Blackjack in the Philippines

The rules in one minute

You play against the dealer, not against other players. Cards 2-9 count their number, tens, jacks, queens and kings count 10, and an ace counts 1 or 11, whichever helps. You and the dealer get two cards each; one of the dealer's cards is face up (the upcard). An ace plus a ten-value card on your first two cards is a blackjack and usually pays 3 to 2. Other wins pay 1 to 1, and equal totals are a push (your bet comes back).

On your turn you choose:

• Hit: take another card. Go over 21 and you bust and lose at once, even if the dealer busts later.
• Stand: keep your total.
• Double: double your bet and take exactly one more card.
• Split: with a pair, add a second bet and play the two cards as two hands. Split aces usually get one card each.
• Surrender (only at some tables): give up half your bet and end the hand.

The dealer has no choices: they draw until they reach 17 or more. Tables differ on a soft 17 (a 17 that counts an ace as 11, such as ace-6): at some the dealer stands, at others the dealer hits. These are the standard rules as described by Wizard of Odds; the rules screen of the game you play is what counts.

Worked example (invented)

You bet ₱100 and get 10 and 6, a hard 16. The dealer shows a 10. Both choices are bad: in our calculation you lose about ₱54 on average whether you stand or hit, and hitting is better by less than ₱0.10. Now say you get 6 and 5 (11) against a dealer 6. Standing on 11 loses about ₱15 on average, hitting wins about ₱33, and doubling to ₱200 wins about ₱67. Doubling is right here because the dealer busts about 42% of the time from a 6 and your next card is often a ten.

House edge: what the table rules cost

Blackjack is the one casino table game where your decisions change the house edge. The figures below assume perfect basic strategy; mistakes add to them.

How we got them: we calculated the exact expected return of every starting hand against every dealer upcard, assuming an infinite deck (each card equally likely every draw), with the dealer checking for blackjack first, double on any two cards, double after a split, one split per hand, one card to each split ace and no surrender. Real shoes of six or eight decks and extra rules move these figures a little: Wizard of Odds puts the value of re-splitting at about 0.10%, and the difference between six and eight decks at 0.02%. The gaps between the rows match the rule costs Wizard of Odds publishes: 0.22% for a dealer who hits soft 17 and about 1.4% for 6:5 (we get 1.35% with an infinite deck; Wizard's eight-deck figure is 1.39%).

Other rules, from Wizard of Odds

Changes in the player's return against an eight-deck game where the dealer stands on soft 17 (Wizard of Odds rule variations). A minus sign means the rule is worse for you:

• Blackjack pays 6:5: −1.39%. Pays 1:1: −2.27%.
• Dealer pushes on 22 (instead of busting): −6.91%. Look for it in the rules screen of any variant.
• Dealer hits soft 17: −0.22%. No double after split: −0.14%. Double on 10 and 11 only: −0.18%.
• No hole card (European style, you lose doubles and splits to a dealer blackjack): −0.11%.
• Late surrender against a ten: +0.07%. Single deck: +0.48%. Six decks instead of eight: +0.02%.

The one to look for first is the blackjack payout. A ₱100 blackjack pays ₱150 at 3:2 and ₱120 at 6:5; you get a blackjack on about 4.7% of hands (2 × 1/13 × 4/13), so the short pay alone costs more than twice the whole house edge of a good 3:2 table.

Blackjack at Philippine casinos: what PAGCOR's rules say

Land-based casinos need PAGCOR's approval for a game's rules, odds and payouts before they use them, and these "shall be consistent with those implemented in Macau, Singapore and Nevada gaming jurisdictions". That is in PAGCOR's Casino Regulatory Manual for Licensed Land-Based Casinos (effective 13 August 2025), which merged the earlier separate manuals. For table layouts it sets only general minimums for every game: the licensee's or casino's name, marked areas for the main, proposition and progressive bets, and all winning odds and payouts. A high-roller blackjack table must have a minimum of ₱25,000 (or US$500) per hand.

The earlier manual for Entertainment City licensees (version 4.0, January 2016) spelled out blackjack in detail:

• Inscriptions on the layout: "Blackjack pays 3 to 2", "Dealer must stand on all 17's" and "Insurance pays 2 to 1".
• Betting areas: no more than seven, "except in the case of the 6 to 5 blackjack variation", where the limit is six.
• Progressive blackjack: a separate acceptor for the progressive chip, one progressive wager per person per round, and a sign near the table showing the winning hands and payouts.

Those inscriptions describe the first row of the house-edge table above: dealer stands on soft 17, blackjack pays 3:2. The 6:5 variation the manual allows for is the third row, more than three times as costly. The current 2025 manual does not repeat these game-specific rules; it requires PAGCOR approval of each game's rules and payouts.

