4% house edge, the calculator shows an expected loss of 4 USD. You can repeat this calculation without depositing money.

1. Open the house edge calculator.
2. Enable “Enter a custom house edge”.
3. Enter 0.4, using a decimal point.
4. Set the bet size to 10 USD.
5. Select “By rounds”.
6. Set the number of rounds to 100.

Calculator inputs showing a 0.4% house edge, a 10 USD bet and 100 rounds

Screenshot of the English localhost development UI, not verification of the published version. Inputs represent a hypothetical S17 profile: a fixed 10 USD initial wager, 100 rounds and a 0.4% house edge.

The result shows total initial stakes of 1,000 USD, 100 rounds, an expected loss of 4 USD and an expected return of 996 USD.

Calculator result showing 100 rounds, 1,000 USD in initial stakes, a 4 USD expected loss and a 996 USD expected return

Screenshot of the English localhost development UI, not verification of the published version. The output is an arithmetic model, not a prediction of the money you will receive after actual play.

For S17:

100 × 10 × 0.004 = 4 USD.

For H17 without redoubling, using the same initial wagers:

100 × 10 × 0.0076 = 7.60 USD.

These calculations assume 100 fixed 10 USD base wagers and a house edge measured against the initial wager. Currency results are shown to the nearest cent; no rounding changes these examples. The 1,000 USD is cumulative initial-wager turnover, not the bankroll required and not all money wagered after doubles and splits. Do not add every extra doubled wager again when the supplied house edge already uses an initial-wager basis.

The 996 USD expected return is the arithmetic remainder of that base-wager turnover, not a guaranteed cashout. The displayed RTP of 99.6% equals 100% − 0.4%; it describes the selected model, not a measurement of the current table.

The “EXCELLENT” badge, if displayed, is only a rough house-edge category—not a safety recommendation. The tool does not choose moves, model individual bonuses or variance, or calculate the probability of profit or risk of ruin. Set spending and time limits before playing, and do not increase stakes to chase losses.

Learn the chart without wagering

Practise decision accuracy with paper hands and compare each answer with the chart for the matching rules. Your practice win rate does not measure how well you have learned basic strategy.

Record five things: the rules, your cards, the dealer upcard, your chosen action and any error. The worked examples above provide an answer key. Spend extra time on S5, S6, D4 and D5 thresholds, 6-7-8 exceptions and the S17/H17 differences.

For physical demonstrations or online practice, verify the rule match first. A generic 52-card blackjack trainer is not a substitute for Spanish 21 practice. Static exercises need only the chart, its legend and recorded hands; no special video is necessary.

Spanish 21 card counting is a separate subject, not a replacement for basic strategy. The Match the Dealer side bet also needs separate analysis and is not included in these main-hand action charts.