How to Play Blackjack Online
Online blackjack is played in the same manner as normal blackjack with one very important difference. When you play blackjack at a real casino as opposed to a virtual one, you play with a shoe of cards that holds multiple decks. It is quite usual to play with four, six ir eight decks of cards. The cards are not shuffled after every round; rather they are shuffled when a large proportion of the shoe has been played through or whenever the dealer feels so inclined. The reason for this is that it would hold up the game for too long if the cards were frequently shuffled.
When playing online shuffling takes very little time as it is merely a randomisation of a card deck which can be achieved almost instantaneously. Thus the cards are shuffled after every round.
This creates a huge difference between the two versions of the game. In real casino blackjack the structure of the deck changes during the course of playing the game. This means that there are times when it is richer in high cards than at other times. The greater the proportion of high cards in the shoe, the greater the chances of the player hitting a blackjack which pays out at significantly higher odds, 3 to 2, than a normal win which pays out at even money. Tracking the number of high cards that have been dealt can enable a card counter to determine when the shoe contains more high cards and at those times to increase the size of his bet.
Unfortunately, this is not possible in online blackjack, so when you play online you should forget all about card counting; simply it does not work. Instead the best way to play blackjack online is to use a strategy of flat betting and to use basic strategy to decide your moves. Basic strategy is simply a set of rules that have been worked out that suggest the most optimal play for any specific situation based on the cards the player holds and on the visible dealer card.
There are different basic strategies for different blackjack variants, so you should make sure that you use the correct one. You will find that they are all available for download from the web.