Casino Filipino's house rules

Casino Filipino, which PAGCOR operates (14 casino sites, by its own count), publishes these blackjack rules in its gaming guide:

• The dealer draws to 16 or less and stands on 17 or more.
• "Hit for double": you may double only on a total of 10 or 11, for one card, not on split aces or a blackjack. Split hands totalling 10 or 11 may also double.
• Surrender ("business"): give up half your bet before a third card is dealt, but not when the dealer shows an ace.
• Insurance pays 2 to 1; even money is offered on a blackjack against a dealer ace.

How that fits the house-edge table: the dealer standing on 17 is the first row's rule. Doubling on 10 and 11 only is worth −0.18% to the player in Wizard of Odds' figures, and surrender gives a little back. The guide does not state the blackjack payout or the number of decks, so check the payout printed on the table. In the strategy chart, a D on 9 or on a soft hand becomes a hit at these tables, and Ds becomes a stand.

Blackjack vs Pontoon

Both games are on the 2016 Entertainment City manual's list of authorized table games. Its layout rules for each:

Casino Filipino's Pontoon, per its gaming guide, is a different game in practice: eight Spanish decks (ace to 9 plus jack, queen and king, no tens), the dealer draws to soft 17, a Pontoon pays 3 to 2, a hard 21 of five or more cards pays 3 to 2, a player's soft 21 never loses (it ties with a dealer Pontoon or 21), and a pair on the first two cards pays 10 to 1 as a side bet. The house edges and strategy chart on this page are for blackjack and do not apply to it.

Insurance and "even money"

When the dealer shows an ace, you are offered insurance: a side bet of up to half your stake that pays 2:1 if the dealer has blackjack. With an infinite deck the hidden card is a ten-value card 4 times in 13. Per ₱100 insured: you win ₱200 four times in 13 and lose ₱100 nine times in 13, an average loss of ₱100 ÷ 13, about ₱7.69, a 7.69% house edge. A real shoe changes this slightly depending on which cards are already out. "Even money", offered when you hold a blackjack against an ace, is insurance by another name: it locks in ₱100 instead of ₱150, and costs the same on average.

Basic strategy chart

Find your hand on the left and the dealer's upcard across the top. H = hit, S = stand, D = double (hit if doubling is not allowed), Ds = double (stand if not allowed), P = split. We worked this out with the same calculation as the house-edge table and the same rules (dealer stands on soft 17). A few close calls differ in published charts for six or eight decks, and some tables change the right play (for example when the dealer hits soft 17); the losses from those differences are tiny.

Hard totals (no ace counted as 11)

Soft totals (an ace counted as 11)

Pairs

Three rules of thumb that come out of the chart: always split aces and eights; never split tens or fives; and stand on 12-16 only when the dealer shows 2-6 (12 needs a dealer 4-6), because those are the upcards from which the dealer busts most often. In our calculation, once the dealer has checked for blackjack, the dealer busts about 35-42% of the time from a 2-6 upcard and about 17-26% from a 7, 8, 9, ten or ace.

Online blackjack games on PAGCOR's approved lists

PAGCOR's Electronic Gaming Licensing Department links one PDF per game provider under "List of EGLD-Approved Electronic Games". We searched all 126 per-provider files linked on 7 November 2026 for "blackjack". Twelve providers have at least one title:

Three points about these lists. First, they approve games, not websites: a casino can offer an approved game on an unlisted site, and the list does not say which casinos carry which title. Second, the titles do not tell you the rules: names such as "Free Bet", "Power", "Lightning" or "Infinite" are variants whose payouts and dealer rules differ from the standard game, and the rule costs above can go up or down with them. Read the game's rules screen for the blackjack payout, the soft-17 rule and any "dealer 22" rule before you bet. Third, Evolution's file of 19 May 2026 lists the same blackjack titles as the newer 16 July file; we use the newer one.

Systems, side bets and tilt

Betting systems such as Martingale (double after every loss) change the pattern of wins and losses, not the house edge; a long losing run meets the table limit or your budget first (Wizard of Odds on betting systems). Side bets such as Lucky Ladies or pair bets are separate games with their own house edge; do not assume it is as low as the main game's, and check the paytable. The bigger real-world cost is speed. At an invented pace of 300 hands an hour, a ₱100 average bet means ₱30,000 wagered, so even a 0.57% edge is about ₱171 an hour on average, and mistakes make it more. Set a time limit as well as a money limit (see responsible gambling).

Related: baccarat (no decisions, 1.06% on Banker), live casino, and the turnover guide if a bonus counts blackjack at a reduced rate.

Sources: PAGCOR, EGLD page and the provider PDFs linked in the table (all downloaded 7 Nov 2026); PAGCOR, Casino Regulatory Manual for Licensed Land-Based Casinos (Rev. 0, effective 13 Aug 2025: Regulation 3, Sections 8-11) and Casino Regulatory Manual for Entertainment City Licensees (Version 4.0, January 2016: Sections 9 and 12); Casino Filipino, gaming guide (read 9 Nov 2026); Wizard of Odds, blackjack basics and rule variations (read 7 Nov 2026). House edge, insurance, bust rates, the worked example and the strategy chart are our own calculations.