What Does Double Down Mean in Blackjack?

Video Transcript

"Hi. My name is Melissa Powell and I'm with Expert Village. The next thing we're going to talk about in playing Blackjack, is what it means to double down. I'm going to deal the cards out again and show you an example of a good time to double down. So let's take a look. Once again, I'm going to deal the cards for the purposes of just showing hands without dealing them properly. So each person will now have two cards, like so. We start over here. This person has fifteen. Not a great option to double down. So we'll ignore that for now. Fifteen, again not a great option to double down. So we'll move on. Aha! Here we are with a hand of eleven. Now this is a perfect opportunity to double down. So the player, let's say, has bet one chip on this hand. To double down essentially means to double your money. You've doubled the amount of the bet on just one hand, so you hope to increase your chances by winning twice as much money. However, when you double down, you only get one card. Which is why there are very few hands that are very specifically meant to have double downs placed on them. In this case, with an eleven, your chances of getting ten are much greater than any other hand that would be helpful to you. So I deal them one more card and I deal it down horizontally, like this. In this case, the Ace doesn't help them all that much as they can't use it as an eleven or it would bust. So unfortunately, they only have twelve. But if they were to have a ten, they would have twenty-one. Again, not a natural, but a very easily winning hand and they would double their money. That's when you double down. "